AstonJ

AstonJ

How can smaller, more independent languages compete with those backed by tech giants?

  • Do you think it’s worth worrying about?
  • Do you think it’s going to be an even bigger issue in future?
  • If so what can the teams of smaller more independent languages (and frameworks) do to compete?

I have some ideas that doesn’t involve deep pockets - but curious to hear what you think :upside_down_face:

Most Liked

dimitarvp

dimitarvp

Not at all. Most languages out there are not backed by corporations and they are doing amazingly well.

  • OCaml is mostly used and extended by Jane Street but it is still being actively changed by scientists and hobbyists.
  • Rust is backed by a foundation but started off as a bunch of hobbyists.
    Elixir is still not backed by a corporation and it enjoys a steady slow growth to this day.
  • F# wasn’t corporate-backed at the beginning as well.
  • Zig is mostly the brain-child of a single person and is highly praised.

Examples abound. If anything, I’d claim the opposite: the more corporately backed a language is, the more it gets warped to the needs of the corporations that back it and that’s not a good thing.

One example: Golang is backed up by Google and it suffers a number of embarrassing incidents like elementary mistakes in its crypto and HTTP libraries.

Nobody can predict the future but if programming becomes strongly regulated down the line then yes, lack of corporate backing might be fatal. At the moment this isn’t a problem at all though.

Awesome and amazing tooling. Elixir, Rust and Zig are a shining example. It’s not enough your language to be really good (LISP, OCaml) but it also has to have very good package manager, task runner etc. (cargo for Rust, mix for Elixir). Python is hugely popular yet it suffers from basic lack of tooling to this day.

If you make your programming users’ lives easier then will flock to your language.

Nothing in particular except for something rather vague from me:

Watching Rust and OCaml showed me that some scientific (mostly mathematical and logical) training pays huge dividends. Some Rust core functions and 3rd party libraries utilized particular breed of state machines (finite state automatons I think) to optimize regexes and concurrent / parallel processing with crushing success. And others are starting to sit on top of those extremely solid foundations.

Just an opinion: a bit more formal training and higher education need to make a comeback to the professional programming. Otherwise everybody is reinventing the same half-broken wheel all the time.

finner

finner

hi @dimitarvp -

that sounds worrying. What would be regulated? I’m thinking encryption … ?

Another interesting point!! As tech advances at the speed of light the industry might just need people to upgrade their formal qualifications every number of years. The Java community is only starting to shuffle out of its deep sleep for the past 10 years. New concepts need to be learned now like - Functional Programming, Reactive Streams, Java modules, and more.
I have often heard programmers being compared to doctors. Doctors are also constantly in a learning state, otherwise they would be treating patients with outdated techniques. Do you think programmers should have licenses ? … I just has a NullPointerException thrown in my brain when I wrote that,
What kind f formal training are you thinking about?

dimitarvp

dimitarvp

Real, true mathematics. Constraint solving. Probabilistic calculations and algorithms. Calculations of the limits of functions (property testing kind of does that but not really).

Parallel processing of complex graphs – just one strong innovation here can make most compilers on the planet 6x faster.

There are many examples.

I’m not a mathematician. But nowadays I wish I was. Math has a lot of stuff for us to learn from. Modern programming reinvents wheels and tears them apart on a regular basis.

I feel that we can do so much better.

Where Next?

Popular General Dev topics Top

mjk
TL;DR: words that incorporate negation are acceptable, eg. independent, asymmetric, nondeterministic. An example in the book is to renam...
New
AstonJ
Always interested in seeing what apps people use and how they organise their phones/home screens! Here’s mine…
New
New
mafinar
I always start with excitement and then get busy on 9/10th day. This year, like the year before this, and the year before that, I intend ...
New
AstonJ
Hi everyone… I’m so sorry about the delay in getting this thread up, I’ve just been so busy :see_no_evil: Are there any book clubs you’d...
New
dwaynebradley
For those that are interested, Snyk (developer security tool) announced support for Elixir earlier this week: Just thought I’d pass it...
New
TwistingTwists
Hello Fellow developers, I have been trying to wrap my head around How difficult would it have been to be a dev 20-30 years ago? I have...
New
New
ivanhercaz
Hi! I usually keep changelogs for my projects because I think they are really useful, not only to track the changes and not to be lost b...
New
New

Other popular topics Top

AstonJ
If it’s a mechanical keyboard, which switches do you have? Would you recommend it? Why? What will your next keyboard be? Pics always w...
New
brentjanderson
Bought the Moonlander mechanical keyboard. Cherry Brown MX switches. Arms and wrists have been hurting enough that it’s time I did someth...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Rust is an exciting new programming language combining the power of C with memory safety, fearless concurrency, and productivity boosters...
New
AstonJ
I ended up cancelling my Moonlander order as I think it’s just going to be a bit too bulky for me. I think the Planck and the Preonic (o...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Tailwind CSS is an exciting new CSS framework that allows you to design your site by composing simple utility classes to create complex e...
New
AstonJ
Saw this on TikTok of all places! :lol: Anyone heard of them before? Lite:
New
Maartz
Hi folks, I don’t know if I saw this here but, here’s a new programming language, called Roc Reminds me a bit of Elm and thus Haskell. ...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Build efficient applications that exploit the unique benefits of a pure functional language, learning from an engineer who uses Haskell t...
New
First poster: joeb
The File System Access API with Origin Private File System. WebKit supports new API that makes it possible for web apps to create, open,...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight: VM Brasseur @vmbrasseur We have a treat for you today! We turn the spotlight onto Open Source as we sit down with V...
New