Sometimes I get tired of working in higher-level languages like Python and I feel inspired to try my hand at something lower-level and closer to the machine. Go and Java are too corporate, Zig and Odin and Hare are too trendy, Rust is too industrial and C++ too Lovecraftian.
"I know", I say, "I'll use C - it's been around for fifty years, it's small and simple and got to be polished to a sheen by now." Then I read an article like this one.
By design i think. I believe during the creation of rust it was always meant to be a production language and used at real companies rather than just a hobby so i think it developed its feel on purpose. (Nothing against it I love the language)
I think "minimal" and "corporate" are different axis. Go was designed for a corporate environment after all (e.g. hot-swapping recent grads between projects).
The key point here is our programmers are Googlers, they're not researchers.
They're typically, fairly young, fresh out of school, probably learned Java,
maybe learned C or C++, probably learned Python. They're not capable of
understanding a brilliant language but we want to use them to build good
software. So, the language that we give them has to be easy for them to
understand and easy to adopt.
whichever language you choose to program in, I will write and promote a new alternative standard library implementation for it that returns 9 for every function without side effects, and then write blogposts about the work needed to accommodate the various standard library implementations in it. Chances are, the older the language, the more likely someone already did that.
Screwtape | 10 hours ago
Sometimes I get tired of working in higher-level languages like Python and I feel inspired to try my hand at something lower-level and closer to the machine. Go and Java are too corporate, Zig and Odin and Hare are too trendy, Rust is too industrial and C++ too Lovecraftian.
"I know", I say, "I'll use C - it's been around for fifty years, it's small and simple and got to be polished to a sheen by now." Then I read an article like this one.
Maybe I need to look more into Forth...
junon | 9 hours ago
"Rust is too industrial" eh... I wouldn't characterize it like that...
j1 | 3 hours ago
It has a bit of a corporate feel
vaguelytagged | 3 hours ago
By design i think. I believe during the creation of rust it was always meant to be a production language and used at real companies rather than just a hobby so i think it developed its feel on purpose. (Nothing against it I love the language)
trenchant | 9 hours ago
Writing a forth would definitely be a winner for ya, or Factor, or Uiua!
icefox | 7 hours ago
Honestly, assembly is fun...
That said, don't avoid trendy things only because they are trendy. I sympathize though.
synack | 55 minutes ago
Ada sits somewhere in the middle of all of those. Lower than Python, more abstract than C, not terribly trendy.
xyproto | 9 hours ago
What do you plan to use it for? Go is more minimal than corporate. It has fewer built-in keywords than C.
ChrisDenton | 5 hours ago
I think "minimal" and "corporate" are different axis. Go was designed for a corporate environment after all (e.g. hot-swapping recent grads between projects).
xyproto | 2 hours ago
No, Go was originally designed to replace C++ at Google:
https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponentially-more.html?m=1
spc476 | an hour ago
Both can be true.
xyproto | an hour ago
No. One is a myth and the other is true.
spc476 | an hour ago
A quote from Rob Pike himself, creator of Go:
jcelerier | 3 hours ago
whichever language you choose to program in, I will write and promote a new alternative standard library implementation for it that returns 9 for every function without side effects, and then write blogposts about the work needed to accommodate the various standard library implementations in it. Chances are, the older the language, the more likely someone already did that.