
Ask HN: Suggest me a new programming language with small user community to learn - grepgeek
I want to learn a very new programming language. It should not be too popular. It should not have a large user community. It should be relatively new compared to Go, JavaScript, etc.<p>My intention in learning behind a language like this is to see if I can contribute run-of-the-mill libraries to this language&#x27;s ecosystem. If it is new and not so popular yet, there is a good chance its ecosystem would be lacking where I can contribute my time and effort to improve it.
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amirouche
Scheme is big and small at the same time. It is old, but the last report on
the language was released a couple of years back and it is still growing.
There is still many areas that needs some love.

Checkout [http://scheme-lang.com/](http://scheme-lang.com/)

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elderK
You beat me to it!

I'd recommend checking out Chicken Scheme. Not only is it a kick-butt
implementation but its community, #chicken on Freenode, is truly fantastic.

Give it a whirl :)

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siriniok
I'd try Racket (Scheme family) or ReasonML.

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em-bee
there are plenty of older but less popular languages that could use some help
to improve the ecosystem.

pharo smalltalk for example. (i can give you a list of things i'd like to have
there right now.)

pike is a nice language with a small community. plenty of room for interesting
things to add.

red-lang is another one that could use some help.

bonus: if you pick that up any of these three i'll offer to mentor you :-)

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shpx
[https://www.idris-lang.org](https://www.idris-lang.org) the book is great.

[https://urbit.org/docs/learn/hoon/](https://urbit.org/docs/learn/hoon/) has a
small, welcoming community. It's pretty out there though.

There's also nim (fast Python) and Crystal (fast Ruby).

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throwaway8879
I've been meaning to check out urbit thoroughly for a while but they seem to
have gone overboard with the esoteric terminology, at least for me personally.
I was put off by the naming schemes in the docs last I looked at them about a
year ago. I suppose I'll have another look again. Maybe they grow on you once
you are familiar with them.

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brianush1
Odin[0] is very new and has a pretty small community, but it's promising and
very well thought-out.

[0]: [https://github.com/odin-lang/Odin](https://github.com/odin-lang/Odin)

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hazz99
I'd recommend Dart. It's a great language but the ecosystem was severely
lacking when I lasted used it.

An additional benefit is that it's super easy to contribute to the Flutter
codebase!

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codegladiator
What do you consider as "run-of-the-mill" libraries ? like data-
structures/algos ? or say something like a database connector / http router ?

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dom96
Nim sounds like a perfect opportunity for you :)

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throwaway8879
Zig is very cool. Not sure whether it has a community yet. I liked the authors
talks and livestreams on YouTube.

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_proofs
Lua!

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jazoom
Lua is 26 years old. The OP said younger than Go. Go is 9 years old.

