On: Honu: Syntactic Extension for Algebraic Notation (...

[pjmlp]

Dunno, I feel that both Dylan and Julia are somehow good enough approaches.

Dylan failed because Apple losed interest, if they had Swift like motivation back then, it might have turned out differently.

Julia, lets see how it goes.

[ken → pjmlp]

This sounds like an admission that the only way a programming language survives is when a corporation decides we should use it.

Given what I’ve seen in the past 25 years, I’m not sure you’re wrong.

[pjmlp → ken]

Because programming languages are just software products like anything else, where the customer base are the developers.

So you need an use case to keep your product on the market (programming language).

Corporations are the ones with deep enough pockets to push those use cases, even if initally they don't caught on.

For example, if Dart was a FOSS project it would have died by now, instead Google can keep throwing money at Flutter until Dart actually picks up.

[taeric → ken]

I think I repeat basically this every time the topic comes up. Marketing works to build a market for products, but is expensive.

Yes, there are grass roots marketing that gets some languages adopted. They seem to be the exceptions proving the rule.

So much of the technical chase for getting a successful language feels jarring compared to the momentum of languages that are succeeding.

[aidenn0 → ken]

Programming languages have large network effects, so just being able to throw a lot of developers at a language has a major effect.