Re: [dev] New Suckless computer language?

From: Donald Allen <donaldcallen_AT_gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2016 14:52:10 -0400

On Sat, Jul 23, 2016 at 2:25 PM, Cág <caoc_AT_riseup.net> wrote:
>> Is there any need for a new language,
>
>
> No
>
>> or is C good enough?
>
>
> Yes
>
> There is Go already, if C is not enough.

And Rust.

My personal opinion: I've used Go a fair amount and while it has some
nice aspects, is well-documented and has a fairly rich library. I just
find it too damned complicated. If I need flat-out speed, I prefer C.
Yes, it has language warts, but after all these years, we know what
they are. For other applications for which you could consider Go, I
much prefer Haskell. Yes, it takes some doing to learn it, but there
is good material to help with that. It has a very rich library and the
GHC compiler is a work of art. Given the design of the language and
the quality of the compiler, once you have made the compiler happy,
you are very close to having a correct program, modulo your own logic
screwups. I do much less runtime debugging with Haskell programs than
in any other language I've ever used, and I've used pretty much all of
them, since writing my first code in 1960 in IBM 1620 assembly
language (yes, I'm old).

For small programs, particularly those that talk to Sqlite databases,
Tcl is excellent. But 'small' is the operative word. Given its design
goals, it's very well done. The language is simple, performance is
reasonable for an interpreted language, it has a rich library, and the
documentation is excellent. Tk is very useful, too.

Rust: it's an interesting idea and there seem to be some smart people
working on it. My problems are that the syntax is baroque and the
documentation, at least thus far, is awful. The fellow writing the
main document clearly knows his subject. Unfortunately, that is
necessary but not sufficient for producing a good document. He just
doesn't seem to have the knack for explaining what he knows. Read the
section on Lifetimes, the most difficult aspect of Rust, and you will
understand what I am talking about. I have only begun to understand
what this does by reading stuff I've found on the web by searching,
written by people not associated with the project, who have taken the
time to reverse engineer the semantics of various constructs. I've
never had to abandon a language that I was interested in before due to
inadequate documentation. Rust is the first. So I point it out just
for completeness in this discussion, but I can't in good conscience
recommend it. Again, my opinion.
>
Received on Sat Jul 23 2016 - 20:52:10 CEST