I think Odin should market itself for aforementioned games and graphics. Otherwise it will become very niche language. Even now, I think there is only about 5k Odin repositories on github while it is essentially a complete language. Contrast it with Zig, which is still evolving and has breaking changes, being still at 0.x without clear sight of 1.0, and it has over 27k repositories and big projects like Ghostty, Bunt or Tiger beetle are written in it.

Once Jonathan Blow's Jai comes out next year, the language that inspired conception of both of these, Odin will likely have no chance competing on the marketing side of things with programmers and will be taken over by Jai, and Zig in a large extent as well. So the future of the language might not be as solid as it might seem and it might end up just as an internal tool for JangaFX, which is how it originated.

Having the "web stuff" can attract literally millions of developers whom can elevate the language into more stable and broadly used language. More documentation would become available, libraries, youtube videos, internet presence in general.

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Yokohiii an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Did Jon state that he intends to release as open source? I am not sure he is the guy to the stressful route. If it all he would probably go long release cycles without considering public feedback too much.

He also stated recently that he doesn't care too much about language design at a syntax level, or better said it's not his top focus as the overarching concepts are more important to him.

I think there is a chance that people may have a hard time to adopt to the language. His strong focus on gamedev will further cut down the audience. It will certainly draw a lot of attention but a massive adoption is highly questionable.

	▲	gethly 17 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		He said that for some period, the compiler will not be open source, the language will. Whether the compiler will become OS or not, I am not sure. But I think he just wants to get the spec done beforehand. I think he mentioned that the compiler code might be purchased via paid licence? I am not certain but as I am not a AAA studio, I do not care either way.

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_bohm 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> the language that inspired conception of both of these

I haven’t heard this before. Do you have a source on this?

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gethly 20 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I do not, but John's old videos on the idea of making a language and addressing the modern problems of archaic languages has been cited many times.

Here is a list with his videos where he goes from conception to something tangible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH9VCN6UkyQ&list=PLmV5I2fxai...

The first video is from September 17, 2014.

Zig's first commit was Aug 5, 2015.

Odin has first commit in Jul 7, 2016.

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Yokohiii 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The language is in closed beta, there isn't exhaustive details available. You can see interviews and some details on YT if you look up Jon(athan) Blow with suitable topics.

	▲	_bohm 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I meant that I had not heard that both Zig and Odin were inspired by Jai

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imiric 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Popularity is not required for a language to be "successful". An argument can be made that popularity can bring fragmentation, a lack of focus, security and usability issues via poor quality code and outdated information, and overwhelm core developers. Just take a look at JavaScript and Python ecosystems. Whereas less popular languages like Nim, Zig, Odin, etc., thrive within their niches.