There's more to a language than the syntax. The libraries, tools, and the ecosystem of developers, documentation, support, etc. are much more important. There are quite a few academic languages that are interesting to people that never really gain much traction because the people behind them just never commit to proper ecosystem building.

Switching languages is a big time commitment. Or at least it used to be. I find myself more open to that now that I can hit the ground running with AI coding tools in most languages. But still, it's a time investment to learn a language, its idioms, its way of doing things, all the tools, libraries, and frameworks, etc. It's not something you do an in afternoon. And certainly not mid project.

The languages that people gravitate to are the ones that look like they are safe, future proof bets. If you are going to spend all this energy learning one, you want to know it's a good investment. Successful languages have lots of users, decent tools, good libraries, etc. Or at least they look like there are serious people behind them. Many people make these bets early in their careers and then stick to them as well. I meet a fair share of people my age that are still sticking to Java. Because that's what they learned when they were in their twenties. I'm 51 now.

Rust is a good example of a language that's hard to learn but managed to get off the ground because of the solid people behind it. It wasn't just an academic exercise: Mozilla was trying to solve a real problem and they managed to get a nice community behind the language and it grew from there. This is not something that happens a lot. People create new languages all the time. But many stay very niche and the projects around them tend to go stale very quickly if they fail to attract a community of users.

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CodesInChaos 29 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Even if you only consider the language itself, semantics, especially the type system, are more important than syntax.

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purplemoonx an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> There's more to a language than the syntax

Is like saying there’s more to a hammer than being a hammer.

Maybe you’re pretending the hammer is Thor’s Hammer and going on fantastic adventures slaying dragons.

I’m just building a table.

Edit: Damn -4 tell me how you really feel HN! Even my antisemitic posts are less downvoted, good for you guys

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citelao an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I think the more appropriate analogy is there's more to a drill than the drill. When you buy a Milwaukee drill, because it shares a battery with other Milwaukee parts, it's easier to buy more Milwaukee tools.

So it helps to choose a drill brand with the ecosystem you like, not just one that's a serviceable drill.

(Or you could argue that a language's ecosystem is part of the dang language. Which I agree with).

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giancarlostoro an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I still attribute a rich OOTB standard library for Go’s success. You have an OOTB production capable web HTTP server baked into the standard library since practically day 1?

	▲	purplemoonx an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Have you never heard of Node.js where they got the idea from

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purplemoonx an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Fair points, but those preferences seem more grounded in reality than the abstract reasons people say they love a language beyond its interface

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oblio an hour ago | parent [-]

Libraries and frameworks and package management absolutely matter. They're not some abstract thing, they could be the difference between something being done in 6 months or in 2 years.

Why do you think people put up with Spring?

	▲	purplemoonx 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		1000% that's why I said "Fair points" I consider npm to be part of "the interface of JavaScript" and to your point it's one of the strongest reasons beyond performance to use Node over some other dynamic language like Ruby or PHP. Python earned its keep mainly because of its library ecosystem (again to your point) but also due to its simple, teachable syntax. My point is that Python is not used because it's highly performant - it's basically the slowest language there is. But because people like the syntax and the library ecosystem (AKA the interface to the language)

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zaphar an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Comparing a languages syntax to a saw blade is a bad analogy. A saw is a complete tool. Syntax is more like the teeth on the saw blade. The quality of the saw is not just about the teeth. It's also about the size and spacing of those teeth, the strength of the blade those teeth are on, the shape of the saw blade itself, the hardness of the metal, as well as the shape of the handle.

If you are just building a table then hopefully you are not trying to do the whole thing with a keyhole saw.

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benj111 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

So 2 languages are the same if they have the same syntax but 1 is interpreted, and not safe, whereas the other is compiled and safe?

Where one has a large library and runs on many platforms, and the other doesn't?

Where one behaves like PHP with respect to equality, and the other doesn't?

The closer metaphor is the handle. A saw handle may be ergonomic, that doesn't mean the quality of the blade is good, or even suitable for what you're trying to cut.

	▲	purplemoonx 16 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> compiled vs interpreted Best rebuttal here - yeah didn't think of that obvious one! I had a larger point about language idealism / putting code on a pedestal vs getting the job done but yeah, this crowd can't handle that lmao