Agreed. I saw the announcement and had an inkling of the excitement I got the first time I tried Crystal, years ago. I remembered how exciting new languages were to learn, and putz around with.

Then I remembered I could open [coding agent of choice] and it'd nearly oneshot whatever I would want to try in Crystal. I got a little disheartened.

Some languages for me were never meant to be 'used in production', but were a creative & learning space instead.

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miah_ 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

People who work at the leopard breeding factory being upset that the leopards are being bred to eat their faces..

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satvikpendem 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

People love trotting out this phrase. But on analysis of its usage for the above comment, it doesn't make any sense. Who is the leopard, the breeder, and why are they upset in that above comment? They don't sound upset, just sad.

	▲	an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
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	▲	neutronicus 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I think the leopard is software-as-automation, the breeder is the tech industry, and the exact semantics of "upset" are less important than schadenfreude at automation (and ensuing poverty) coming for the automator.

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pjmlp 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Not everyone gets to work at the factory, yet they still get their face eaten.

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ethin 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I mean maybe but... There's nothing forcing you to use Claude or what have you to play around is there? I mean an employer might force you to use it but you don't have to in your free time. That's one way I comfort myself lol

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afavour 5 hours ago | parent [-]

You’re right. But the treat was having a hobby that was also professional development. People in other industries have to take courses, study through dreary textbooks… I got to do something I enjoy and get professional benefit. That’s the shine we’re rapidly losing.

	▲	itishappy 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I can't comment on the enjoyment aspect, but I'd argue that writing code still confers professional benefits. It might not be the most economical way to ship code [citation needed] but it's still the best way to understand code, and understanding code will remain professionally relevant for a long time yet.

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ModernMech 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

As someone who also feels that with new languages, I see it a little differently. To me, the limiting factor of all these langauges was (no shade to Crystal not really the case there these days) most of them have terrible or no docs, have terrible onboarding, have rough edges that may or may not be fixed.

So it was a gamble learning something new could just result in a brick wall dead end where you can't fix the thing, you can't get in touch with anyone who knows how (or has time), there's no docs to help you on the way, the code base is a mess and inscrutable, maybe written the a language you don't know -- maybe even the one you're trying to learn! It could be very frustrating at times, to the point I'd just pass over some interesting languages if they weren't polished enough. Which is a shame because I know there's good ideas in there, I just can't invest the time to make sense of them. Seems contradictory, but designers are not always the best communicators.

With LLMs, all this consternation is gone. Can it write the program for you? I guess... but also not really because for many niche languages with interesting features, the LLM won't do so idiomatically, opting instead to implement enough functionality to scaffold a Python-shaped solution, and then it writes that.

The neat ideas are still there, the learning opportunity is still there, the ability to leverage technology in a way the LLM can't is still there. Especially in a creative and learning space!