Ask PG: How is Arc coming along?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10048330

by shawndumas • 11 years ago

116 47 11 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I noticed that 500 days ago you said that you'd be working on Arc again [1]. How's it going?

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[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7493993

zatkin• 11 years ago

He handed over the Hacker News leadership to a team of people a while ago[1], so that might be a reason for why he hasn't been working on it.

[1] http://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-hack...

malisper• 11 years ago

PG's comment was made on the post you are referencing.

maehwasu• 11 years ago

Clojure won.

vosper• 11 years ago

You're getting downvoted, but I think there might be some truth to this.

jeremiep• 11 years ago

I'm fairly certain Arc influenced Clojure in some way.

Especially the naming of functions such as fn, pr, prn and the likes.

davelnewton4• 11 years ago

I'm not really convinced Clojure is even one of the reasons, though. It seems like they have different goals and mindsets.

melling• 11 years ago

He should probably rephrase. Clojure has won as an acceptable Lisp in business. Lisp'ers should probably get behind it to help to grow it even more. Once it grows, other Lisps will have an easier time.

drcode4• 11 years ago

As likely one of the few people outside of pg to use arc in production, I agree Clojure won- It has about 80% of the features that arc pioneered, and many additional features that leave arc in the dust. (Most of the remaining "good ideas" in arc are syntactic sugar which are just too controversial to see mainstream adoption.)

ColinWright• 11 years ago

Clickable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7493993

nabla9• 11 years ago

Without deadline there will never be need to compromise. You can keep thinking about it year after year and seek perfection that is The Hundred-Year Language.

http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html

mlitchard• 11 years ago

Plans without deadlines are just dreams.

pmelendez3• 11 years ago

Sometimes dreams are long-term plans

runjake• 11 years ago

  > Plans without *action* are just dreams.

There. I fixed that for you.

omouse• 11 years ago

Good projects last for decades and outlive companies. See: LibreOffice ;)

mhb• 11 years ago

To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.

-Leonard Bernstein

pt• 11 years ago

A dream is a goal without a deadline.

angersock• 11 years ago

Meanwhile, JS shipped inside of a month, and look how far it's spread.

philbo• 11 years ago

It did, but then look at the languages it borrowed from: Self and Scheme.

Yes it has warts borne of ridiculous deadlines, but it also has elegance learned from prior art. All things considered, JS is a good advert for standing on the shoulders of giants, imho.

bbcbasic2• 11 years ago

Waste of time. In 100 years the question will be what lifeform will you be working on / with.

Programming languages will look like stone tablets.

pmelendez3• 11 years ago

Programming languages will look like stone tablets.

Trend look the opposite actually... it's more like everything would be programmable, maybe even virus and bacteria

dothis• 11 years ago

PHP won.

tylermauthe• 11 years ago

lol.

dragonshed• 11 years ago

Some context (say, for example, a brief description of Arc) might be helpful.

ma2rten• 11 years ago

LISP dialect invented by Paul Graham. This site is written in Arc. Afaik that is the only mayor application so far.

http://arclanguage.org/

http://www.paulgraham.com/arc.html

ForHackernews• 11 years ago

This site is written in Arc.

Is that why nobody can ever add any useful new features to it?

akkartik• 11 years ago

There's also more up-to-date documentation/support by the community: http://arclanguage.github.io

1arity• 11 years ago

Perhaps it is already complete.

Inspiration:

A manager went to the Master Programmer and showed him the requirements document for a new application. The manager asked the Master: "How long will it take to design this system if I assign five programmers to it?"

"It will take one year," said the Master promptly.

"But we need this system immediately or even sooner! How long will it take if I assign ten programmers to it?"

The Master Programmer frowned. "In that case, it will take two years."

"And what if I assign a hundred programmers to it?"

The Master Programmer shrugged. "Then the design will never be completed," he said.

Ask PG: How is Arc coming along?

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