Best Way to Advertise a Programming Language
10 months ago
- #programming
- #language-adoption
- #open-source
- The best way to advertise a programming language is by writing useful programs that appeal to a wide audience.
- Common Lisp and Haskell, despite their merits, lack a significant number of widely-used programs, which affects their popularity.
- GitHub stars and project utility are key indicators of a language's practical adoption.
- Examples of notable Common Lisp projects include Nyxt (web browser) and pgloader (PostgreSQL migration tool).
- Haskell has projects like pandoc (markup converter) and ShellCheck (shell script analyzer), but many are niche tools or compilers.
- Python and Zig have more widely-used programs, demonstrating practical adoption beyond theoretical benefits.
- Shipping real software demonstrates a language's viability and can serve as effective evangelism.
- Language popularity is influenced by marketing, education, and institutional support, not just technical superiority.