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It's been a while since pg's appeared here? (reddit.com)
4 points by bhoung 4926 days ago | 10 comments


4 points by garply 4926 days ago | link

I do wish PG would spend more time making his language better and it does feel a bit like he's abandoned it. If Clojure compiled to C instead of sat on top of Java, I would probably jump ship. Having a community is a valuable component of a language and PG's in a great position to really market Arc (we already have proof that he can build a community due to HN), but he just doesn't. My conclusion is that running YC has caused him to strongly deprioritize Arc.

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7 points by pg 4925 days ago | link

While I still hack in Arc constantly because I'm always tweaking HN, I haven't made dramatic changes to the language itself lately. I only seem to be able to work on 2 things at once, not 3. Since YC is a given, that means I have to choose between hacking and writing. Lately I've mostly chosen writing.

I should release a new version though. News.arc is greatly improved since the last release.

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2 points by garply 4925 days ago | link

That would be great. Seeing others share code - even tools that I don't currently use - makes me want to push code as well. When I push code and no one else does, I feel a bit like my work is unappreciated and want to stop sharing. I suspect there is type of momentum at work in the formation of vibrant programming communities. Seeing Arc 3.2 would be motivational.

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3 points by akkartik 4925 days ago | link

Yeah. I have this hazy sense that people submit lots of bug reports on this forum, but no idea if any of them are ever integrated.

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2 points by aw 4923 days ago | link

iirc all reported bugs fixes were incorporated by the arc3.1 release. (Releases haven't always incorporated all fixes reported up to that point, the atomic-invoke fix was particularly alarming and took several releases to make it in).

The only bug I'm currently aware of off the top of my head in arc.arc is readline, which was reported after the arc3.1 release.

There are a couple of known issues with the Arc runtime (i.e. the queue bug you found which seems likely caused by unsafe mutation of immutable cells, nested quasiquotation) which have prospective fixes, but neither tested throughly enough that I'd personally say, "oh, why yes, you should go ahead and switch HN over today".

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1 point by hasenj 4923 days ago | link

> I should release a new version though. News.arc is greatly improved since the last release.

Just curios, do you have a public git repo, or anything like that?

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1 point by bhoung 4926 days ago | link

I suppose I submitted the link to try and gauge how accurate you guys thought the comments on Reddit were.

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1 point by garply 4926 days ago | link

I don't think he's trying to distance himself from it, nor do I think he will shut the language down or port HN. But he's also clearly not developing it very quickly.

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3 points by pg 4925 days ago | link

Kind of correct. It depends on the degree to which you count news.arc as part of the language. I work quite actively on that.

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2 points by bhoung 4924 days ago | link

Thanks for the replies.

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