logoalt Hacker News

dibujarontoday at 12:07 AM12 repliesview on HN

This article makes Odin sound extremely well-known. I've never heard of it before, and I feel like I keep up with programming topics pretty diligently. Admittedly I don't work at the systems programming layer, but I've definitely heard plenty about Rust and c++ topics.

Curious if others feel similarly, or maybe I just happened to miss it?


Replies

recursivecaveattoday at 12:25 AM

I would consider it extremely obscure overall. A large majority of programmers would not be aware of its existence. At the same time there are clearly much less popular languages with articles so it is kindof weird to push to delete. (eg: random scheme implementation w/ no releases in 20 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SISC) I would say that wikipedia broadly favors programming languages as far as notability. Like most nerd/geek things their footprint skews toward the internet, and people who enjoy geek stuff are more likely to be wikipedia admins than the general population.

show 3 replies
andaitoday at 12:14 AM

The author protested the framing, but it's very much a game-dev oriented language. In fact, it's the most pleasant language for game development I have ever used. It comes with all sorts of "batteries included" in that direction, possibly more than any other existing language. (Well, I still didn't get my Jai invite, so who knows ;) Odin was a major influence on Jai.)

show 1 reply
3836293648today at 1:55 AM

I think you just happened to miss it. It's very commonly mentioned in the new systems space, alongside Jonathan Blow's jai.

panzitoday at 12:10 AM

I am interested in programming language topics and I certainly have heard of Odin and have seen a couple of interviews with Ginger Bill. Same with Zig, Rust, Jai, C++ etc. I haven't used much of these (only C++ and Rust out of these), though. But I find that stuff interesting.

loegtoday at 1:13 AM

It's relatively well known? Certainly not mainstream.

firesteelraintoday at 4:18 AM

I have only heard about it because of HN.

krautsauertoday at 1:27 AM

It's been here a few times, maybe 4-6 times in the past year?

dismalaftoday at 12:32 AM

It's kind of niche but is getting bigger. The Discord server has 10k members, the biggest(?) Twitch programming streamer has been using it recently, JangaFX is big enough to be used by AAA game companies and a few large film studios, and I'm sure there's plenty of users who aren't on the Discord server.

If you're comparing it to Rust/C++ you must live in a cave or something. So yes. It's not that big. But it's probably in the top 10 of hyped languages of the current year. There's a bunch of languages from the 60's to 90's on Wikipedia that have probably never had as many users or software shipped as Odin.

jibaltoday at 12:55 AM

Odin is extremely well known to every human being who keeps up on programming language development, along with Zig, Nim, D, Jai, V, Crystal, Carbon, and others. "programming topics" isn't relevant.

show 1 reply
steveklabniktoday at 12:43 AM

I feel like if you’re into programming languages as a hobby, the chances you know of Odin are pretty high. Not everyone can know everything, of course, but my impression is that it punches above average on notability within the niche.

bobbytheblkbeartoday at 12:54 AM

[flagged]