alt Hacker NewsLike Go and Rust, the coolest thing (and maybe only cool thing) about this language is the name.
Now that LLMs are out of the bag, I expect to see a lot of new programming languages. In such an environment, one is better off promoting what you can do with it, rather than the language itself and its quirks.
Show me what you made with this language - it will help me better understand the use case(s) and trade-offs.
I say it because I see Odin following Rust in that it is relying a lot on its name in marketing. And on these microscopic language quirks that people don't really care about en masse, things people easily work around in other languages.
Doesn't seem very useful (sales-wise) to spend so much time talking about garbage collection or whether or not a language has native tuple support - and also the branding just doesn't matter that much. Go does a better job of this (what is Go's logo? Idk either. I know Swift's though. Go is 4x more popular - both "released" around the same time by similar companies).
JavaScript has the worst name of all time yet it's the most popular language because of how heavily relied upon it is by all kinds of consumer technology.
Python also - not a great name really, still wildly popular because of its use cases (and having a high quality library ecosystem).
Turbopack was a great example of when, why, where, to use a new, novel language (Rust) in an area I'd never consider it (web dev). It also opens my mind up to Rust doing other things like that in the ecosystem where I'd never consider it before. Now I kinda know what Rust is for.
This is maybe the best example I've found for Odin: https://odin-lang.org/showcase/solar_storm/
It opens up questions like "is it designed only for graphics and GUIs or is it more backend in general, is it low level systems or network" etc. then after that I'd ask whether or not it's strongly typed, compiled, and get into all those language quirks (which don't matter that much).
After seeing the game demo, I read that it wraps basically every major GL - more questions related to graphics programming but then the site keeps saying:
"The Data Oriented Language"
...on every page.
Up until now I had began to think it was a graphics oriented language, with all the GPU talk and game dev demos. But now it's a data language? And what does that even mean?
Then there's a book for sale that I keep running into. This isn't helping!
I love the name "Odin", and I like the idea of a new graphics-oriented programming language that somehow does something useful. Push me over the edge! Help me fall for this thing, it's so much like Rust in this way - seems amazing! But why? Why do I want this?
If it were me: I'd narrowly focus on 1 thing at first, something controversial and powerful - private MMO servers with good server-side physics and anti-cheat, or torrents, or running local AI models.
Build a beautiful IDE designed around your language ecosystem (that works for other languages too) and give it away for free. Optionally include a 7b LLM in the IDE to autocomplete Odin syntax to teach people the language. Get private servers for games like WoW and FF14 (illegal in most countries) online and teach people how to deploy their own. Tout the fact that no backend language in all of gaming can simulate physics to such a degree (fluid dynamics, etc.) and that no front-end language in gaming wraps all major GL providers so seamlessly in a single, easy-to-learn syntax.
Make the IDE icy af
Replies
Interesting, I am thinking/expecting we will see a massive decrease in new languages. Or people might make new languages but the will not get any adoption.
A new language now has to clear the ever growing hurdle of not being in the LLM training data.
Unless the language provides an absolutely incredible technical or runtime advantage over every other language that LLMs “speak” well I think it will really struggle to gain adoption.
Additionally, a language’s qualitative benefits to human writers arguably matters less and less.
I used to live in my IDE. Now I use it maybe an hour each day even in a JVM based language. IDEs dont really matter as much anymore.
Data-oriented is a programming paradigm, just like object-oriented and procedural and functional. It has nothing to do with Big Data. It's about the way things are done. It prefers something like an ECS (data-oriented) rather than a class hierarchy (object-oriented). "Graphics oriented" isn't a thing.
Also, i disagree with your point about "promoting what you can do with it, rather than the language itself and its quirks". Like, what? Every language can do everything another language can. As long as it's turing-complete and has some interface for FFI or something similar, it can do anything. You can make a full modern SaaS in C if you really wanted to, from backend to frontend. The language itself and its quirks are what would make you maybe consider not doing that (as much as I love C, that would just be stupid if your goal is anything other than fun and experimentation).
I can see all the great software and games that were made with C++. Doesn't make me wanna use it though, the language sucks.
Your paragraph about IDE and the whole name thing just seems very out of touch to me. Are you a marketing / HR / sales person perchance?