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Not long ago I was looking through programming language sites to figure out how to best introduce the language I'm working on.

ruby-lang.com stood out with a text in a big font:

Ruby is...

Followed by a paragraph about what makes Ruby special. I think that was an exceptionally simple and natural way of introducing something as complex as a programming language.


"Programmer's best friend" is precisely the wrong thing to do though (it says nothing and only makes the reader confused. Are we talking about a language or a pet? I'm not looking for a friend.). They took a step back with that.

For reference this is the old one, which is much better: https://www.ruby-lang.org/images/about/screenshot-ruby-lang-... From: https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/about/website/

The old one was better because it said something about what the language is and how it benefits the user. "Best friend" is not descriptive. "dynamic language with minimal syntax that is easy to read and write" at least tells me something about Ruby, its priorities, and value proposition. I'm very concerned about a language that claims it wants to be my friend.


Dunno, it's a comfy tagline. I never got into Ruby but it always feels to me like it's a really ergonomic and cozy language. Sure, the best friend thing is a stretch, but it's honestly a slogan. How many people land on this page with no knowledge of what Ruby is and will confuse it with an app to make friends?

It sure is a comfy tagline, but because it doesn't really mean anything you could say it about any language, and it only works if you already know what Ruby is. It's not that anyone would confused Ruby with an app to make friends, but it doesn't really say anything about Ruby at all. As other pointed out, the page doesn't even make clear that Ruby is a programming language.

A programming language for the web: https://www.firefly-lang.org/


Sure, but one could imagine that there are people working at the supermarket who would also rather do personal stuff or go cycling. But there they are, serving you.


I think this kind of slop has negative value. It's unclear how much of the information in the comic is hallucinated, and the malformed code "for i = i1+|>" and nonsense text "(starts write hooks!" doesn't bode well.


Definitely still needs a "human in the loop." I don't know if this particular comic was cherry-picked or if it was the first one generated by Nano-Banana Pro, but either way, it's still got plenty of messy typos.

  RULES OF HOORS? 
  Updste #2: setState
  Starts wite hooks!


>Definitely still needs a "human in the loop."

At which point I feel like I would rather the human have invested their time into writing a design doc that we could discuss well before they submitted a PR.


But on Hetzner, you can usually get a dedicated server installed and ready tomorrow.


Even sooner than that. I bought a dedicated server on auction and it was ready 2h after the payment.


Hetzner is oversold. It's not appropriate for production in the same sense that EC2 obviously is. It's fine for staging though.


Out of curiosity, how is a dedicated server oversold?


I'm not familiar with Hetzner personally, but maybe they mean the uplink? I've found that with some smaller providers, advertising 10Gbit, but you rarely get close to that speed in reality.


A few years ago I worked on TopShell, an attempt to reimagine the shell+terminal using functional programming: https://github.com/topshell-language/topshell#readme

It ticks some of the boxes, but tonnes of work would be needed to turn it into a full alternative.


Working on a programming language for webapps!

https://www.firefly-lang.org/

Speed is not an optional feature on the web. The site above is written in Firefly, uses hydration, and scores 100% on PageSpeed Insights.

The language is largely complete, and we're now working on DX: Got a language server, a devserver, and some essential libraries.


This looks good! It feels a little bit similiar to ReScript. I like the idea to have nodeMain, browserMain and buildMain. The Roc language had something similiar with platforms and I love that idea!

In general I prefer a better language over an involved javascript framework that does not look like js anymore.


Thank you! Yeah, I think some of the newer frameworks really complicate dataflow. We're trying to keep dataflow clear, though it's a big design space given the distributed nature of webapps.

In any case, if you take it for a spin, I'd love some feedback.


Seems like we can join the club! https://www.firefly-lang.org/ is 218 kB uncompressed.


By requiring transparency? What's the actual problem here?


Basic greenhouse effect: Visible light (and ultraviolet light) comes in relatively unhindered. Gets absorbed by the earth and heats it up. The heat is emitted as infrared radiation. This gets absorbed by CO2 (and equivalents) and reemitted in a random direction. Takes a long time to reach space by chance, so the energy stays in the atmosphere for a while.


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