JaiPrimer

Looking at this, there's some nice features in there, I guess. Likely the major features are about what it doesn't have. https://github.com/BSVino/JaiPrimer/blob/master/JaiPrimer.md A syntax to mark structs to be stored as SOA in arrays is the only one I see that doesn't have a modern C++ analogue (besides things like no header files). Const expressions, defer (but not sure its significantly different than using destructors), some smart pointer stuff... I assume you need to compare it to C++ from more than a decade ago.

> But most languages are pretty bad at supporting this style, some are better. The first and most important step is having a language without statements and only expressions. But, as Jai needs a `return` in functions, it already failed the trivial test. https://github.com/BSVino/JaiPrimer/blob/master/JaiPrimer.md

Thanks, and yes, I didn't think about closures. Talking about closures, I also don't know why Jai needs explicit capture lists. In C++ and Rust I understand the need for them, because you have various ways to pass them into the lambda, but Jai doesn't seem to care, at least in the examples at https://github.com/BSVino/JaiPrimer/blob/master/JaiPrimer.md.... To be honest, I also don't see how this is different from just writing the function definition by hand, just in more than one step and you have to throw away the intermediate versions? Btw. I just replied to say that I really like your username, I have noticed it just now :)

There's quite a lot of information, just not very accessible. https://www.twitch.tv/j_blow/videos?filter=archives&sort=tim... : this is jai's author livestreaming language development, most up-to-date https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmV5I2fxaiCKfxMBrNsU1... : a cureated subset of twitch videos, possibly outdated info https://github.com/BSVino/JaiPrimer/blob/master/JaiPrimer.md : a summary of jai based on the above curated videos, possibly outdated

This reminded me of Jai, the language by Jon Blow. In the Primer here: https://github.com/BSVino/JaiPrimer/blob/master/JaiPrimer.md, the section on Data-oriented design is relevant. Note that the bottom of the OP article mentions explicitly the games industry as caring about this; relevant given Blow's background.

Look for "Data oriented design" or "Structs of arrays". Here's a talk on the former by Mike Acton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX0ItVEVjHc On the latter, there's Jai, a new programming language for games (WIP, unpublished) by Jonathan Blow, who has been very public in documenting the process creating it, and which is centered around such concepts. There is some unofficial documentation of the ideas on SoA vs AoS and how the language can help switching between the two, e.g. here: https://pixeldroid.com/jailang/overview/Features/SOA/#/overv... and here: https://github.com/BSVino/JaiPrimer/blob/master/JaiPrimer.md... Edit: Just realized that the articale even mentions Jai towards the end.

Odin seems rather similar to Zig: https://ziglang.org/ It would be interesting to hear from anyone who has spent time in both about the differences in experience. It’s a trend of “Better C than C” languages that don’t go as far as Rust or C++ in terms of either complexity (or safety) but are more opinionated and modern than C. I think Nim can squeeze into this category, too, but maybe not? Nim is confusing to me. Jon Blow is also working on one of these, but it isn’t released yet: https://github.com/BSVino/JaiPrimer/blob/master/JaiPrimer.md

Regarding your SoA example, Jai has explicit support for switching between SoA and AoS without having to rewrite everything: https://github.com/BSVino/JaiPrimer/blob/master/JaiPrimer.md...

Here is a link to a primer written by the community: https://github.com/BSVino/JaiPrimer/blob/master/JaiPrimer.md Right now, the only way to actually see the language in action is to tune in to Jonathan's livestreams on Twitch. He is writing his next game entirely in Jai. He also streams compiler development every now and then (last night was a compiler stream).

That is called a "struct of arrays" (vs an "array of structs"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOS_and_SOA I don't know of any language that transparently supports it other than Jai, which isn't available yet. https://github.com/BSVino/JaiPrimer/blob/master/JaiPrimer.md...

Jonathan Blow discusses harmful abstractions in several youtube videos, while discussing the Jai Programming language. That language isn't out yet, but an overview is available at: https://github.com/BSVino/JaiPrimer/blob/master/JaiPrimer.md

"The original designer said that "video games are machines that fill memory". The majority of the time, game programmers are thinking about how to fill memory with huge reams of data in ways that allow the data to be efficiently accessed and processed. Hundreds of megabytes of memory must be moved from the hard disk into main memory, and from there into the video card or the processor cache to be processed and returned back to main memory. Because video game players don’t like to wait, all this must be done as fast as is allowable by laws of our universe. The primary purpose of a programming language is to allow the specification of algorithms to manage data. Language features like garbage collection and templated data streams and dynamic string classes may help the programmer write code faster, but they don’t help the programmer write fa