> Is it getting hype before it's ready? Will it be able to recover from that?
Isn't that the very definition of hype? :^)
We can't hide in a cave to build everything in secret until it's ready because otherwise we wouldn't have the money to pay contributors, or we would be forced to get funding through other means (I mention that point in the blog post). And while we do want to be in the open, you can see that in my writing I never talk about a future that's distant and completely unproven. Even the most forward-looking stuff I mention, like incremental compilation, has at least had a proof of concept to show that it's not pure fiction.
I'm obviously biased, but I think we're in a pretty good spot when it comes to gathering public interest vs getting things done.
> We can't hide in a cave to build everything in secret until it's ready because otherwise we wouldn't have the money to pay contributors, or we would be forced to get funding through other means (I mention that point in the blog post).
Can you see though how this model can cause a lack of trust in external observers? Your development model is reliant on attracting attention to drive funding. There are some major incentive problems here. I want to be clear that I am not suggesting that you are deliberately doing this but your model actually incentivizes building a lower quality product. You just need to make something appealing enough that people start using it and then, once they are invested in the language, some of them may be willing to pay you to fix the issues they find or build new features that would be useful to them. If the language didn't have issues, there would be no reason to pay you to fix them.
I know I will likely get downvoted for this but I believe in what I say.
> Your development model is reliant on attracting attention to drive funding.
Yes, what alternative do you recommend? VC funding? You think any other financing model would result in being less reliant on attention as opposed to enhancing the effect?
> I want to be clear that I am not suggesting that you are deliberately doing this but your model actually incentivizes building a lower quality product.
You're writing this in a discussion about us having just spent two years reimplementing the compiler to pay tech debt, instead of doing any of the things that you mentioned.
I have to admit that your post smells a bit of concern trolling, especially considering that we've seen a bunch of that in the last few weeks.
> Can you see though how this model can cause a lack of trust in external observers? Your development model is reliant on attracting attention to drive funding. There are some major incentive problems here... You just need to make something appealing enough that people start using it and then, once they are invested in the language, some of them may be willing to pay you to fix the issues they find or build new features that would be useful to them.
As also a 3rd party observer, there is an obvious partial counter to the argument that you made. In the case of free and open-source, people are investing money or time because they believe in the product and its potential usefulness. That the product will deliver, for all people invested and for all users, is clearly unrealistic. There is no such thing as a "sure thing". It's more a matter of if the product delivers for enough people. And if anything, if unsatisfied, people are free to jump to the next candidate or savior that floats by.
I think the more valid aspect of the point presented, is the lack of trust or suspicions coming from when the hype is paid for and doesn't come from the grassroots and actual users. To include, negative propaganda campaigns targeting competing languages.
> If the language didn't have issues, there would be no reason to pay you to fix them.
All languages will have issues. I've always found this curious about people having such expectations. Maybe the argument is more valid in terms of the total amount of issues and bugs, but then that would need to be a fair and relative comparison to other languages. There is no such thing as a bug-free perfect language. While other parts of your post were "more valid" or at least points worth considering, I think on this point, it kind of fell off the mark.
> I know I will likely get downvoted for this but I believe in what I say.
Odd, that's exactly what happened. The tribalism is arguably too severe, which may relate to the money involved, that the downvoting is so predictable.
Isn't that the very definition of hype? :^)
We can't hide in a cave to build everything in secret until it's ready because otherwise we wouldn't have the money to pay contributors, or we would be forced to get funding through other means (I mention that point in the blog post). And while we do want to be in the open, you can see that in my writing I never talk about a future that's distant and completely unproven. Even the most forward-looking stuff I mention, like incremental compilation, has at least had a proof of concept to show that it's not pure fiction.
I'm obviously biased, but I think we're in a pretty good spot when it comes to gathering public interest vs getting things done.