YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Rewriting a Commercial Engine in Jai

29 points frading 2 days ago 17 comments

frading 2 days ago | parent

This is a recap of the reasons that led me to bite the bullet and rewrite an engine I used to sell and ship commercial projects.

EdwardDiego 2 hours ago | parent

I got a 406 Not Acceptable because this website doesn't like my browser.

https://imgur.com/a/uF2CxfT

Which means this website doesn't even know how HTTP 4xx codes work (406 is about content negotiation) and is also being rather pathetically pedantic about user agents.

So, to you polygonjs.com, I say, 469 Go Fuck Yourself.

frading 30 minutes ago | parent

Very happy to fix any issue with the website but your link only shows "Content not available in your region", so I propose you to be less pedantic about regions.

Less hate would be good too.

EdwardDiego 5 minutes ago | parent

That's an imgur.com link mate, it's a rather well known image host. I don't run it.

Let me give you the full text of the message I got:

> 406 Not Acceptable

> Your browser is not supported. Please update your browser to continue.

My browser is fine, it's built off Chromium like many are, but apparently the UA makes your website say no. Your website should stop doing that, it's pointless.

> Less hate would be good too

My apologies, but I'm rather sick and tired of websites that impose arbitrary restrictions because I'm not using Chrome.

There's absolutely no reason to do UA filtering in 2026.

And using a 406 response incorrectly triggered my nerd rage.

matja 1 hour ago | parent

Is there a manual for Jai, or some info on how it compares with other languages? I find it hard to find resources on it - there's no Wikipedia page, and my web searches list some videos and random github projects?

ablob 1 hour ago | parent

It's closed to the public at the moment, so I don't think you will be able to find much.

kunos 1 hour ago | parent

The closest thing would be the book that Ivo Balbaert is writing and that's available here: https://github.com/Ivo-Balbaert/The_Way_to_Jai

this is also good: https://github.com/Jai-Community/Jai-Community-Library/wiki

Twey 1 hour ago | parent

JB's original claim, at least as I understood it, was that with LLVM and the like language tooling is now good enough that anybody can quickly whip up a language to their personal tastes with no PL background, and therefore the hurdle of novelty and generality required for a language to justify its existence is drastically lower than it has been in times past. It's a shame, but having his personal language be in closed beta twelve years later is pretty strong evidence against that thesis in a couple of different ways.

HexDecOctBin 1 hour ago | parent

Blow's claim was that C++ sucks and that an alternative better suited for gamedev should be created. It's not like he's had good things to say about LLVM.

Twey 1 hour ago | parent

LLVM doesn't have to be great for its existence to make PL dev a lot easier. Codegen used to be a real pain.

The interesting part to me was always that he didn't justify Jai very much. He didn't assert that anybody else would want to use it, or that it would be universally better than C++. His claim was that he didn't need to: building a language is now so quick that he can make a language just for him, just because he feels like it. Everybody can have their own language frontend.

https://youtu.be/TH9VCN6UkyQ

Twey 1 hour ago | parent

In fact reading between the lines of that video a bit, I think he might believe that general-purpose languages are poorly suited to his use because they're focused on solving other people's problems. But that's just me extrapolating.

npn 1 hour ago | parent

Eh? It is not his duty to public his language. It is not like publish the language is the end of story, you need to deal with the flood of feedback, that not always from good wills. The drama could cause him to lost time, effort and motivation, and hinder his game dev process.

It is pretty understandable he needs to hold back before he releases his new game, or even more.

ablob 1 hour ago | parent

AFAIK, the language is and was used in JB's projects. JB is just very picky about when he wants people to see things. He doesn't want outside voices influencing him and he still has some things he wants to think through. Doing that mostly solo takes time - it's not like the PL is the only thing he has been doing

If you are fine with getting there 80% his claim is correct. That he's using the language for his games proves it to me. Of course, if you require it to be both open and popular to be a success you kind of reach a stalemate. In a world where everyone can quickly whip up a language I would expect most to be closed to the public anyway.

I would like you to elaborate on how still being in closed beta is an argument against the thesis. To me it just looks like avoiding feature-requests, nitpicks and community interactions for a product he doesn't even want to sell.

Twey 1 hour ago | parent

I'd agree more except that as far as I know (I'll admit I've not been following the development that closely) he's been significantly building it in public on Twitch. So he's happy to spend time sharing it with the public, and has been from the start; it's just taken a long time to get it to a usable state.

> If you are fine with getting there 80% his claim is correct. That he's using the language for his games proves it to me. Of course, if you require it to be both open and popular to be a success you kind of reach a stalemate. In a world where everyone can quickly whip up a language I would expect most to be closed to the public anyway.

I think we're firmly in agreement here, except that IMO the default for software that's not for public consumption is to throw it over the wall, put the source up on GitHub or something, and not bother with documentation, explanation, or interaction. A carefully curated closed beta is kind of the opposite of that. If anything he's spending more time promoting it than I would expect.

anonymous908213 38 minutes ago | parent

It's evidence of no such thing. It categorically does not take 12 years to write a language from scratch, or anything remotely close to that, so the only thing that Blow taking 12 years to write a language is evidence of is that Blow chose not to prioritise language development very highly over doing anything else with his time for 12 years. Javascript was famously developed by one person in 10 days. Writing a language and compiler is a common semester project for students, ie. people who have no idea what they're doing.

program_whiz 2 minutes ago | parent

My comment on Jai is that it is a language with some conveniences, but ultimately no strong reason to favor it. Similar to zig, odin, and others, its basically just C with some syntax conveniences.

It has some design choices that I appreciated at first, but are really strongly suited to a particular way of writing games, and I wouldn't call it general purpose (those same design choices are very limiting in other domains).

I do appreciate compiler speed, but ultimately I bounced off of it because the slight improvement in syntax doesn't justify losing massive tooling, libraries, docs, support, etc.

The language is also quite quirky in its conventions, which I think is due to Jon Blow's style, but which can feel quite odd to anyone who has a wider breadth of programming (than just custom game engines).

Also of course, any contributions or suggestions are met with the typical JB politeness and charm :)