Jonathan Blow - Jai Demo and Design Explanation (KEYNOTE) - Updated

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matthewkayin · 2025-12 · Recommendation

> What features in Jai make it superior to C++ for writing games specifically? I know that Jonathan Blow can be abrasive and one-sided in his talks on programming, but I think we should be open-minded about Jai. Yes, he is making this language because he doesn't like C++, but you make it sound like he is hating on C++ just for the sake of it. I mean, is it really so hard to imagine that someone might not like something about C++? There are plenty of people who think we could have a better systems language, which is why we have seen languages like Rust, Zig, and Odin pop up. In Blow's case, he has said that he doesn't like Rust because he feels that satisfying the borrow-checker slows down iteration time[1], which is important especially in the early stages of game development when you are still experimenting with mechanics are where requirements and architecture are still very much subject to change. As far as what Jai offers, it seems his focus is on making a simple but powerful language (contrary to C++'s ever-growing bag-of-tricks), with fast compile times (less than 3 seconds on a full build of his new game), better build and dependency management (no more cmake), and powerful meta-programming features. In a talk on the language[2], he demos how he is able to use the language's meta-programming features to develop powerful code-analyzing and memory-analyzing tools. These tools, in particular, hint at his philosophy: lots of ideas in programming like RAII, garbage collecto

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sothatsit · 2025-07 · Recommendation

AI building complex visualisations for you on-the-fly seems like a great use-case. For example, if you are debugging memory leaks in a specific code path, you could get AI to write a visualisation of all the memory allocations and frees under that code path to help you identify the problem. This opens up an interesting new direction where building visualisations to debug specific problems is probably becoming viable. This idea reminds me of Jonathan Blow's recent talk at LambdaConf. In it, he shows a tool he made to visualise his programs in different ways to help with identifying potential problems. I could imagine AI being good at building these. The talk: [VIDEO]

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baranul · 2026-07 · Reference

There is also the fact of newer "closer to C" alternatives like C3[1] and Zen C[2], or more intriguing C family alternatives such as Odin[3], Jai[4], or Vlang[5]. Zig is kind of trapped. It can't go "head to head" with heavy weights like Rust, who specialize in safety, are more mature (post 1.0), and have lots of corporate support. Then there are the other C alternatives, who each offer something it doesn't have. It appears the only way for it to maintain its position, is through heavy hype and marketing, but the whole Bun ordeal and extensive beta issues are subtracting from any such attempts. [1]: [LINK] [2]: [LINK] [3]: [LINK] [4]: [VIDEO] [5]: [LINK]

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