Ideas about a new programming language for games.

What people said

erikpukinskis · 2018-07 · Strong recommendation

I am a little disappointed he hasn’t released the source, but I am also sympathetic. He wants to be free to change major things about the language while he’s designing it, and that’s harder if other people are using it. That said, if you want to know what Jai is about, I recommend starting from his first video: [VIDEO] The first couple dozen videos are all pretty dense, with him presenting the basics of the language pretty efficiently. (His more recent vids are more like development vlogs) Yes, videos are slow, but for me I don’t think I would’ve appreciated his design choices without all the context. I also found watching his process for inventing the language extremely instructive, just as a programmer. It has substantially formed my own process and thinking over the last few years.

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erikpukinskis · 2018-03 · Strong recommendation

It’s a bit of a rabbit hole, but Jonathan Blow’s “Ideas for a programming language about games” and all the subsequent videos have totally revolutionized how I code: [VIDEO] The irony of it is I’m a JavaScript programmer and Blow hates JavaScript, he thinks it’s antithetical to his style of coding. But really, I think the ideas are very generic: he proposes what I think of as “data-driven programming” which in my head means “only move the bits you have to.” And that core idea maps to any substrate. Blow is offended by the idea of targeting something other than processor instructions, and Jai (his new language) develops along those lines. But I have no problem applying the same ideas to V8... you can really use any substrate... I could target Minecraft blocks and code in the same way. It just requires stepping back and asking what the minimum number of writes needed to get that substrate where it needs to be. And then rather than writing some monstrous declarative programming structure like Rails or Webpack, you just write the minimal function calls needed to make those bits flip and thing more. Blow writes a whole new language and compiler based on those concepts, but I find the ideas translate to any arbitrary API target.

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erikpukinskis · 2015-09 · Strong recommendation

I strongly encourage anyone interested in programming languages to watch his series about Jai, the language he is creating for his next game. Starts here: [VIDEO] It's not released yet, but watching the videos has massively changed the way I think about programming. The notion of "data-driven programming," which I would describe as "only move around the data you have to", has been a real revelation to me. I sort of came out of the Ruby world (and Java before that) where the attitude is more "Abstract all the things!" I have been trying to apply many of Blow's principles in my JavaScript programming and it has been awesome. I find myself staying closer to the "metal" (which in JavaScript world is pure Node and low-level browser APIs) and it has been incredibly rewarding. I've also really enjoyed his policy of pragmatism over idealism. I think the React world for example has taken a good idea (immutability can clarify data flows) and turned it into a religion (Everything Must Be Immutable!) Watching Blow work has given me the confidence to steer away from that. Much in the same way that learning Rails made me a better programmer (even though I don't use it anymore, and I've rejected a lot of its premises) I have found learning Jai has really leveled me up as a programmer and a computer science thinker.

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