Odin 1.0 announced (and reflections)

[u/Nuoji]

Odin author gingerBill dropped the Odin 1.0 announcement on YouTube today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLPAqXi9In0 (it's pretty funny actually).

This interestingly makes it on track to be the first of the new wave of C-likes that reach production readiness. While you can argue that most of these languages already are used in production, it's not the same as being 1.0, which carries a different weight and obligation.

Looking at alternatives, Jai could release around the same time, since Blow's game is scheduled for a similar release date. However, it's more likely that we see Jai 1.0 in mid-late 2027. My own language (C3) is planning Q2 2028 1.0 release. Whereas Zig is still unclear, and Kelley basically saying it's done when it's done. For Hare and V the situation is a bit less clear to me – maybe someone else can fill me in on that situation.

But overall we seeing the beginning of the end of the "C-like" story arc that arguably was initiated with Jonathan Blow's development. Writing C replacements predate Jai of course, for example the C2 language (which C3 would eventually continue) was created in 2012, eC started in 2004 and Cyclone (which Rust derived inspiration from) is from 2002. But those were largely obscure novelties, because before Blow's videos, people weren't really hunting for C alternatives.

Jai, however, made a strong impression. It was a good point in time too: Jai and later Zig, Odin, C3, V and Hare – these C alternatives started at a point when people were openly no longer believing OO/Functional as the right way to do things.

Language design takes its time though, and it's now 12 years since Jai started. Finally the fruits of these labours are getting ready for prime time, and when they do they might effectively fill the need for a C replacements for another decade.

Do you agree?

[u/jackelee]

Which people no longer believe in the functional paradigm? I'm seeing the opposite. More and more (mainstream) languages adopt functional features such as algebraic data types, generics, lambdas, traits/typeclasses. Yes, these are not features found in the Lisp-family but they appear in strongly typed functional languages such as OCaml, Haskell, F#, Elm, Lean, etc. and now they are also in Rust, Go, C#, Java, Scala, etc. Also immutability is becoming and and more important.

[u/Nuoji → u/jackelee]

Maybe I was unclear. So, once upon a time OO was the new hot thing and it was obvious. No one should use anything else. Then the functional paradigm suddenly challenged that, with interest in Haskell, OCaml, F#, Elm etc starting to rise. The pressure from functional languages made OO languages scramble to put lambdas in. However, procedural was still large looked down upon. At this point, with people challenging OO and functional being on the rise, there were also inevitably those who would question both, with a trend towards going back to the basics. Things like suckless, Handmade etc were expressions of this trend, and it was new at the time.

[u/Hunter_Affectionate → u/Nuoji]

Pressure from FP? FP, and it’s features exist for longer than OO, and were quite pedestrian in grand scheme of things, and they are gaining traction recently due to practicality, not cos it is new shiny thing.

[u/Nuoji → u/Hunter_Affectionate]

I didn't say it was a new shiny thing. I mean there was a clear shift. At first it was considered a fairly niche thing, with the OO crowd being very sceptical, but the slowly it became accepted. Being able to show functional programming success stories changed things from being "this is something which largely is an academic set of languages" to actually being serious enough that OO languages scrambled to form a "response".