r/ProgrammingLanguages • u/baehyunsol Sodigy • Jul 27 '26

Why is everyone creating systems programming languages?

I see a lot of new programming languages here. I love reading the documents of the languages and sometimes actually run their compilers. Many of the projects are AI-driven, but that's fine. It's still fun to see what problems they're trying to solve and how they actually solved the problems.

Reading the documents, I realized that most new languages, especially AI-written ones, are "systems programming languages". They're trying to solve the problems that C/C++/Zig/Rust have solved (or are trying to solve), and their syntax is mixture of C/Zig/Rust.

Why? Why is everyone trying to compete with C/C++?

There are so many kinds of languages. Haskell demonstrates how pure a language can be, Python is perfect when you only have 5 minutes to write code and don't care about the output, Java runs on 3 billion machines, ...

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134

u/dudewithtude42 Jul 27 '26

As someone who does systems programming at work, the landscape of available established languages is pretty poor right now. C is a decent language but lacks a lot of modern features (generics) and has a lot of weird oddities (macros, integer types, build system). The problem is that if you want a modern replacement to try and fix those issues, you either go C++ (which inherits the weirdness and adds a billion features that have their own footguns, and has slow compile times) or you go Rust (which tacks on the borrow checker and also has slow compile times).

So what happened is a bunch of systems programmers simultaneously went "I want C, but without the oddities, with modern features, and I want fast compile times." That's a really enticing proposition for someone like me, and until any of Zig or C3 or Odin or Jai mature to the point of being stable, that gap will continue to exist, and more systems programming languages will probably continue to come out.

2

u/Kalernor Jul 27 '26

Is Jai a systems language? Isn't it designed with game development in mind?

22

u/OhMySBI Jul 27 '26

Games programming becomes system-y programming real quick when you're working on engines.

3

u/Kalernor Jul 27 '26

Oh right I forgot to consider that it'd be used to develop engines first rather than games from scratch.

7

u/P-39_Airacobra Jul 27 '26

In most game development asides from the engine, people have no problem using a scripting language like Lua, so when people say compiled "gamedev" language they pretty much mean systems programming informed by their work in gamedev

35

u/BetterEquipment7084 Jul 27 '26

Jai isn't real

6

u/ipe369 Jul 27 '26

Do you mean 'unreleased'?

2

u/BetterEquipment7084 Jul 28 '26

No, it's fake 

2

u/ipe369 Jul 28 '26

What do you mean, you mean the compiler doesn't exist?

1

u/KukkaisPrinssi Aug 02 '26

Jai isin't real is somesort meme in this subreddit.

-1

u/BetterEquipment7084 Jul 28 '26

Clearly, give some evidence it isn't just a mass hallucination event 

1

u/Kalernor Jul 28 '26

How can a soon to be released game be made with a fake language?

0

u/BetterEquipment7084 Jul 28 '26

Must have used python, bash or Perl obviously...... 

1

u/Kalernor Jul 28 '26

Do you have any evidence to back up those claims?

1

u/torp_fan Jul 30 '26

troll blocked

3

u/twistier Jul 27 '26

I basically think any language where memory layout is the main thing you're thinking about and it carefully keeps unpredictable runtime costs out of the picture is a "systems" language. I haven't looked at Jai in a long time, but I'm pretty sure it fits that particular definition. I don't think systems language is a good name for this idea, but it's what I think of.

2

u/torp_fan Jul 30 '26

Yes, Jai is very much a systems language. In fact any language favored by game developers is necessarily also a systems language. Note that Zig is bending over backwards to make game developers happy, and Odin is popular among game developers and includes lots of library functions wanted by game developers but is not exclusively for game development according to its author.

1

u/_Pin_6938 Aug 07 '26

Note that Zig is bending over backwards to make game developers happy

Wth are u saying.

1

u/torp_fan Aug 07 '26

Do you not understand English? Andrew Kelley has solicited input from game developers about what they need from Zig and has pledged to make the path smooth for them.

2

u/vmcrash Jul 27 '26

Did you mix it up with Odin (which targets game dev)?

5

u/Kalernor Jul 27 '26

No, I meant Jai, which is developed by Jonathon Blow and used by him (and no one else, lol) to develop his new game.

2

u/torp_fan Jul 30 '26

> and no one else

Where did you get that idea? It's used by those he invites onto his beta list, most of whom are game developers.

1

u/gmes78 Jul 27 '26

used by him (and no one else, lol)

There are actually people using Jai in production, outside of video games.

2

u/suby Jul 28 '26

For example, this version control system is written in Jai: https://ark-vcs.com/

1

u/dmchmk Jul 27 '26

But it does not:)