> I think the only way to judge a language is to use it full time for at least one year, but even then you will probably just have scratched the surface.
In theory, that sounds nice. Have you spent a year on Rust, Go, Elm, and Crystal? If not, then what if one of them is the perfect language for that problem you're trying to solve? How can you make the right judgment call when starting a project if you haven't spent a year using each of these and more?
In reality, that's a completely absurd approach for the first-level approximation people need/want when they discover a new language... surely you realize this. People need to be able to see the big picture before they'll know whether they want to dive into the details.
There are literally thousands of programming languages. Many are created each year. How can anyone afford to spend a year, full-time, on each language to discover the truth of each language? They can't.
So I agree with dotdi:
> Unfortunately, the documentation, FAQ and User Guide all failed in succinctly giving me the information I need: what can it do well, what does a known snippet look like implemented in <Lang>, how does it compare to other languages, etc.
The programming language is not going make or break most projects. Hence the standard advice is to use a language your developers already know.
Picking an obscure language that none of your developers know well is usually not the right decision, even if the language has certain advantages over the ones you already know.
In theory, that sounds nice. Have you spent a year on Rust, Go, Elm, and Crystal? If not, then what if one of them is the perfect language for that problem you're trying to solve? How can you make the right judgment call when starting a project if you haven't spent a year using each of these and more?
In reality, that's a completely absurd approach for the first-level approximation people need/want when they discover a new language... surely you realize this. People need to be able to see the big picture before they'll know whether they want to dive into the details.
There are literally thousands of programming languages. Many are created each year. How can anyone afford to spend a year, full-time, on each language to discover the truth of each language? They can't.
So I agree with dotdi:
> Unfortunately, the documentation, FAQ and User Guide all failed in succinctly giving me the information I need: what can it do well, what does a known snippet look like implemented in <Lang>, how does it compare to other languages, etc.