Wayland and Weston 0.99.0 snapshots released

Posted Oct 17, 2012 12:50 UTC (Wed) by ms (subscriber, #41272)
In reply to: Wayland and Weston 0.99.0 snapshots released by drag
Parent article: Wayland and Weston 0.99.0 snapshots released

Mmm, true. I genuinely find it fascinating that a technology that had so little going for it (other than it was the only game in town) grows to a point where it has the properties you described in your other posting, and then manages to spread because of its ubiquity etc and possibly actually finds uses to which it is better suited. It's not so much that I want to beat JS with a big stick, it's more I'm finding its spread genuinely interesting: many finer languages have failed spectacularly and trying to understand the whys is important I feel.

Wayland and Weston 0.99.0 snapshots released

Posted Oct 17, 2012 12:56 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

JS is warty indeed, but it's built on solid and well-known principles - it's just a Scheme in disguise. So once you get past idiosyncrasies of JS it's actually quite pleasant to work with.

Wayland and Weston 0.99.0 snapshots released

Posted Oct 17, 2012 13:01 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

Oh. That's easy to understand:

Worse is better.

Why is windows dominate on the desktop? Why did Unix beat out other much better optimized systems? Why did Linux become the most popular posix-y system when it's full of so many idiosyncrasies and the BSD OSes were technically superior for many years early on and were just as free?

etc etc.

The answer is that implementation differences in technology pale in importance when compared to external factors and realities.

The corollary to this is that technical superiority isn't going to do much for you in terms of marketability nor usefulness for your target users and developers. Ignore external realities at your peril.