Performance is not everything

[Tristam MacDonald]

In general, Sisal is no longer-winded than C. However, it isn't a C like 
language, though trivial examples show some similarities. It is a 
functional language, and one based on mathematical process (perhaps most 
similar to Erlang), and while more advanced than the C-family in 
expressiveness, correctness and parallelism, C programmers seem to have 
a lot of trouble transitioning to these sorts of languages (hell, even 
Scheme seems to be a stretch for many).

Deewiant wrote:
> Henrik wrote:
>> I found this article on wikipedia today: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SISAL
>>
>> "SISAL (Streams and Iteration in a Single Assignment Language) is a
>> general-purpose single assignment functional programming language with strict
>> semantics, implicit parallelism, and efficient array handling."
>>
>> On top of automatic parallelism and whatnot, the article claims that it
>> outperforms C. Sounds great! So is this the Next Big Language(tm)? Nope. It's
>> been around since 1986.
>>
>> It reminded me that performance must only be a small part of whether a
>> language is widely adopted or not. So what determines whether people start
>> using a language? Is it only a matter of inertia, tradition, habit and prior
>> investments? Or are there more complex considerations to be taken into
>> considerations?
>>
>> Why haven't we been writing applications and games in SISAL the last 21
>> years? In ten years, will people look back at D and ask themselves the same
>> thing or is D:s future different? If so, why?
> 
> Here's one possible reason: http://hackety.org/2007/08/15/oneLinersAreCrucial.html
> 
> I don't know SISAL, but I doubt you can be productive with it within an hour (or
> 15 minutes, as suggested). With scripting languages like Python or Ruby, you can.
> 
> I'd say that with D, it's the case only if you already know C or C++, maybe also
> Java. D isn't a very beginner-oriented language.
>