What happens to an arc?

Question

Arc, if you don’t know, Paul Graham is a “100-year-old language,” or, more prosaically, the new version of Lisp. It was heavily riveted to reddit (back when reddit was interesting), and an earlier version was released last January.

But since then nothing of the kind has happened - the forum is almost dead, and there is nothing new on Paul Graham’s own site. Does anyone know what is going on?

Answer 1

Um, Paul Graham better than half Jessica had a child , what happened to Arc ...

Answer 2

Nobody knows a lot. The last time Paul Graham, posted to the Ark forum, was here where he indicated that he didn’t care if he produced anything that people “think they want now” and he doesn’t have time to work on "Arc." That was a few months ago, and perhaps it was the straw that broke the Arc community. In my opinion, Arc is a utility or fault tolerance.

For an alternative, Clojure is a good, fresh, actively developed Lisp that exists and works right now.

Answer 3

In response to this blog post mentioning Ark, Paul Graham (pg) made the following comment on Hacker News (HN) , indicating that Arc was not abandoned by any means:

"In the end, Mr. Graham himself abolish the language"

Imagine how funny it was to read while taking a break from working on HN, surrounded by windows full of Arc Source, I was in the middle of editing.

Many people seem to feel that the language is not real if the designer speaks to them every day. But this is not the only way to use languages. Not the best way. I feel that you get better ideas if you think in separate episodes and not a stream of tweets. It seems likely, the same will be true with language design.

Answer 4

The arc should not be the next big thing. It is more for the next big thing after the next big thing after the next big thing after the next big thing after the next big thing. In fact, the programmers Doug is intended for have not yet been born ... hell, their parents have not even been born!

So, cut the guy some slack! Designing a programming language is difficult. Developing a programming language that stands the test of time is even more difficult.

I mean, of course, COBOL is still alive and kicking, but this is not the immortality that Paul Graham is looking for. He doesn’t want programmers to write Arc in 2109 because they have to support some kind of awful outdated code base; he wants them to write Arc because it’s still the best, most beautiful, most enjoyable, most expressive, most powerful language.

If you are looking for Lisp for 2009 (or even 2019), instead of 2109, then I suggest Brian C.'s second suggestion to take a look at Clojure.

Answer 5

The latest update I know of is here :

The baby sleeps and I crack.

The next release will have more improvement in news.arc than the main language, because that's what I have been working on lately. But I'm going to focus more on language soon.

Answer 6

5 hours ago Paul Graham said :

I will probably release a new version later this year. Most of the changes will be in news.arc, which is pretty solid right now. Maybe I really will make the desire to do it without understanding the source.

Answer 7

And picoliss is becoming more interesting. picolisp is the most “arc” like lisp, and 15-20 years ahead of the arc.

Answer 8

Take a look at PicoLisp, a pre -release version of the 100-year-old language release, now documented in two freely available scridb books (pdf format):

• PicoLisp Works , 467 pages
• PicoLisp for example , 1372 pages

Answer 9

The arc is old. Now this is a factor that is hot. :)

Answer 10

I don’t think that Paul Graham’s goal in developing his new language involves some kind of effort to be “first to market” or to take care of backward compatibility, support complex implementation, create a community, libraries, test, etc. It sounds like a long process. (And this is wonderful!)

Answer 11

branch

nex3 remains quite active.

http://github.com/nex3/arc/commits/master

Answer 12

For me it was like hot air. I also watch what happens for a while, but now I'm disappointed. The material that came out of it is far from praise in his essay. But maybe he is too busy ...

Answer 13

When asked

"This article makes you wonder: status arcs?"

Paul replied:

"I’m hacking a considerable amount of it, less for it. I was hoping to release a new version of News in the near future, and, therefore, also a new version of Arc. But I'm pretty busy with YC.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2926991

Answer 14

It seems that the arc is moving on the glacier, if at all. Clobure (not to be confused with Clojure, which was already mentioned), is perhaps closest to Arc as an alternative.

Answer 15

The arc dies in obsolescence ... its star slowly disappears ...