What do you guys think of the Odin programming language?

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For experienced users on both Rust and Odin

I am curious to know your thoughts on how you perceive Odin in comparison to Rust.

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The way you worded the title and your sentences makes me wonder if you're not just trying to secretly promote another programming language on the Rust user forum, which I think is pretty shameless.

a few moments later, after looking at the site:
The documentation is fairly incomplete and there is a bold work in progress at the top of the language specification with a lot of nothingness across several topics, especially when it comes to pointers. I doubt there exist many experienced users of the Odin programming language.

I see a lot of parallels with the unnamed programming language Jonathan Blow has been making, which he started publishing videos about on YouTube in 2014 (playlist). Especially the language goal "joy of programming" really rings a bell… The website of Odin exists since 2016. Coincidence? It's suspicious, to say the least. The blog seems to be basically empty, with no statement to be found as to how the language came to existence.

Personally, I don't trust a programming language without roots and an unknown creator.

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This language is not even made by me so why would I even want to promote it? What would I get out of it? And also I haven't even used Odin before.

There are a few who I know are experienced with Odin.

Somebody even made quite an impressive fire animation using the language, here is the animation if you are interested.

The guy should have and I agree with you. However the creator has his own blog in a serperate page regarding certain issues he has had with other languages. BUt yeah he should put it on his main Odin page.

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One of my immediate reactions also was "this looks like Jon Blow's Jai language". Apart from that:

  • This language seems far less regular and more magical than Rust. That for-in syntax that changes types based on whether you use one or two variables (separate index and element) just stuck me as wrong.
  • There also seems to be a large amount of builtin syntactic sugar for things that don't really need it.
  • It's got the same imperative control flow statements as C, like the 3-statement for loop or the switch statement, but no pattern matching.
  • It is unclear from the documentation whether it uses RAII or garbage collection or something else.
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I can 100% convirm it doesn't use GC, reference counting (unless you implement it). Afaik I don't believe it doesn't use RAII as well.

Edit: Accoring to a user he claims it has dynarrays, slices, and maps safety checks which can be turned off.

I see

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I'll be honest, my first instinct was that this was a language created by you, and that you were pushing people towards it by posting here. The only reason I did not flag this post as spam (which would've automatically hidden it until a moderator could review) is because you've been on the site for 2½ years and have a nontrivial post history.

With regard to the language itself, the home page provides extremely little detail on why I'd want to use it. A quick peek into the documentation only shows how to use it, which again is not helpful if I want to know why I should use it. As silly as it may sound, documentation can make or break a language. In this case, I have no desire to look into the details of the language because the documentation is frankly terrible, at least upon first impression.

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What do you mean by that?

I see

As on top of my post, I am really asking for experienced users for both Rust and Odin for their opinions on both languages.

I don't know why some people automatically assume I am promoting it or something. I just want to hear your opinion as an experienced user for both languages and nothing more. I quite frankly don't care if you hate Odin or Rust at all. I just want to hear your opinions and nothing more.

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What do you mean by that?

You have a history on this forum, which indicated to me that you weren't shamelessly promoting a new language.

I don't know why some people automatically assume I am promoting it or something. I just want to hear your opinion as an experienced user for both languages and nothing more. I quite frankly don't care if you hate Odin or Rust at all. I just want to hear your opinions and nothing more.

The original post, by itself, looks spammy, as has been pointed out by a few people. If you can't see that, there's not much I can do to help you see it that way.

As on top of my post, I am really asking for experienced users for both Rust and Odin for their opinions on both languages.

Considering I've never even heard of this language and that it's only a few years old, I highly doubt there is a sizable population that is experienced in both Rust and Odin.

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I see

How does it look spamy though? I'd like to hear your opinion.

I see.

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First impression from the title:

  • Take a look at this language
  • Start a discussion by asking about opinion

Second impression from the text:

  • Hiding intention of promotion by asking only for opinions of those who already know the language, yet sharing the link to the homepage without being asked for it. (Hint: Experienced people already know the homepage)
  • Keeping your relation to the language a secret
  • Asking for opinion about a less popular language in a forum of a more popular language
  • Very little text in general, with the link taking up most of the space of the post.
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