0:03 Odin is a very weird programming
0:07 language to advertise or market for.
0:09 Now, when I've been designing Odin, Odin
0:12 is very pragmatic in its design and just
0:14 general philosophy. Unlike all popular
0:16 languages out there, it doesn't really
0:20 have a killer feature. I've just tried
0:22 to design it to solve actual problems
0:26 with actual solutions. Those languages
0:29 with a killer feature to them do not
0:31 make well they do make them stand out
0:32 and consequentially it makes them more
0:35 hypable. The problem is is those killer
0:38 features are usually absolute nonsense
0:41 very niche or they rarely have any big
0:44 benefit. Hype doesn't make software
0:46 better. And that's the thing is Odin
0:49 isn't a big idea language but rather an
0:52 alternative to see on modern systems. It
0:53 tries to solve the problems that other
0:56 system languages have failed to address.
0:58 The problems are usually very small but
1:01 unrelated to each other. It's not
1:04 solvable with a single big idea. Now,
1:06 Now,
1:08 what better way of putting this is name
1:10 a single language out today and I can
1:12 name the killer feature in that language
1:15 itself and why it became popular because
1:17 of it. People may complain about the
1:19 feature many years later, but that's
1:22 what brought them to it.
1:25 So before people say, "Oh, Odin's killer
1:27 feature is we has none." And I'm like,
1:31 "Well, how the heck do you market that?"
1:33 That seems to be like an anti-marketing feature.
1:34 feature.
1:36 There isn't an example of a popular
1:38 program language out there today which
1:42 hasn't got a killer feature. Even C was
1:44 that in many ways with it being a
1:46 portable assembly. Now, even if that's
1:50 not actually true,
1:53 I know I have a bad habit when I ask
1:55 when people ask me, "Oh, why should I
1:57 use Odin?" And I usually just ask them
1:59 then what their needs are, and if those
2:00 needs are met with Odin, then I tell
2:02 them to try Odin, as well as many of the
2:05 other competition to see which they
2:08 prefer. I know that's honest English
2:09 politeness to a tea. But that that's me
2:13 as a man. I want Odin to be as best as
2:15 it can be, but without trying to sell
2:18 the world to someone in the process. I
2:19 want to show people the trade-offs that
2:22 each design has and even in other
2:24 languages and not ignore those
2:27 trade-offs. Look, there's no solutions,
2:29 only tradeoffs.
2:32 This lack of hyperboolness that Odin
2:33 offers is kind of reflected in the
2:35 people that seem to be attracted to Odin
2:37 in the first place. They seem very
2:40 pragmatic. They just want to get on with
2:43 programming and as such these are the
2:45 kinds of people that don't even share or
2:47 hype Odin. So I guess I don't really
2:49 want to easily attract the people who
2:52 are more driven by hype than pragmatic concerns.
2:55 concerns.
2:57 I want to make software a better place
2:59 and attracting such people is
3:02 detrimental to the endeavor in the first
3:06 place. Ju just just look at all the
3:08 hyped JavaScript frameworks out there
3:11 and do they really make software better
3:12 or do they just optimize for the
3:16 mythical developer experience which just
3:18 results in more crap which gets slower
3:23 bulkier and of less to the actual user.
3:25 Now my my view is kind of like developer
3:27 experience is kind of a little scop in
3:30 the sense it makes software worse um at
3:32 the expense of making the programmer
3:34 thinking he is being more productive
3:37 when really he is being less so because
3:40 the developer experience is optimizing
3:42 for that dopamine hit of felt
3:44 productivity rather than actual productivity
3:45 productivity
3:52 So, this is probably why some of my hot
3:54 takes on the internet, especially on
3:57 Twitter, usually do the rounds every now
3:59 and then. I'm trying to find out what
4:01 the actual problems are and see what
4:03 possible options there there are to
4:05 either solve or mitigate them on a
4:08 case-bycase basis. A lot of these again
4:11 hot takes that I have have been in the
4:12 form of kind of like marketing. And
4:14 look, I I'm trying to at least give
4:17 myself some exposure as well. I am this
4:20 is my job. but it's on the internet. Um,
4:21 every single one of them is just my
4:24 opinion. Um, and usually I think they're
4:27 quite mundane, too. But because the
4:29 internet is huge, there's going to be
4:31 some people who will find those takes
4:33 shocking because they've just not heard
4:35 them before. And to be clear, I'm I'm
4:38 not really asking for Odin to be more
4:40 hypable in the first place. I am glad
4:43 with the steady, stabby, albeit slow
4:45 growth Odin's been getting. The people
4:48 who try Odin pretty much always stay for
4:50 the long haul as they fall in love with
4:52 the language since it does bring them
4:55 the joy of programming back. Something
4:58 which I do advertise on the website is
5:01 the joy of programming aspect but it
5:03 it's something which I've not been able
5:06 to explain in words very well but rather
5:07 it kind of has to be experienced to be believed.
5:10 believed.
5:12 The other issue with advertising or
5:14 marketing a systems level programming
5:18 language is that that is a niche.
5:21 It is manual memory management and it
5:23 has high control of memory layout. It
5:25 has SIMD structural array support and
5:27 many other things and that's great for
5:29 people who need that level of control
5:32 but not needed for the general web depth
5:34 and and obviously that isn't the
5:36 intended audience for Odium, right? But
5:37 the problem is is that so the social
5:40 media landscape
5:42 is the the webdev people those voices
5:44 are the loudest and many will actually
5:46 shut down the voices of people who
5:49 disagree with them just because well
5:51 they're not in the webdev domain so they
5:54 must be wrong and it's like
5:57 a minor issue that people are starting
5:58 to think what I'm noticing also with
6:03 Odin is um it's just for gamedev. The
6:06 problem is that statement makes me laugh
6:09 because gamedev is pretty much the most
6:12 wide domain possible where you do
6:13 virtually every area of programming
6:18 possible in it. So the just is is a huge
6:20 compliment but clearly it's the wrong
6:24 image. It's like saying C++ is just for
6:26 gamedev when obviously it can be used
6:28 for anything. And again it's the same
6:30 with Odin because it's a systems
6:33 programming language as well. Odin does
6:36 bundle with many game or application
6:38 oriented packages but again they are
6:45 I know there's
6:47 there's another way of thinking about
6:48 all these issues is that look the other
6:50 problem is is that Odin can be thought
6:52 of in a few different ways and so does
6:53 many other languages. You can think of
6:55 it's just the language itself. the
6:58 language plus the compiler, the language
7:01 plus the compiler plus the core library
7:03 plus the vendor library or you can think
7:06 of as the entire ecosystem.
7:08 Now I know for certain languages and
7:09 people speak of like Python, they
7:12 usually think of the entire ecosystem
7:14 and I've worked with people who honestly
7:17 thought Python was numpy and sciols etc
7:19 and that you just had to download them
7:22 separately to package it together. They
7:24 had no distinction between any of these
7:27 concepts. Python in in quote brackets
7:32 there uh was just the tool itself.
7:33 Since I'm originally a C programmer and
7:36 also a language designer, all of these
7:38 distinctions are made obviously clear to
7:41 me. There is no single C compiler and
7:43 they're all different. The standard
7:45 library is dreadful and you want to
7:46 replace it with your own thing straight
7:51 away. But again, C still prevails.
7:54 I make these those distinctions because
7:56 it make it I believe it makes a lot
7:58 things clearer around programming itself
8:01 and it helps you to understand what the
8:04 flaws are in the tool. Thus you can know
8:05 how to mitigate or work around those
8:08 issues entirely. But this does require a
8:11 higher quality standard than that of the
8:15 norm currently.
8:17 And then kind of like the final aspect
8:20 as well is that
8:23 another issue is Odin is free.
8:25 And as weird as that sounds, but since
8:26 like 20 years ago at the time of
8:29 recording, it's n impossible to sell a
8:31 compiler. People expect a programming
8:34 language and compiler to be free without
8:36 caring how much time, money, or effort
8:39 goes into building a tool such as that.
8:41 Yes, there are compilers that still cost
8:42 money like Mat Lab or Mathematica and
8:45 such, but again, they were always cost
8:47 and they've not got rid of that cost and
8:49 they also rely a lot on like students in
8:51 universities to keep purchasing it. So,
8:54 that's their model. Now, I know Odin
8:56 does have a GitHub sponsors page. Yeah.
8:58 Yeah, that was a little ad. Sorry. But
9:01 we don't make that much really. Um, I'm
9:02 happy for all the stuff we making and
9:04 thank you so much for all the donations,
9:06 but again, it's not definitely enough to
9:09 pay anybody fulltime yet. Um, we will
9:10 pay for the odd piece of contract work
9:12 from time to time when we have the
9:14 money. It's only a few weeks here or
9:17 there. I would love to have few more
9:18 people work, well a few people in
9:20 general, not more, just at least one
9:24 working full-time on Odin. And but it's
9:26 something we can't afford. Um, it's one
9:29 of the main motivations too as well
9:31 behind all of this is that we want to
9:34 pay people for their work.
9:37 Open source is a thankless paidless
9:41 thing in general. And um
9:42 yeah, I think people should just pay
9:44 more in general for software. It's just
9:45 that we've gotten so used to everything
9:47 being free.
9:52 So I ask you fellow internet users, how
9:54 the heck do you market or advertise
9:56 Odin, a systems level programming
9:58 language when it does not really have a
10:01 discernable killer feature, nor is it
10:04 hypable, but its very nature just a
10:06 pragmatic language.
10:10 Now I've got one hypothesis as to doing
10:12 this and you the answer is not to
10:15 advertise a language but to make a
10:18 library or a package that everybody
10:20 wants to use and it just happens to be
10:23 only in Odin. So you're doing this
10:24 effectively like other languages out
10:26 there. The ones that can to come to mind
10:29 are going to be Dart and Swift. Dart
10:31 people only use Dart for Flutter. I
10:33 cannot think of anybody else using Dart
10:36 nowadays for anything else but Flutter.
10:37 And the other one with Swift is people
10:39 are using it mainly because oh it's
10:41 better than object quotequote better
10:42 than Objective C because it's got better
10:43 syntax even though I think Swift is
10:45 actually a worse language than Objective
10:47 C but people also use Swift because they
10:49 want the Swift UI and all the other
10:50 libraries that come about it which
10:51 aren't necessarily available in
10:54 Objective C. So again those people are
10:56 using those languages not because of the
10:58 languages themselves but because of the
11:00 libraries that they want to use to make
11:02 products and they just happen to have to
11:03 use that language. So, that's my
11:06 hypothesis is the best way to target it.
11:07 I'm not going to say what I'm going to
11:09 be doing that for yet. That'll be for a
11:11 later date for you guys to find out. But
11:13 again, I do pose this question to you
11:15 guys. What is the better way to
11:18 advertise or market Odin? Um, because
11:20 again, we can't really advertise it like
11:21 other languages where you say yes,
11:23 that's the killer feature because it
11:25 doesn't really have one. And again,
11:28 saying it doesn't have one is is one.
11:30 Again, that's not marketable. But again,
11:32 thank you very much for watching and uh
11:33 stay tuned for another video which will
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