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Poll: How often should Arc be released?
7 points by lojic 5874 days ago | 5 comments
Here's an Arc article from November 2001 when Arc was "about three weeks old".

http://www.paulgraham.com/arcll1.html

So a timeline is:

  Nov 2001: Arc is 3 weeks old
  Apr 2003: 'The Hundred-Year Language'
  Oct 2003: 'Some Work on Arc'
  Jan 2008: Arc0 released
  Feb 2008: Arc1 released
  Feb 2008: Arc2 released
I was curious about how people felt about an optimal release frequency for a project such as this over the next year or so. The units are weeks.
(0, 2]
1 point
(2, 4]
7 points
(4, 8]
12 points
(8, 16]
1 point
(16, 32]
1 point
(32, inf)
1 point
I don't care
6 points
This is a stupid poll
26 points


8 points by lojic 5874 days ago | link

Expectation management may be as important as the particular plan, or lack thereof.

Arc is unusual in that there was some activity very early on followed by a very long period of little publicly visible activity (prompting much speculation), then a flurry of activity since its release in January. So, the expectations of how Arc might unfold probably vary widely.

Is pg gathering feedback to go back to the lab for a few more years in silence, or will there be a consistent effort to work toward a '1.0' release, and if so, approximately when will that be, or is the plan something else entirely?

And maybe I'm the only one who has these questions :)

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4 points by almkglor 5873 days ago | link

Given that Anarki exists and appears to be updated reasonably frequently, it seems likely that, unless pg does something, sheer genetic drift will cause Anarki and ArcN to diverge enough to become separate and incompatible dialects. If someone makes a killer app in Arc, and uses Anarki-specific extensions, it may very well be that merging ArcN into Anarki may be too difficult and possibly even counterproductive (e.g. if too many names in an Arc3 conflict with names on Arc2-based Anarki).

If it goes on for longer, both may even evolve into entirely different languages (like Scheme and CL). Might make a good study of memetics and the origin of programming languages ^^.

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2 points by sacado 5874 days ago | link

You're not the only one, I was wondering too !

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3 points by lojic 5873 days ago | link

I think Arc3 is already finished, but pg is just waiting for the Arc2.tar post to drop off the front page before releasing it :)

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1 point by sacado 5874 days ago | link

I made 3 votes. My thought is : between once every two weeks (on fast periods) and once every 4 months (for more stable periods).

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