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So what does it mean to be underground?

So what does it mean to be underground?

From:
Aaron Olson
Date:
2011-02-19 @ 15:39
Obviously anything on the esolang wiki counts, but what about less obscure
languages like Factor and Arc? I don't know that I'd call them underground,
but they're definitely not mainstream.

What about Lua and Smalltalk? They get a lot of play in certain circles, but
in my experience, they remain largely unknown to the average working
programmer.

Rough consensus ought to be enough, maybe with some basic guidelines. e.g.
If it's commercially available, it's not underground (Smalltalk).

Would we want to turn away a well-written article about Prolog?

-Aaron

Re: [tupla] So what does it mean to be underground?

From:
Zed A. Shaw
Date:
2011-02-19 @ 16:51
On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 10:39:56AM -0500, Aaron Olson wrote:
> Obviously anything on the esolang wiki counts, but what about less obscure
> languages like Factor and Arc? I don't know that I'd call them underground,
> but they're definitely not mainstream.

Oh, I'm sure they'll want to be included.  I'd say, if the author
doesn't want to be called underground and included then their language
won't be.  Pretty simple.

> What about Lua and Smalltalk? They get a lot of play in certain circles, but
> in my experience, they remain largely unknown to the average working
> programmer.

Just to piss everyone off I was going to say if the language is on the
TIOBE then it's not underground.  So, Smalltalk yes, Lua no. :-)

> Would we want to turn away a well-written article about Prolog?

After the twitter storm where I said there needed to be selection
criteria for what gets printed, it'll have to be something like:

* Every language gets documented on the website.  No matter what.  As
long as it actually exists (or existed) and functions (functioned).
* We publish all the languages through Lulu's API by the year they were
invented, minus any languages where the author objects.

That should be good enough for a start.

-- 
Zed A. Shaw
http://zedshaw.com/

Re: [tupla] So what does it mean to be underground?

From:
James King
Date:
2011-02-22 @ 14:32
TIOBE is a reasonable exclusion list. :)

Perhaps languages who've not been mentioned in a publication with a
readership > than X where X is some sufficiently small number to
denote a lack of mainstream interest?

On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 11:51 AM, Zed A. Shaw <zedshaw@zedshaw.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 10:39:56AM -0500, Aaron Olson wrote:
>> Obviously anything on the esolang wiki counts, but what about less obscure
>> languages like Factor and Arc? I don't know that I'd call them underground,
>> but they're definitely not mainstream.
>
> Oh, I'm sure they'll want to be included.  I'd say, if the author
> doesn't want to be called underground and included then their language
> won't be.  Pretty simple.
>
>> What about Lua and Smalltalk? They get a lot of play in certain circles, but
>> in my experience, they remain largely unknown to the average working
>> programmer.
>
> Just to piss everyone off I was going to say if the language is on the
> TIOBE then it's not underground.  So, Smalltalk yes, Lua no. :-)
>
>> Would we want to turn away a well-written article about Prolog?
>
> After the twitter storm where I said there needed to be selection
> criteria for what gets printed, it'll have to be something like:
>
> * Every language gets documented on the website.  No matter what.  As
> long as it actually exists (or existed) and functions (functioned).
> * We publish all the languages through Lulu's API by the year they were
> invented, minus any languages where the author objects.
>
> That should be good enough for a start.
>
> --
> Zed A. Shaw
> http://zedshaw.com/
>