Aloso

It is well supported in all browsers and operating systems. At least VS Code and IntelliJ support it, and even some terminals.

Apparently the maintainer trusted the first-time contributor enough to propose tackling another bug.

There is no trust needed when asking someone to fix a bug. It’s not like the maintainer would lose anything if the contributor failed to fix the bug.

Besides, I think it is natural to want recognition when you do a lot of work for free. Many other people wouldn’t do this unpaid work at all; recognizing their contribution is the bare minimum of good manners. Even in a company where employees are paid for their work, it is customary to give credit to co-workers who have helped you. Most people don’t like to work in places where they don’t feel appreciated, and that is also true in Open-Source.

It’s not possible to instantiate or assign, which is more like a never type than a unit

Actually, this is because void is not a type, it is just a keyword, a placeholder used instead of the return type when a function doesn’t return anything.

If it were a bottom type, that would mean that a method returning void must diverge, which is simply not true.

Also, if it were a bottom type, it would be possible to write an “unreachable” method

void unreachable(void bottom) {
    return bottom;
}

Even though it couldn’t be called, it should be possible to define it, if void was a bottom type. But it is not, because void isn’t a bottom type, it’s no type at all.

No it’s not, it is 100% a unit type (except it’s not really a type, since you can only use it as return type and nowhere else)

• Svelte/Vue/React components need to be compiled
• JavaScript should be minified if the project has a significant size
• File names should have a content hash, so they can be cashed in the browser
• Even with HTTP/2, there’s still a case to be made for bundling hundreds or thousands of JS modules into a single file for better performance
• Bundlers give you a dev server with live reload and hot module replacement for great developer experience
• Setting up Vite is really easy and requires minimal configuration (compared to Webpack, for example)

Easy interop with legacy code is how kotlin took off, so maybe it will work out?

Good interop was a requirement for widespread adoption, but not the reason why programmers want to use it. There’s also null safety, a much nicer syntax, custom DSLs, sealed classes, type inference, data classes, named and optional arguments, template strings, multi-line strings, computed properties, arbitrary-arity function types, delegation, custom operators, operator overloading, structural equality, destructuring, extension methods, inline functions and non-local control flow, reified types, …

Some of these features have since been added to Java.

Fully agree with what you said. There are still just as many passionate people fascinated by computers in the youngest generation as there are in older generations. It’s just that the sheer number of programmers has made them less visible in recent years.

Also, one thing the article misses is that programming 8 hours a day and then continuing to program in your spare time is not healthy for many people. People are different, and there are some who can do it without negative consequences, but for others it can lead to burnout, especially if they also have a family to take care of or other issues to deal with. I used to do a lot of programming in my spare time when I was in college. Now that I have a 40-hour-a-week job, I’ve learned that I need to be careful how much energy I spend, and I don’t do as much open source work because I need a lot of my free time to rest and recharge.