Changelog Interviews Hare aims to be a 100 year language
Dec 6, 2023
Drew DeVault, a free software developer and creator of the Hare programming language, dives deep into his passion for open-source and sustainable systems. He crafted Hare out of necessity, aiming for it to achieve unprecedented stability over a century. Drew discusses its unique C-like features, the philosophy behind SourceHut’s email-first approach versus GitHub, and the importance of community governance. Plus, he humorously touches on the art of making a perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich!
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Sustainable Free Software Business
- SourceHut is a profitable, three-person business that builds free software and publishes financial reports.
- It funds work on projects like Hare while allowing engineers to prioritize interesting free-software work.
Email Patches Scale Better Than Web PRs
- Email-based patch workflow (git send-email) is far more efficient for large-scale maintainers than web-driven pull requests.
- Drew prefers email workflows and even wrote his own mail client to optimize patch review throughput.
C-Like, But With 50 Years Of Hindsight
- Hare is a C-family systems language with modern conveniences like tagged unions, slices, and improved strings.
- It balances low-level power with pragmatic safety and a superior standard library compared to C.