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Ask Slashdot: How Can I Make My Own Vaporware Real?

Posted by EditorDavid on from the real-soon-now dept.

Long-time Slashdot reader renuk007 is a retired Unix/Linux systems programmer with the ultimate question: After retiring I started a second career as a teacher -- and I'm loving it. My problem: I designed a (I feel) wonderful new language compiler, but implementing it will take me another ten years if I have to do it part-time.

Linus Torvalds was able to leverage the enthusiasm of the Internet to make Linux exist, but 1990 was a more innocent time. How does it work today? Any thoughts?
Or, to put it another way, how can you build a community to bring your ideas to light? Leave your best thoughts and suggestions in the comments. How can you make your own vaporware real?

7 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Description? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You'll need to show someone *something*. Got a link to an abstract discussing why this compiler is so much better and worth the time investment? Not like there's a dearth of compilers of various designs out there.

  2. Here's how to do it: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Make the language simple enough so a simple parser will do.* Write a simple back-end that works, however inefficiently.

    Then publish.

    linus did it by publishing early and often. He also had the tide with him, building on a handy-dandy toolset, surfing on a wave of user demand for something, anything, that would make their computer go (linux really is very shoddy in its design and very far from the cutting edge, that was already the case right from the get-go), and you don't: There are too many pet languages already. But don't let that stop you. Write software that works, efficient comes later. Oh, and get with the documenting early on. Language specification, goals, non-goals, et cetera. Publishing early and publishing often is still a good start, and then there's the community building.

    * I'd like to mention the Crenshaw textfiles here.

    1. Re:Here's how to do it: by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Pretty much this.

      "Ideas are a dime a dozen, its their implementation that is worth their weight in gold"

      Also a successful business must master "good enough." Build up the revenue stream and slowly add features. The late Steve Jobs knew this in spades. e.g. The first iPhone didn't have cut/copy/paste but it didn't need to.

      These days it is called Minimum viable product

  3. "I don't mean to frighten you..." by stevegee58 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "...but you'll have to do some actual work."

    --Dilbert

  4. In other words: by AmazingRuss · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ""How do I get highly skilled, highly paid people to work on my idea for free?"

    If you figure that out, I'd love to learn it.

  5. Re:step one by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    He might be able to hire help, at least for the initial development, on a site like Fiverr.

    People that are bad at development tend to also be bad at hiring developers, so most likely he would end up wasting money on incompetents.

    But the question is about getting people to work for free, not hiring help. Ideas are a dime a dozen, and it is extremely unlikely that he is going to get anyone to work on his, unless it is a really really good one ... and "new computer languages" tend to be the dumbest ideas of all. That is the last thing the world needs.

    And seriously, TEN YEARS to write a compiler? If he has a grammar (and if he doesn't, he has NOTHING) then just slap it into a parser generator such as Bison, and connect that to the gcc backend, or an existing parse tree interpreter, and you're done. That is a couple of weekends.

  6. Sigh. by ledow · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you can design a compiler and have any clue whatsoever about how to do so effectively, you can sure as hell break out another compiler and code it up.

    Then, once it's self-hosting, you can concentrate on the compiler itself.

    Like every "project" I ever got involved with or people asked me to join since I was a kid - it's the person with "all the ideas" who has no clue how to actually make the thing work, or what's even feasible. While the people who "can do" have a thousand such ideas throughout their life and can implement the ones that actually work and are feasible.

    Trust me, I've sat there for years thinking about ideal programming languages and game concepts and operating system design and all kinds of things. It's when you sit down and actually code stuff that you realise why it doesn't work, why it can't work well, why it's not so easy, and why the existing things were designed as they are.

    The "wow" moments come from someone MAKING IT HAPPEN and seeing that the lightbulb-moment can be real, never from just the moment or idea itself.