Comment by gethly
15 hours ago
I've been actively toying with Odin in past few days. As a Gopher, the syntax is partially familiar. But as it is a lower level language wiht manual-ish memory management, simple things require much more code to write and a ton of typecasting. Lack of any kind of OOP-ism, like inheritance(bad), encapsulation(ok), or methods(nobrainer), is very spartan and unpleasant in 2025, but that's just a personal preference. I don't think I ever used fully procedural language in my entire life. It requires a complete rewiring on one's brain. Which I'd say is a huge obstacle for most programmers, definitely from the younger crowd. For low-level guys, this is quite a nice and powerful tool. For everyone else, it's a bit of a head ache(even Zig has methods and interfaces). The language still lacks basic things like SQL drivers, solid HTTPS stack, websockets, and essentially anything related to web and networking(which has the bare bones functionality). As a Gopher, I am biased, but the web rules the world, so it is objective complaint. In the end, this is a solid language with great support for 2D and 3D graphics and advanced mathematics, which naturally makes it a very niche language for making games or anything to do with visual programming. Definitely try it out.
PS: I just read a funny comment on YT video: "Odin feels like a DSL for writing games masquerading as a systems language."
I am using Odin to write a video game.... why would I want tn HTTPS stack, SQL Drivers, Websockets or any of that? Maybe eventually I might need some websockets if I want multiplayer. But I can also just make bindings to a C library so no real issue there.
Odin is explicitly made for video games.
Directly from the FAQ: https://odin-lang.org/docs/faq/#is-odin-just-a-language-for-...
> Is Odin “just” a language for game development? # > No. It is a common misconception that Odin is “just” for game development (“gamedev”) due to the numerous vendor packages that could be used in the aid of the development of a game. However, gamedev is pretty much the most wide domain possible where you will do virtually every area of programming possible. > > Odin is a general purpose language; is capable of being used in numerous different areas from application development, servers, graphics, games, kernels, CLI/TUIs, etc. > > There are many aspects of Odin which do make working with 2D and 3D related operations (which are common in gamedev) much nicer than other languages, especially Odin’s array programming, swizzling, #soa data types, quaternions and matrices, and so much more niceties which other languages do not offer out-of-the-box.
> Odin is explicitly made for video games.
Ginger Bill vehemently refuses this notion and tries to fight in every podcast, to "sell" Odin as general purpose low level language. But he is failing because of my points and your claim just proves it yet again that Odin has profiled itself as language for games when in reality that was never the intention of Bill. There is nothing wrong with that, it's just the perception among programmers.
It's also in the Handmade crowd, and for a lot of people that's intimately connected to video games. I actually think Handmade's approach is helpful for games in a way it isn't for a lot of other software.
Games are art. The key thing is that you have to actually make it. Handmade encourages people who might make some art to actually make something rather than being daunted by the skill needed for a very sophisticated technology. Handmade is like telling a would-be photographer "You already have a camera on your phone. Point it at things and take pictures of them" rather than "Choose your subject, then you will need to purchase either an SLR or maybe a larger camera, and suitable lenses and a subscription for Photoshop and then take a college course in photo composition"
I don't want to use a text editor made by someone who has no idea what they're doing and learned about rope types last week. A dozen handmade text editors, most not as good as pico, are of no value to anybody.
But I do want to play video games by people who have no idea what they're doing. That's what Blue Prince is, for example. A dozen handmade video games means a dozen chances for an entirely unprecedented new game. It'll be rough around the edges, but novelty is worth a lot.
> even Zig has methods and interfaces
Zig doesn't have interfaces as a language level feature. It uses manually implemented vtables and wrapper methods.
You can do the same in Odin with wrapper functions around a vtable.
There's even syntax-sugar for it in Odin with the `->` operator.
This gets you dynamic dispatch, roughly via the C++ route (inline vtables in implementing types). This means you must always pay for this on the types which provide it, even if you rarely use the feature, removing those vtables makes it unavailable everywhere.
A lot of programmers these days want static dispatch for its ergonomic value and Odin doesn't help you there. Odin thinks we should suck it up and write alligator_lay_egg_on(gator, egg, location) not gator.lay_egg_on(egg, location)
If we decide we'd prefer to type gator->lay_egg_on(egg, location) then Odin charges us for a vtable in our Alligator type, which we didn't need or want, and then we incur a stall every time we call that because we need to go via the vtable.
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Oh, nice. I have to admit I'm not all that familiar with Odin, because I've been all-in on Zig for a long time. I've been meaning to try out a game dev project in Odin for a while though, but haven't had the time.
I have not looked much into it. Someone mentioned it once, so i just remembered it.
i'm kinda glad it's lacking typical webdev stuff at the moment. if nothing else for developers focus. its absolutely excellent for game development. i have written 2 complete games in odin and working on a third. all using just vendor raylib and absolutely flying. build time, language server, debug cycles. i complete entire features every session, very productive language. i look forward to its maturity
I think Odin should market itself for aforementioned games and graphics. Otherwise it will become very niche language. Even now, I think there is only about 5k Odin repositories on github while it is essentially a complete language. Contrast it with Zig, which is still evolving and has breaking changes, being still at 0.x without clear sight of 1.0, and it has over 27k repositories and big projects like Ghostty, Bunt or Tiger beetle are written in it.
Once Jonathan Blow's Jai comes out next year, the language that inspired conception of both of these, Odin will likely have no chance competing on the marketing side of things with programmers and will be taken over by Jai, and Zig in a large extent as well. So the future of the language might not be as solid as it might seem and it might end up just as an internal tool for JangaFX, which is how it originated.
Having the "web stuff" can attract literally millions of developers whom can elevate the language into more stable and broadly used language. More documentation would become available, libraries, youtube videos, internet presence in general.
Did Jon state that he intends to release as open source? I am not sure he is the guy to the stressful route. If it all he would probably go long release cycles without considering public feedback too much.
He also stated recently that he doesn't care too much about language design at a syntax level, or better said it's not his top focus as the overarching concepts are more important to him.
I think there is a chance that people may have a hard time to adopt to the language. His strong focus on gamedev will further cut down the audience. It will certainly draw a lot of attention but a massive adoption is highly questionable.
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> the language that inspired conception of both of these
I haven’t heard this before. Do you have a source on this?
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Popularity is not required for a language to be "successful". An argument can be made that popularity can bring fragmentation, a lack of focus, security and usability issues via poor quality code and outdated information, and overwhelm core developers. Just take a look at JavaScript and Python ecosystems. Whereas less popular languages like Nim, Zig, Odin, etc., thrive within their niches.
Please read gingerbill’s blog to understand more about why Odin is designed the way it is https://www.gingerbill.org/article/
lot's of what you say is simply not true. Maybe before sharing opinions educate oneself.