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"The Economics of Programming Languages" by Evan Czaplicki (Strange Loop 2023)

Strange Loop Conference · talk · Watch on YouTube

Programming language designSoftware practice, open source & careers

What it is

Evan Czaplicki, creator of Elm, examines how programming languages are funded. He looks at where compiler engineers' salaries come from, why Go has about 5 engineers while Dart has about 30, and how this limits language design.

Why Hacker News recommends it

Recommended repeatedly as a funny, informative talk on the economics behind programming languages and open source.

  • 10 people recommended it
  • 8 different months
  • 2 strong recommendations
  • first 2023, last 2026

What HN commenters said

  1. “Very highly recommend this funny, informative talk to understand aspects of creating a programming language other than the theoretical ones.”

    Funny, informative look at how creating a programming language really works

    __rito__, 2023-12 · Strong recommendation · in “Ask HN: Best tech talks you have heard in 2023?”

  2. “Really good talk, I remember watching it when it came out.”

    Really good talk on language adoption and economics.

    arcadia_leak, 2026-02 · Strong recommendation · in “D Programming Language”

  3. “I saw a great talk from Strange Loop the other day by the developer of Elm on the economics of opensource software[1].”

    Elm creator on the team effort a good open source project needs

    josephg, 2023-10 · Recommendation · in “Just paying Figma $15/month because nothing else fucking works”

  4. “A bunch of great talks at Strange Loop this year!”

    Strange Loop 2023 talk on economics of programming languages

    surprisetalk, 2023-11 · Recommendation · in “Ask HN: What's your favorite tech talk from the past year?”

  5. “There's a great talk by Evan Czaplicki [0] that outlines the financial significance of browsers.”

    Explains the financial significance of browsers

    D4ckard, 2024-02 · Recommendation · in “Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice”

  6. “Evan (creator of Elm) gave a great Strange Loop '23 talk”

    Elm creator on where he imagines the language going

    jcuenod, 2024-02 · Recommendation · in “Learning Elm by porting a medium-sized web frontend from React (2019)”

  7. “Evan Czaplicki's great talk where he basically traces the funding of most modern programming languages to search engine revenues”

    Traces funding of modern programming languages to search engine revenue.

    yawaramin, 2024-12 · Recommendation · in “DuckDuckGo donates $25k to the Perl and Raku Foundation”

  8. “The talk is primarily about the economics of open-source programming languages”

    Economics of open-source language funding, overlapping with wider OSS issues.

    plankalkyl, 2025-04 · Recommendation · in “Ask HN: How do you make a living contributing to and/or creating OSS projects?”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: open source funding, elm, language adoption, strange loop, evan czaplicki

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