The guy behind the language - Sylvan Clebsch - seems to have a very solid background, and current professional situation. He works at "Microsoft Research Cambridge" in the Programming Language Principles group.
My point is - sure, it doesn't have a handful of massive companies stewarding it like Rust. But, on the other hand, it's made by a guy with really serious chops, who has a solid programming language related job. So while not being as industry-sanctified as Rust, or Java, it seems nonetheless like a language that could go places!
This is great. I hope they stay committed to the open source side of things, but all evidence seems to suggest they're serious about it. Generally, it's great to see a good idea getting executed well and arguably improving the state of affairs in computing, and making it, as it were.
The flat salary structure at a generous level (from my perspective, anyway) is a breath of fresh air. Everyone getting caught up on the equity is a bit hard to understand, given the clarity of the message from the company.
I will be applying for one of the open positions. Kudos to this company for their approach to business, and congrats on the success.
> 1. Read a 10 page description of what the car is
> 2. Click on a link buried on page 12 that lets you buy the thing
But the link to the playground is on page 1, the home page, and not page 12? So your whole argument is moot, since it seems the Pony people obeyed at least this part of your interface design dogma.
Or, in other words, "you could not be more wrong if you tried :)".
The issue here was that page 2 was linked in the title, so everyone was getting to page 2, and not clicking back to page 1, where the playground was, and instead clicking forward and getting lost.
And all that aside, as another commenter said, even if the playground was hidden behind the most fiendish of mazes -- perhaps not every programming language is interested in attracting the kind of people who think every corner of the universe must mirror Amazon's approach to "sales".
Read the "Early History of Pony":
https://www.ponylang.io/blog/2017/05/an-early-history-of-pon...
My point is - sure, it doesn't have a handful of massive companies stewarding it like Rust. But, on the other hand, it's made by a guy with really serious chops, who has a solid programming language related job. So while not being as industry-sanctified as Rust, or Java, it seems nonetheless like a language that could go places!