what's being explored? is c++ better than arc for this "exploring" ... it has more libraries ;)
i wonder why people are not writing more apps in arc. there seems to be a lot of activity porting it to different environemnts, writing compilers, optimizers, creating a repository .... but no app. (other than hacker news)
I've used Arc professionally twice. Once as a web interface to an rsync system (http://my-arc-stuff.blogspot.com/2008/02/i-needed-web-app-fo...), the other one as a database for our local library (basic stuff : which book do we own, who borrowed it, ...)
These are real apps. I must admit Arc is really great (even as it is now) for these small, basic but usually time-consuming webapps. It doesn't prevent me for writing a compiler for Arc :) (which is itself written in Arc and is actually the biggest piece of code I've written in this language).
Enhancing Arc is fun, writing practical apps in it is not. Open source developers go where the fun is.
As for your next question ("Why is enhancing Arc fun?"), it's because Arc provides many tools for manipulating Arc code (macros, code-is-data), and few tools for writing applications (libraries). The implementation is also fairly simple, vs. trying to hack on Java or Python or C++ compilers. Path of most impressiveness per unit effort seems to go through porting it to another language, rather than writing another webapp that'd be more impressive if done in Rails or Django.
You're absolutely correct... I'd somehow conflated the two in my mind. I guess the first big Python game was actually Eve Online. I can't recall any big, early Python applications outside of the LLNL work... which, I suppose, says even more about applications being a poor indicator of early language uptake.
i wonder why people are not writing more apps in arc. there seems to be a lot of activity porting it to different environemnts, writing compilers, optimizers, creating a repository .... but no app. (other than hacker news)