The ability to securely dynamically load and execute arbitrary untrusted code within the same address space as trusted code, ala the Java bytecode verifier. I'm not certain whether the creators of Java invented this idea, but they were certainly the first to popularize it.
Ask HN: When was the last really transformational idea in programming languages?
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Re: Ask HN: When was the last really transformational idea in programming languages?
#12The question reminds of the notion of processes and channels in Occam with constructs for parallelizing based on Tony Hoare's CSP theory.
It's a good thing I read the thread before commenting because that was exactly what I was going to write!
Naturally you've got my vote.
Let me add a bit of history to reduce the 'me too' content: There was an interesting hardware development at the same time which was specifically tailored to these channels, the 'transputer' by INMOS.
The whole upshot of this idea was that processors and a bit of support structure would live on a small dimm like package that you could stick into a base platform to create a mini cluster on a card.
I think this idea was well ahead of its time and that eventually we'll see something very much like it as our future hardware architecture. After all the current trend towards clustering and miniaturization all point in that direction.
Re: Ask HN: When was the last really transformational idea in programming languages?
#13Most really fundamental ideas are only recognizable in hindsight, after people have built other ideas on top of them. If I remember the early/mid 80s correctly, the hot language was BASIC because it came with most microcomputers and would supposedly enable a new generation of hobbyist programmers. (Which it did, but they grew up to program in C++, Python, and JavaScript, not Basic.) There're a lot of really interesti…
There is a demo video of Subtext here: http://www.subtextual.org/subtext2.html. It looks like it would be fun to play with. Too bad we can't download it yet.
Re: Ask HN: When was the last really transformational idea in programming languages?
#14When was any? I find these sorts of things crumble in your hands, because as soon as you pick a candidate you find yourself thinking "but that was just a variant of such-and-such earlier idea."
I think you are right - all that we have now is ultimately derived from the structure of the underlying machine and that model has not undergone any fundamental change since the earliest iterations.
For a truly transformational step we need a new machine.
Re: Ask HN: When was the last really transformational idea in programming languages?
#15Two things that I'd probably call just features of OO languages, but seem significant: - Type-safe generic programming - Introspection
both these are outgrowths of C++ features - templates and rtti, which I saw first in the early 80's but were probably around earlier.
Re: Ask HN: When was the last really transformational idea in programming languages?
#16type inferencing as used in haskell et al, that's a fairly recent development - early 90's/late 80's?
Category theory is another perhaps - it's from the 40's but it's application to programming is new - 80's perhaps?
Re: Ask HN: When was the last really transformational idea in programming languages?
#17[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: When was the last really transformational idea in programming languages?
#18Monadic models of computation, in Haskell etc?
Re: Ask HN: When was the last really transformational idea in programming languages?
#19What about javascript's dynamic object model, where the objects can be changed at run time? I don't think this was possible earlier on, can't remember if this was possible in smalltalk or self?
The idea of the DOM?
Both mid 90's
Re: Ask HN: When was the last really transformational idea in programming languages?
#20Somewhere/Sometimes comes the point where fundamental ideas just evolve or merge's. Democracy is one of these examples, just from a other domain.
Future improvements would be massive parallelism and languages would evolve on this.