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Near Future of Programming Languages [pdf]

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Re: Near Future of Programming Languages [pdf]

#111

Post by arianvanp »

aryehof wrote: post #72
ShallowLearning wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of the time, new languages lead to new design paradigms. As a general rule, newer languages are more abstracted than older ones. When people don't need to get hung up on the intricacies of low level programming, real progress can be made on the design paradigm front.

I'm curious which languages have resulted in which new design paradigms?

Two good examples:

Erlang led to Microservices and the Reactive Manifesto. the Open Telecom Platform is still a very modern Microservice library (in my opinion) after more than three! decades

ML led to programming against generic interfaces (http://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs312/2006fa/recitations/r...)

Re: Near Future of Programming Languages [pdf]

#113

Post by tluyben2 »

pjmlp wrote: post #107
tluyben2 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been thinking about that and there is an issue with it; Delphi (and VB) where written in a time when devs paid a lot for software tools. Besides some niches (embedded) that is not really the case anymore. You expect to pay a few $10 at most in total if that. And a lot of people (but that might be the HN/Reddit echo chamber) demand all to be OSS as well they work with. Making 'a modern Delphi' is a lot of work;…

There are companies trying it though, https://anvil.works/ https://www.outsystems.com/platform/ JetBrains is probably a good example of a "Borland" like company. Outside HN/Reddit bubble that are plenty of companies that are willing to pay for software, the supermarket cashier doesn't take pull requests. Also, the back to native focus on mobile platforms, including Google having to integrate Android apps on ChromeOS,…

Outsystems and Jetbrains are these examples but on the other hand they are not; they are 'old'; they both exist since 2000 and at that time pushing into the market was a lot easier. I was more thinking of a company starting now, to which I'll check out Anvil.Works. There are more new companies working in the space, for sure, but they all miss the breadth that Borland had (they really had a lot of cash and developers on hand in those days).

But yes, Outsystems (I worked with them and their product quite a lot in the past) could be considered a Delphi. But still not modern; it's rather painful building apps/sites with it that people seem to want.

Jetbrains can be considered a Borland; I didn't think of that because I consider them more in the space of 'low level' programming tools (which, like you say, includes Delphi functionality, but a modern Delphi wouldn't be like the old Delphi; it would need a lot more innovation).

Re: Near Future of Programming Languages [pdf]

#114

Post by asavinov »

ShallowLearning wrote: post #63
aryehof wrote: post #61

My thoughts are that we don't really need more languages. Arguably we don't need better ones either, because they aren't the problem in general computing. Instead we need better design paradigms that better let us model complex requirements and systems into code. Let's have new languages that then support those paradigms. We continue to struggle abstracting complex problems using functional decomposition, structured…

Much of the time, new languages lead to new design paradigms. As a general rule, newer languages are more abstracted than older ones. When people don't need to get hung up on the intricacies of low level programming, real progress can be made on the design paradigm front.

I would say that it is a two-directional dependency:

  language constructs  design patterns
Programmers experiment with and accumulates various design patterns using existing languages. Then the most useful of them are implemented (frozen) as programming constructs. Then programmers experiment with these new programming constructs and come up with new design patterns. And so on.

In fact, these design patterns and language constructs come in (anti-phase) waves.

Re: Near Future of Programming Languages [pdf]

#115

Post by s4vi0r »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #103
Animats wrote: post #78

Things to think about for the near future of programming languages: - The borrow checker in Rust is a great innovation. Previously the options were reference counts, garbage collection, or bugs. Now there's a new option. Expect to see a borrow checker in future languages other than Rust. - Formal methods are still a pain. The technology tends to come from people in love with the theory, resulting in systems that are…

Great points, but I have a question about one of them in particular: > - Functional is OK. Imperative is OK. Both in the same program are a mess. What do you mean by that? My experience is that functional alone is impossible, since the only useful thing a program can do is through state changes; imperative is a-OK, and functional+imperative in the same program is the best way to do things (i.e. well-defined stateful…

Once you get over the initial learning curve of the functional/pure approach to state/IO, its far superior to imperative imo. You don't need to reason about global state - because everything is explicit, including passing around your state, you never have to worry about "what if someone else or some other code somewhere is touching this" again.

Re: Near Future of Programming Languages [pdf]

#116

Post by PaulRobinson »

tluyben2 wrote: post #95
PaulRobinson wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with a few of your thoughts, but they're good thoughts! * Javascript everywhere is a function of low barrier-to-entry for it, but almost everybody agrees it is flawed as a language. If that's the future, we are screwed as an industry. One thing I've noticed (and I say this as a guy who wrote Ruby for 10+ years), is that type safety is becoming a hugely desired feature for developers again. * WYSIWYG web de…

> Javascript everywhere is a function of low barrier-to-entry for it, but almost everybody agrees it is flawed as a language Everybody is everybody who has used other languages intensively or is into programming languages or, the most negative parties against JS, people who are into formal methods. But 'everybody'; I get often downvoted to hell for being negative on JS on Reddit. And i'm not using a baseball bat; i'm…

I said 'almost everybody'.

Even the most ardent JS fans I work with call it objectively bad.

Re: Near Future of Programming Languages [pdf]

#117

Post by meredydd »

tluyben2 wrote: post #113
pjmlp wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are companies trying it though, https://anvil.works/ https://www.outsystems.com/platform/ JetBrains is probably a good example of a "Borland" like company. Outside HN/Reddit bubble that are plenty of companies that are willing to pay for software, the supermarket cashier doesn't take pull requests. Also, the back to native focus on mobile platforms, including Google having to integrate Android apps on ChromeOS,…

Outsystems and Jetbrains are these examples but on the other hand they are not; they are 'old'; they both exist since 2000 and at that time pushing into the market was a lot easier. I was more thinking of a company starting now, to which I'll check out Anvil.Works. There are more new companies working in the space, for sure, but they all miss the breadth that Borland had (they really had a lot of cash and developers…

Anvil founder here!

The crucial difference between Outsystems(/Bubble/etc) and Anvil is that Outsystems tries to be a "no-code" environment, and we think that's a mistake (or at least, a different market).

Delphi and Visual Basic proved that writing code isn't the problem - code is the best way to tell a computer what to do. But writing code in five different languages to produce "Hello World" on the web...now that will slow you down.

(Count 'em: JS, HTML, CSS, backend eg Ruby/Python, SQL. We do everything in Python, which gets you going much faster. We just got back from PyCon UK, where among other things we got an 8-year-old building database-backed web apps in an afternoon. That's the sort of thing that used to happen with VB/Delphi.)

Re: Near Future of Programming Languages [pdf]

#118

Post by blipblop »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #89
Animats wrote: post #78

Things to think about for the near future of programming languages: - The borrow checker in Rust is a great innovation. Previously the options were reference counts, garbage collection, or bugs. Now there's a new option. Expect to see a borrow checker in future languages other than Rust. - Formal methods are still a pain. The technology tends to come from people in love with the theory, resulting in systems that are…

I disagree with a few of your thoughts, but they're good thoughts! * Javascript everywhere is a function of low barrier-to-entry for it, but almost everybody agrees it is flawed as a language. If that's the future, we are screwed as an industry. One thing I've noticed (and I say this as a guy who wrote Ruby for 10+ years), is that type safety is becoming a hugely desired feature for developers again. * WYSIWYG web de…

> but almost everybody agrees it is flawed as a language. If that's the future, we are screwed as an industry.

What language is not flawed? And why are we "screwed"? I don't get this FUD...there are more important things than language-choice such as dependency management system + community + ecosystem. JS lets you get on with the job and get things done quickly. You need performance - use C/C++ bindings. Its been clear for a long time that JS is the safest long-term choice and is slowly creeping into every other language's castle.

Re: Near Future of Programming Languages [pdf]

#119

Post by machiaweliczny »

josefrichter wrote: post #91

Just curious where does Elixir fall in this scheme of things? Any experienced devs who could give a qualified answer, please?

Elixir is mostly different syntax(Ruby-like instead of Prolog-like) for Erlang. Beyond syntax change it fixes some Erlang warts, ads better metaprograming and great tooling. Elixir isn't academic innovation - it's about proffessionals convinience and effectivness similar as go lang. Started by 1 person.

Re: Near Future of Programming Languages [pdf]

#120

Post by tluyben2 »

meredydd wrote: post #117
tluyben2 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outsystems and Jetbrains are these examples but on the other hand they are not; they are 'old'; they both exist since 2000 and at that time pushing into the market was a lot easier. I was more thinking of a company starting now, to which I'll check out Anvil.Works. There are more new companies working in the space, for sure, but they all miss the breadth that Borland had (they really had a lot of cash and developers…

Anvil founder here! The crucial difference between Outsystems(/Bubble/etc) and Anvil is that Outsystems tries to be a "no-code" environment, and we think that's a mistake (or at least, a different market). Delphi and Visual Basic proved that writing code isn't the problem - code is the best way to tell a computer what to do. But writing code in five different languages to produce "Hello World" on the web...now that w…

Thanks; that sounds very interesting. I will check it out tonight.
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