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Programming language innovation - Is it dying?

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Re: Programming language innovation - Is it dying?

#11
For a PL theorist/purist, there may not be much new under the sun. However, for "real" programmers (I kid) there is a lot more to programming languages than the theory.

A programming language is not just a means to formulate instructions for a computer to execute. It is also a way for programmers to communicate with each other and, taken further, a way for customer desires to translate into computer actions. I would agree that, viewed as instructions for a computer, not much new has come about in the last 10-15 years.

What has developed more recently are all the new ways that programmers are discovering or creating to communicate via code. TDD/BDD/RDD, literate programming, module systems baked into the language, optional typing, parameterized types, etc. are all features that, while not necessarily entirely new from a theory standpoint, are creating new ways for programmers to signal intent.

A good example of this at work is the recent resurgence in functional languages. These have, literally, been around since the very first programming languages were created, but they have never really "caught on" (for some value of "caught on"). I would suspect that part of the problem is that it has traditionally been more than a little difficult for someone not used to functional programming to approach the code. So, I would argue that the most important recent advances in the FP space have less to do with type inference, lazy evaluation, or correctness provability, and more to do with clearly communicating intent.

Re: Programming language innovation - Is it dying?

#12
The recent trend in languages like Go is not bad. The intention is to make you productive. It's a new direction that programming languages should explore more. Instead of CS theory emphasize psychological theory, since it's still humans that program.

And note the human reaction to yet another language like Dart. Many of the programming languages they've tried promised the moon, but turned out didn't have huge effects on general productivity. Libs, frameworks, idioms, testing approaches etc, have a bigger impact.

Re: Programming language innovation - Is it dying?

#13
I can say that, with Gosu, our goal is not to be innovative with syntax or semantics. Rather, our goal is to make common patterns today easier to deal with.

As an example: the open type system allows developers to mix various resources (xml files, wsdl files, json/jschema files, etc.) along side the gosu code, and access it all in a type-safe, easy-to-tool manner. This isn't particularly innovative from an academic perspective: there are no theories at work here, just some practitioners trying to make our lives easier. On the other hand, it is a very nice advancement for day-to-day coding.

As a broad generalization, I think that the technology community over-prioritizes innovation: I believe it would be more productive for most people to take the best ideas of the past and get on with the laborious task of sanding down and perfecting the implementations.

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