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If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century

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Re: If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century

#51

Post by reificator »

tonic-music wrote: post #50

So, COBOL for everyone then? lol. Your "create file" example looks exactly like COBOL. I disagree completely that business-oriented languages (the BO in COBOL stands for "Business Oriented") are the answer. You decry DSLs because they are "worthless" for the user to learn -- but you forget that they make the work of the original developers that much easier, which is why they exist. You bring up Lisp as an example and…

The buttons at the bottom are not a survey, the rest of the article is hidden behind them.

Re: If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century

#52

Post by tonic-music »

reificator wrote: post #40

> The language for the 21st century should be business oriented, English-like and not dependent on native types. It is shocking to me how often the problem of "programming is difficult and time consuming and unintuitive" is to be resolved by "making programming languages more like English". The language is there as a tool to make programming easier! Do you know how many times I've taken someone's keyboard to type a t…

Props for the Inform mention... One of the few cases where writing in pseudo-English is the right answer.

Re: If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century

#53

Post by tonic-music »

jorams wrote: post #44

> The INCITS 226–1994 standard consists of 1153 pages. This was only beaten by C++ ISO/IEC 14882:2011 standard with 1338 pages some 17 years after. C++ has to drag a bag of heritage though, it was not always that big. Common Lisp was created huge from the scratch. This is a surprisingly incorrect remark, given that the author is apparently fairly well aware of programming language history. Common Lisp is a relatively…

Indeed. The original description of Lisp included something like 10 primitives. That's it. Numerous examples of full-blown Lisps have been built from just those few primitives. One article I read even showed how arithmetic can be built from car and cdr.

Re: If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century

#54

Post by tonic-music »

reificator wrote: post #51
tonic-music wrote: post #50

So, COBOL for everyone then? lol. Your "create file" example looks exactly like COBOL. I disagree completely that business-oriented languages (the BO in COBOL stands for "Business Oriented") are the answer. You decry DSLs because they are "worthless" for the user to learn -- but you forget that they make the work of the original developers that much easier, which is why they exist. You bring up Lisp as an example and…

The buttons at the bottom are not a survey, the rest of the article is hidden behind them.

That's a poor UI for an article. Just say what you want to say! If this article were written in the hypothetical, it would make the point much better.

Re: If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century

#56

Post by jonnydubowsky »

reificator wrote: post #40

> The language for the 21st century should be business oriented, English-like and not dependent on native types. It is shocking to me how often the problem of "programming is difficult and time consuming and unintuitive" is to be resolved by "making programming languages more like English". The language is there as a tool to make programming easier! Do you know how many times I've taken someone's keyboard to type a t…

Thanks for such clear examples to demonstrate your point.

Re: If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century

#57

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

hazz99 wrote: post #17
fooker wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with 'less syntax'. More syntax (when designed well) results is significantly more readable code.

Ada has a lot of syntax, but also gains a lot in terms of functionality (and arguably readability, but I disagree) for those extra characters. Syntax for the sake of syntax is pointless, imo. Obviously there's a balance here - APL and Applescript both suffer from either extreme.

I have a suspicion that something like APL is only a problem as far as the learning curve is concerned. For example, the syntax of advanced mathematics is nearly illegible to me but, for a physicist or mathematician who does this every day, it's the most efficient way of communicating information.

Re: If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century

#58

Post by coldtea »

warent wrote: post #41
crazygringo wrote: post #12

> Ultimately this: > FILE * test_file = fopen(“/tmp/test.txt”, “w+”); > Should become something like this: > create file /tmp/test.txt for input and output as test_file > Syntax highlighting should work instead of syntax notation just fine. I couldn't disagree more. The first example is easily scannable visually -- a variable is being created from a function call. I can tell because my eyes immediately notice the mid…

I wholeheartedly agree with you on this. `create file /tmp/test.txt for input and output as test_file` To me, this does not explain what's happening here with any clarity. I'm left feeling overwhelmed with uncertainty and ambiguity. Is there an iterable being acted on? Is this blocking? Is it creating a variable? Two variables? What type is /tmp/test.txt when it has no quotation marks, and how does it handle spaces o…

>Is there an iterable being acted on? Is this blocking? Is it creating a variable? Two variables? What type is /tmp/test.txt when it has no quotation marks, and how does it handle spaces or concatenation/methods?

Well, if you knew the language, you'd have answer to all of those questions.

Plus, if you didn't know C, you'd be baffled by the other example as well...

Re: If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century

#60

Post by [deleted] »

crazygringo wrote: post #12

> Ultimately this: > FILE * test_file = fopen(“/tmp/test.txt”, “w+”); > Should become something like this: > create file /tmp/test.txt for input and output as test_file > Syntax highlighting should work instead of syntax notation just fine. I couldn't disagree more. The first example is easily scannable visually -- a variable is being created from a function call. I can tell because my eyes immediately notice the mid…

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