All the new programming languages I hear recently does not seem to be innovative. They are just mixing and matching old language features borrowed from dynamic/functional programming languages.
Is there any new programming language which brought any new feature/concept which is not available in languages like Lisp, Haskell, Python etc?
Programming language innovation - Is it dying?
1–10 of 13 posts
Re: Programming language innovation - Is it dying?
#2constraint programming (mozart/oz)
actor model (erlang,mozart/oz)
More generally, see peter norvig's talks on youtube where he talks about data being more agile than programming. The new frontier in computing is using data to get things done. Programming language researchers, bless their hearts, are nice people, but won't add to much computing in the future.
Re: Programming language innovation - Is it dying?
#3Very few languages are truly groundbreaking. Most are simply refinements of existing ideas (doesn't necessarily mean that they're not a step forward). If you're interested in something earth-shatteringly different, you're going to need to look into programming language research to find it (One great reference that could probably answer this question better is http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/).
For examples of a recent-ish language that was developed by a professor at UIUC, see http://maude.cs.uiuc.edu/, which is based on rewriting logic and is currently still being developed/refined. But even that has strong ties to a previous language OBJ by the same creator.
If you're interested in learning something really different but a bit easier/more fun, I would strongly recommend Prolog. Schapiro has a great book (http://www.amazon.com/Art-Prolog-Second-Programming-Techniqu...).
Re: Programming language innovation - Is it dying?
#4constraint programming (mozart/oz) actor model (erlang,mozart/oz) More generally, see peter norvig's talks on youtube where he talks about data being more agile than programming. The new frontier in computing is using data to get things done. Programming language researchers, bless their hearts, are nice people, but won't add to much computing in the future.
Research is by nature high risk/high reward. In most fields, it takes years for research to make it into an actual product. Programming language research doesn't stop at developing new languages. Automated testing tools like Microsoft's PEX fall under the same umbrella of formal methods.
Even if the research doesn't affect a completely new programming language, it could very likely have a strong hand in updating old ones. See programming language memory models for instance.
Re: Programming language innovation - Is it dying?
#5Flow! http://www.flowlang.net/
Re: Programming language innovation - Is it dying?
#6Very few languages are truly groundbreaking. Most are simply refinements of existing ideas (doesn't necessarily mean that they're not a step forward). If you're interested in something earth-shatteringly different, you're going to need to look into programming language research to find it (One great reference that could probably answer this question better is http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/ ). For examples of a recen…
another step forward in lazyness : pure
http://code.google.com/p/pure-lang/
it's almost formal math, quite cool
Re: Programming language innovation - Is it dying?
#7I think to the contrary, programming language design as an area is flourishing now more than it has in a couple of decades. The availability of the JVM and JS as targets are freeing people up to experiment with lot's of different languages. Sure a lot of the things in these languages have been seen in some form before, but because there is so much cross-interaction between language features, putting things together in tasteful and elegant ways can be very innovative in the PL context.
It's easy to forget that Lisp, Haskell, Python, etc, didn't just spring forth fully formed. I read a great history of Lisp recently: http://www.dreamsongs.com/NewFiles/Hopl2.pdf. A lot of the features in Common Lisp we take for granted today were the product of various dialects and splinters of Lisp over the years.
Re: Programming language innovation - Is it dying?
#8As an Interaction Designer, I'd love to see a language that was built using UX methods and patterns (e.g. user research, usability testing, designing for visual perception). It probably won't produce linguistic innovations, but it could be a way to advance productivity and developer experience.
Re: Programming language innovation - Is it dying?
#9I think the problem is more about visibility, adoption and becoming industry usable language (community, framework, library, learning curve, etc.) then being groundbreaking. Language being too innovative and too different from mindset of developers in my opinion would create barriers for adoption.
Take a look at functional reactive languages and value they offer for web or even to regular UI scenarios (http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/2057). There are a lot of research and real world languages done, but adoption rate is really low.
On another hand if you do hit a sweet spot by simplifying existing scenarios and piggybacking on some popular concepts (example of node.js library using JS and simplifying web developers workflow) you instantly get adoption and visibility.
Re: Programming language innovation - Is it dying?
#10Most of it's been covered here, but another point is that for every mainstream language that doesn't seem to be so revolutionary, there are lots of little languages that never made it. In order for there to be lots of innovation, we also need lots of iterative steps in languages. This helps the less than genius programmer, the ones that get that templates in C++ are good, but would never bother learning lisp, get the new ideas in incremental steps.
Also, something you see quite a lot is innovative concepts built onto existing languages via libraries that then get integrated into new languages.