Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming la

BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> writes:


> it does seem however, that on average, languages are becoming gradually
> more general purpose, and the distance between "different" languages
> seems to be gradually shrinking.


It is true that languages tends to grow over time to the point where
they have everything: Objects, functional values, static types,
dynamic types, lazy evaluation, strict evaluation, pure functions,
impure functions, parametric polymorphish, interfaces, message
passing, query sublanguages, etc., all in one language. In this
respect, languages tend to grow more general-purpose and more similar.


But at the same time, there is an increasing trend of domain-specific
languages: Languages designed for _very_ specific problem domains.
While these previously usually looked a lot like existing languages
but with a few added constructs or standard data types, they are
increasingly designed from the ground up for supporting the specific
problem domain -- they are often not Turing-complete, and they may
have complex type systems or restrictions that ensure domain-specific
constraints (such as resource usage or analysability). And they often
have syntax that look nothing like traditional PL syntax.


So the way I see it, there is a widening range of languages from
monstrous general-purpose languages with huge standard libraries to
tiny domain-specific languages with no libraries to speak of and
everything in-between. And while the languages at one end of the
spectrum tend to converge, the languages at the other end diverge more
and more.


Torben

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