Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming language design?

From	Ian Lance Taylor <ian@airs.com>
Newsgroups	comp.compilers
Subject	Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming language design?
Date	2012-03-08 17:02 -0800
Organization	Compilers Central
Message-ID	<12-03-017@comp.compilers> (permalink)
References	<12-03-012@comp.compilers>

Show all headers | View raw

Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> writes:

> - And here's the first itchy point: there appears to be no correlation
> between the success of a programming language and its emergence in the form
> of someone's doctoral or post-doctoral work. This bothers me a lot, as an
> academic. It appears that deep thoughts, consistency, rigor and all other
> things we value as scientists aren't that important for mass adoption of
> programming languages.

As a non-academic, I agree.  None of those things matter very much to me
when it comes to actually getting stuff done.  They are not bad things
to have, but they are not the things that matter.

> - So one pertinent question is: given that not much seems to have emerged
> since 1979 (that's 30+ years!), is there still anything to innovate in
> programming languages? Or have we reached the asymptotic plateau of
> innovation in this area?

As others have mentioned, there may be some good ideas to come in the
area of safer and more efficient parallel programming.  I like the CSP
model, but perhaps there is something better.  I personally think the
model of threads, mutexes and condition variables has so far proven too
difficult to use correctly for most programmers.  That goes double for
the atomic operations and barrier model.  And functional and dataflow
programming languages do not appear to have gotten much adoption in
practice.

I also think there is more room for thought about programming in the
large.  Many software shops these days are huge, producing programs that
are far too large for anybody to keep in their heads.  As a side-effect,
many programmers spent a lot of time performing maintenance of various
sorts.  What can languages do to help?  Refactoring is just the most
obvious example in this space, and even there it is clear that some
languages support refactoring far better than others.  Other areas
related to language are speed of development, dependency management,
ease of debugging, modularity, ease of performance analysis, no doubt
many more.

Ian

Back to comp.compilers | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar

Thread

Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming language design? Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2012-03-07 13:52 +0000
  Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming language design? Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2012-03-08 00:44 -0600
    Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming language design? torbenm@diku.dk (Torben Ægidius Mogensen) - 2012-03-14 09:51 +0100
      Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming language design? Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2012-03-19 08:00 -0700
        Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming language design? torbenm@diku.dk (Torben Ægidius Mogensen) - 2012-03-21 11:53 +0100
          Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming language design? "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-03-22 21:17 +0100
          Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming language design? jgk@panix.com (Joe keane) - 2012-03-23 19:45 +0000
    Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming language design? eijkhout@tacc.utexas.edu (Victor Eijkhout) - 2012-03-19 15:42 -0600
      Re: HPC and parallel programming, was Have we reached the asymptotic Marco van de Voort <marcov@toad.stack.nl> - 2012-03-21 10:28 +0000
  Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming la SLK Systems <slkpg3@gmail.com> - 2012-03-08 10:21 -0500
    Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming la BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-09 18:16 -0700
      Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming la glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2012-03-12 07:42 +0000
        Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming la BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-13 02:27 -0700
          Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming la glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2012-03-14 05:19 +0000
            Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming la BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-15 00:06 -0700
          Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming la torbenm@diku.dk (Torben Ægidius Mogensen) - 2012-03-14 09:24 +0100
    Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages? "robin" <robin51@dodo.com.au> - 2012-03-11 21:09 +1100
    Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson <johann@2ndquadrant.com> - 2012-06-06 17:38 +0000
      Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2012-06-06 22:40 +0000
        Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2012-06-07 08:00 -0400
          Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson <johann@2ndquadrant.com> - 2012-06-07 17:21 +0000
            Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2012-06-08 22:31 +0000
            Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages Martin Ward <martin@gkc.org.uk> - 2012-06-10 10:42 +0100
            Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-06-10 13:36 -0700
              Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages "robin" <robin51@dodo.com.au> - 2012-06-11 20:21 +1000
              Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@aol.com> - 2012-06-11 18:18 +0200
          Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de> - 2012-06-08 16:16 +0200
      Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-06-07 14:20 +0100
        Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com> - 2012-06-07 16:06 -0400
          Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2012-06-08 22:47 +0000
      Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages "robin" <robin51@dodo.com.au> - 2012-06-08 00:03 +1000
        Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson <johann@2ndquadrant.com> - 2012-06-07 18:01 +0000
          Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages Lieven Marchand <mal@wyrd.be> - 2012-06-09 17:24 +0200
      Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages torbenm@diku.dk (Torben Ægidius Mogensen) - 2012-06-11 13:41 +0200
        Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2012-06-11 22:13 +0000
          Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages "robin" <robin51@dodo.com.au> - 2012-06-13 01:16 +1000
  Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming language design? "Derek M. Jones" <derek@_NOSPAM_knosof.co.uk> - 2012-03-08 19:54 +0000
  Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming language design? George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2012-03-08 17:41 -0500
  Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming language design? Ian Lance Taylor <ian@airs.com> - 2012-03-08 17:02 -0800
    Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming language design? Cameron McInally <cameron.mcinally@nyu.edu> - 2012-03-08 23:40 -0500
      Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming language design? thomas.mertes@gmx.at - 2012-03-11 07:33 -0700
    Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming language design? Michael Dunlavey <mikedunlavey44@gmail.com> - 2012-03-09 16:07 -0500
    Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming language design? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-09 21:14 -0700
  Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming language design? Rock Brentwood <federation2005@netzero.com> - 2012-03-17 12:31 -0700
    Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming language design? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-18 02:35 -0700
    Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming language design? "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-03-18 20:35 +0100

csiph-web