Programming Language Convergence? 2

[benlinkknilneb]

Hi all,

I'm a VB programmer... I started working with VB5 and am currently using .NET. My schooling was basically all in C-based languages. Today, for the first time, I have been trying out C#. I was absolutely amazed at the similarity between my VB.NET code and my C# code... aside from syntactic differences, they seem to be identical. My question for this thread is two-fold:

1) What capabilities does one language have over the other,

and

2) Do you think that we'll see a trend toward a single programming language that combines many of the ones we use today?

 

[benlinkknilneb]

Never mind the first question, all... found an old thread that dealt with that... but I am still curious... do you think we're headed toward a one-programming-language system?

 

[sleipnir214]

I don't see programming languages heading for any kind of great synthesis, at least not any time soon.

On a related topic, there is an interesting page which covers the developmental relationships between various languages graphically:

http://www.levenez.com/lang/

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

TANSTAAFL!

 

[CajunCenturion]

I think the reason that you're seeing an apparent convergance between VB.NET and C# is because both are from the same vendor and based on the same .NET architecture. I think that's more of product consolidation effort rather than a language convergance. It's simple a coincidence in this case that the products are languages.

I don't think it's likely that we'll see a trend towards a single programming language. Much along the same lines as "jack of all trades, master of none", general purpose languages try to be the jack of all trades, and in so doing, don't do all things well. And I don't think they're going to go away at all. But I do think we're more likely to see a slow evolution towards more special purposes languages, geared to do specific functions quite efficiently.

Great link sleipnir214

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[Cheiron]

Languages have now borrowed so much from each other that the key abstractions – good support for components, convenient access to the operating system API, object oriented programming as the primary abstraction, and support for threading, networking (in its various forms), and GUI development – are now appearing in virtually every language. Yes, VB.Net is like C#, but C# is also like Java, and Java (albeit, to a lesser extent) is like C++ -- and all of these languages are very unlike traditional COBOL, Basic, FORTRAN, Lisp, or even C. Well known important features absent from Java, and C# are coming, generics chief among them. Yes, languages are converging, not at the syntax level, but at the features level.

 

[harebrain]

You can't address the issue of convergence based on procedural languages alone. Declarative languages (e.g., XSLT) are a whole different ball of wax, and there's a lot of activity there, too.