The programming langauge of the future ?

[maverickmonster]

What do you guys/galls think the langauge that we all will be using in the future ?

 

[Dimandja]

COBOL. Rumors about the demise of this language have always been extravagantly exaggerated.

And C. Although it's practitioners always announce the demise of COBOL.

However, as evidenced by Java and .NET, all current languages and platforms are merging and increasingly sharing the same resources.

I don't see any truly new language emerging in the near future.

 

[alexhu]

Chinese

Alex

 

[MasterRacker]

I think eventually Java and/or C# will replace C and C++ because of the limitations they put on the unsafe pointer operations that are possible in the older languages. This will be a long term thing though because, like COBOL, there is a tremendous installed base of code out there that's not going away any time soon.


Jeff
The future is already here - it's just not widely distributed yet...

 

[Zech]

I do think that pointers (however unsafe they may be) are crucial when doing low-level programming (such as operating system or device driver programming).

While application programming may be moving towards Java and C#, Assembly, C and C++ are here to stay - doing the jobs that other high level languages can't do very well.

Anyhow, what we need in the future is not a new programming language, but an increase in standardization. Java and C# are just the beginnings of such standardization. Ultimately, differences in programming languages, operating systems, and hardware architectures will become irrelevant.

 

[Mike555]

I think that Speech Application Language Tags (SALT) incorporated w/ASP.NET apps will very popular in the next few years as the technology develops.

--
Mike

 

[Dimandja]

I do think that pointers (however unsafe they may be) are crucial when doing low-level programming (such as operating system or device driver programming).

Actually, in some platforms or environments practically any existing language can do pointers -- they are no longer constricted to C.

 

[CajunCenturion]

They never were restricted to C. In fact, pointers were being used in programming languages before C was even a language.

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[Zech]

Dimandja, please note I did not say that pointer is C-specific feature.

I agree with Cajun that pointer has existed even before C. Pointers are mere storage containing memory addresses. It has been used even before assembly language was a language. It is as old as the machine language itself.

The trend of many high-level programming languages is to rid the programmers' direct access to pointers. Many high level languages, such as Java, does not have pointers (Java uses reference but not pointers). While this is supposed to help programmers from making careless mistakes when dealing with pointers, it also takes away options and flexibility that programmers have. Such flexibility and control are needed when doing low-level programming. That was the point that I was trying to get across in those two lines that Dimandja has quoted.

Zech

 

[maverickmonster]

I think that Speech Application Language Tags (SALT) incorporated w/ASP.NET apps will very popular in the next few years as the technology develops.

Mike555 when will this kind of thing start ??

P.s how do u make qoutes it is not on the formating pages

 

[Mike555]

maverickmonster,

The technology hasn't gotten past the 1.0 phase yet as far as I understand. Micro$osft has incorporated some of this technology into Visual Studio .NET, which they are calling Speech.NET. Micro$osft hasn't marketed the technology much at all which, in my opinion, indicates that there is still much work to be done.

--
Mike

 

[MasterRacker]

Actually, I'm waiting for INTERCAL to make a "comeback".

http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/intercal-man/home.html

[LOL]


Jeff
The future is already here - it's just not widely distributed yet...

 

[Dimandja]

Zech, we are in agreement. I misunderstood your first post.

 

[jwenting]

hmm, a new company creating a new language?
Never heard of Micro$osft before, they'd better watch out as their name is quite similar to Microsoft which could confuse people and could lead to legal action by Microsoft for trademark infringement.

 

[haslo]

Why only one language? I now use Java (great for GUIs and networking with RMI), PHP (good for fast hacks and some web work), Python (works good for the web with Zope, is easy on the eyes), C (embedded systems, PDAs - altough I have very little actual programming experience here) - and I'm pretty open to using other languages, as long as they're the ones that fit the specific needs of an application best. Why constrain us when we know there will never be something like "one language fits all purposes"?

Or do you think a language could fill all gaps? If so, I wouldn't expect a language that is not cross-platform (example that hits my mind is C#) to be it, I'd rather see Python in that spot...

haslo@haslo.ch - www.haslo.ch​

 

[Dimandja]

Or do you think a language could fill all gaps? If so, I wouldn't expect a language that is not cross-platform (example that hits my mind is C#) to be it, I'd rather see Python in that spot...

Actually, you may. Once Python goes dot net.

 

[petey]

My cultural anthropology prof always said that labor specializes and diversifies when technology increases, so I think we'll find ourselves in an ever more complex IT landscape with more languages and niche skillsets than ever.

 

[infinitelo]

Its been my observation for some time that the attempt to create the catch all programming language is futile, and only encourages the creation of sublanguages, offshoots and rework. The Idea of being able to use multiple languages in a single application(dot net) is very interesting to me in that each programmer can stick with his/her own skill set and still be a part of an overall team effort. Over time i think dot net will fail, but a new system that will run cross platform and multilingual will emerge. the "core" platform must be extensible and the most likely language it will be written in is c.

if it is to be it's up to me

 

[Dimandja]

infinitelo,

I too like Visual Studio. But, once enough people write applications with it, it will be difficult for it to die. But, that said, you never know with Microsoft's patches and new releases.

Newer and greater systems will always emerge. They do all the time. Most of them don't catch on though. These days, it takes big financial muscles to shove a new system down people's throat - ask Microsoft.

As for C being the language, it all depends on the following factors. If you are writing for a PC system (or generic computer system), then C is Ok. If you are writing for anything more specific or larger than a PC, a language native to the machine is usually preferred so as to take full advantage of the architecture.

 

[CajunCenturion]

In the short term, I think we will continue to see more and more specialized languages at least at the higher levels. At low levels, which itself will become a speciality primarily for the purpose of developing the high level tools for the masses, we're going see a new language that will truly be platform agnostic from the simplest of PCs up the line through the super-computers.

For the long term, I'm not sure that talking about the "language of the future" is going in the right direction. I think that we are going to see major changes in the way in which we interface with computers, and "computer langugage", at least as we use the term today, will no longer be applicable. I don't think we know quite yet just how we will interface with the machine to do programming in the future.

Good Luck
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