I think we need more languages if only because I think we've barely started to explore the programming language design space – it's a very non-convex optimization problem. Sure, some languages are close to local optima, but you never know what's going to happen when you start combining things in new ways and find yourself in a totally new part of the space. Clojure, Go, Rust, Ceylon, Scala, Swift and lots of others are trying really new and innovative things, some of which are working out really nicely. People need to try these things if we're going have better tools.
On Fri, Dec 26, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Páll Haraldsson <pall.haralds...@gmail.com> wrote: > Note, I said "I know". You may know more languages. Wander what the top 3 > are (if Julia isn't top 1). > > Still, languages have died out (mostly) and I think we need fewer > languages, not more. > > I do not see a good reason for C++ any more (is the exception handling in > Julia as least as good as C++/Java?). Just my preference. I would also > think MATLAB is legacy (do not know APL..). With the endless > bufferoverflows and security issues in general, C should be replaced as > much as possible. Java isn't better in my view and just do not know C#. > Maybe not as verbose. > > Just do not know the pure functional languages really. Haskell is a > minority language, maybe I should know more, just hope Julia is at least > practically better. Do not really know Erlang, good for it's purpose, but > couldn't Julia do as well (at the language level). What are the > requirements really in that area? Just not convinced an obscure language > there is better. Hard-realtime, Julia may not work - for now. Since Java > can work there, Julia should to, but maybe something different is even > better there. I assume no changes needed at the language level just > improved GC, and it should be possible. Any reason why not? > > Julia might have some safety issues, but I'm not too worried. > > A little intrigued by Racket, but any (primarily) S-expression language, I > just will not get mainstream. > > -- > Palli. > > > On Friday, December 26, 2014 10:50:58 PM UTC, Spencer Russell wrote: >> >> On Friday, December 26, 2014 5:32:39 PM UTC-5, Páll Haraldsson wrote: >>> >>> >>> Maybe I should just put my blinders on, just not look at other languages >>> more. I'm pretty convinced all the others I know are obsolete (for new >>> code).. I just might be missing something with the newer languages. >>> >> >> Julia is wonderful and in my top 3 favorite languages to code in, but >> there's a lot to be learned from other languages. Also often different >> circumstances call for different tools. I'd hesitate to make claims like >> "all the others I know are obsolete" (I reserve that sort of hyperbole for >> clickbait Wired headlines). >> >
