The Hundred-Year Language

dtolton writes "Paul Graham has a new article called "The Hundred-Year Language" posted. The article is about the programming languages of the future and what form they may take. He makes some interesting predictions about the rate of change we might expect in programming languages over the next 100 years. He also makes some persuasive points about the possible design and construction of those languages. The article is definitely worth a read for those interested in programming languages."

Comments

nutty article

[selderrr]

The article starts with It's hard to predict what life will be like in a hundred years. There are only a few things we can say with certainty. We know that everyone will drive flying cars, that zoning laws will be relaxed to allow buildings hundreds of stories tall, that it will be dark most of the time, and that women will all be trained in the martial arts.

doh ? I'm not a visionary, but any article starting with such predictions loses quite some credibility.

The end of the article is kinda silly too : When you see these ideas laid out like that, it's hard not to think, why not try writing the hundred-year language now?

Yes indeed mister know-it-all : why not ?

The summary of his article is : future languages are gonna be way kewl, l33t and 5hit. They're gonna be dead simple, and anyone will be able to write them. If given to us now, we'd be able to use them right away. The stupid languages (read : every language that exists today) will die and this new thingie will rise and save our butts.

Basicallly, he's repeating what managers & analysts are saying since ENIAC. And as those 2 groups, he has no solution, no roadmap, no ideas, no nuthin. You know what ? When I read such shit, I feel all warm & fuzzy, comforted knowing that I'm gonna keep on coding C for a long time to come.