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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."
I have developed a large system that deals with end-to-end running of a large supplier of outdoor leather goods. Including B2B transactions, custom querying, post-sales tracking.
Most of the system is written in Java, with a good deal of Python code on the back end. The front-ends are fully Java/Swing based, and run comfortably on a P3-500 with 256MB of RAM. The back-end is mostly written in Java, but retains some Python code (the project started out as a web-based app for post-sales/customer relations management).
Add to this the quick deployment time of the Java language, the extremely easy portability (compared to some other languages), and the ease-of-use, and you can see why Java is a good choice for scalable business applications. The stuff we have managed to add to this program is amazing, I'll wager that our system has more features than any single commercial solution. There is definitely something to be said for in-house development.
We hang the petty thieves, but appoint the great ones to public office. - Aesop
Haha, I would have started the article similarly.
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 elephants, that zoning laws will be relaxed to allow buildings to build to China, that beaches will be sunny all the time, and that women will all be trained in karma sutra.
What an idiot, the article starts wrong and goes downhill from there.
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
All those people were proclaiming how all the Iraqi people would rise up to defend their country and this would be a long bloddy conflict...
The reality of it has been that people have been celebrating the arrival of the American and British forces...
So, they start predicting their next major set of dire consequences...
"The Iraqi people will very soon start turning against the US and British forces, since they won't be seen as liberators, but instead occupying forces...."
That's a pretty dire prediction...
I like to look on the lighter side though...
I believe that the Iraqi people, like most people, simply want to be able to freely determine how they will live their own lives. If this means that they will have to deal with a short-term, up to a year or two, of protective forces of the US and Britain assisting in keeping the peace, then they will accept that willingly.
Of course, if the war opening speech of President Bush is proven to be a lie and that the US went over there not to give Iraqi resources and freedom to the Iraqi people, but to create a colonial government with all the profits going to the US, well... Then they will start fighting the US.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
2. You're positive of this? How do you know? Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Maybe now we'll find out. We certainly weren't going to find out while the UN conducted its searches.
3. In a way, you could say that we already have. What might happen to neighboring countries if Iraq develops itself as a productive, democratic society (with something resembling unrestricted media?)
I sometimes wonder if some of the vocal critics of this war are just utterly removed from reality. Or perhaps it's me, and I'm being snowed by a huge conspiracy of every American and British media organization (who must be very good at coordinating their "lies"?)
How do people ignore the long list of reports from exiled Iraqis and other sources about the horrid crimes the regime has committed against even its own people? Maybe you think it's their problem, and they should overthrow their own government without our help. It's probably pretty difficult to do that when you're not allowed to assemble to even plan such a futile action.
Here in the US we're free to assemble and to say negative things about our leaders. In many countries it's just not allowed. In many countries, former Iraq especially, even being suspected of saying negative things about the government could lead to death or worse.
I could go on, but from my experiences with people like you in the past, I know it would be pointless. I'd just hear some irrational, emotional response. Certainly I'd never get an answer to a simple, direct question.
.sigs are for post^Hers.