What are the Next Programming Models?

jg21 writes "In this opinion piece, Simeon Simeonov contemplates what truly new programming models have emerged recently, and nominates two: RIAs and what he calls 'composite applications' (i.e. using Java, .NET or any other programming language). He notes that Microsoft will be trying to achieve RIAs in Avalon, but that it's late out of the gate. He also cites David Heinemeier Hansson's Ruby on Rails project as showing great promise. 'As both a technologist and an investor I'm excited about the future,' Simeonov concludes. It's a thoughtful piece, infectious in its quiet enthusiasm. But what new models are missing from his essay?"

Comments

funny AND interesting, but yeah FP...

[MarkEst1973]

Paul Graham has written extensively on how languages are becoming more and more like one from yesteryear: LISP.

See Beating the averages for a well-written and thoughtful essay.

In a nutshell, languages themselves vary in power. No one disputes that. All things being equal, you should generally choose the most powerful language you can all the time. As we move more and more to server-hosted software, your choice of language is incredibly important because a) it's your choice, not forced on your by being the language of the OS and b) it can be a huge competitive advantage.

Matz (Ruby's creator) acknowledges ripping off ideas from Lisp (but putting a friendlier face to it). Python is Lispy. Javascript has been called Lisp in C's clothing. These are all functional languages, or can be used functionally.

Graham noted how all languages are trending more towards Lisp in terms of features (see the essay linked above). Want further proof? C# 2.0 is getting lexical closures. Innovation from Microsoft! These were available in Lisp for 30 years, javascript for 10 (since it was created), they're in Perl 5, Ruby, I can go on...

If languages continue to become higher and higher level, wouldn't we need to investigate this weird AI language from 1958 and see what features it doesn't have in order to do more meaningful research? 'cause these days, all the "new" features of today's languages are decades old...

Functional Programming: Haskell

[Paul Johnson]

See Haskell.

Functional programming greatly simplifies the task of the programmer by removing execution order from the things that programmers have to keep track of. Just as garbage collection in Java got rid of the need to recycle memory manually, so in Haskell the execution order is a matter for the compiler to optimise rather than for the programmer to worry about.

Historically functional programming has had problems doing IO: languages have had to admit impure side effects to do IO. Haskell has a wonderful solution to this problem, which unfortunately this post is too small to contain (really: go see!).

Paul.

Re:Afraid of parenthesis? Stay away from XML!

[mrchaotica]

Here's why. Take this LISP code example:

)

Now tell me what it means. Specifically, tell me what expression it ends.

In contrast, take this XML example:

</p>

Now tell me what expression it ends. See how much easier it is?

See, that's the difference: In XML, the angle brackets aren't units really units of syntax in and of themselves; tags as a whole are. Moreover, in XML these units of syntax are self-discribing. Also, angle brackets are never nested; they always occur in "" pairs without any more brackets between them.