Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Stephen Wolfram Developing New Programming Language

Posted by samzenpus on from the lets-try-this dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Stephen Wolfram, the chief designer of the Mathematica software platform and the Wolfram Alpha 'computation knowledge engine,' has another massive project in the works—although he's remaining somewhat vague about details for the time being. In simplest terms, the project is a new programming language—which he's dubbing the 'Wolfram Language'—which will allow developers and software engineers to program a wide variety of complex functions in a streamlined fashion, for pretty much every single type of hardware from PCs and smartphones all the way up to datacenters and embedded systems. The Language will leverage automation to cut out much of the nitpicking complexity that dominates current programming. 'The Wolfram Language does things automatically whenever you want it to,' he wrote in a recent blog posting. 'Whether it's selecting an optimal algorithm for something. Or picking the most aesthetic layout. Or parallelizing a computation efficiently. Or figuring out the semantic meaning of a piece of data. Or, for that matter, predicting what you might want to do next. Or understanding input you've given in natural language.' In other words, he's proposing a general-purpose programming language with a mind-boggling amount of functions built right in. At this year's SXSW, Wolfram alluded to his decades of work coming together in 'a very nice way,' and this is clearly what he meant. And while it's tempting to dismiss anyone who makes sweeping statements about radically changing the existing paradigm, he does have a record of launching very big projects (Wolfram Alpha contains more than 10 trillion pieces of data cultivated from primary sources, along with tens of thousands of algorithms and equations) that function reliably. At many points over the past few years, he's also expressed a belief that simple equations and programming can converge to create and support enormously complicated systems. Combine all those factors together, and it's clear that Wolfram's pronouncements—no matter how grandiose—can't simply be dismissed. But it remains to be seen how much of an impact he actually has on programming as an art and science."

4 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Well... by AdamColley · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Hrm, another programming language...

    Attempts have been made in the past to automate programming, it's never worked very well (or at all in some cases)

    Still, look forward to seeing it, perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised.

    1. Re:Well... by plover · · Score: 5, Insightful

      People seem to think that the problems with programming come from the languages. They're too weakly-typed, too strongly-typed, they use funny symbols, they don't have enough parenthesis, they use significant white space.

      The biggest problems aren't coming from the languages. The problems come from managing the dependencies.

      Everything needs to change state to do useful work. But each state has all these dependencies on prior states, and is itself often setting up to perform yet another task. Non-programmers even have a cute phrase for it: "getting your ducks in a row" is an expression meaning that if you get everything taken care of in advance, your task will be successful.

      Ever notice that on a poorly done task that it's so much easier to throw away the prior work and start over? That's because you've solved the hard part: you learned through experience what things need to be placed in which order, which was the root of the hard problem in the first place. When you redo it, you naturally organize the dependencies in their proper order, and the task becomes easy.

      What a good language has to do is encapsulate and manage these relationships between dependencies. It might be something like a cross between a PERT chart, a sequence diagram, a state chart, and a timeline. Better, the environment should understand the dependencies of every component to the maximum degree possible, and prevent you from assembling them in an unsuccessful order.

      Get the language to that level, and we won't even need the awkward syntax of "computer, tea, Earl Grey, hot."

      --
      John
  2. His next project is interesting by paiute · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wolfram announced his latest idea - that there needed to be some kind of pliable material available next to toilets with which to clean one's bum. This material, he said, is going to be really soft, probably a couple of layers thick, and needed to be on some kind of continuous dispenser mechanism which he is developing.

    --
    If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
  3. Oh boy. by korbulon · · Score: 5, Funny

    First a new kind of SCIENCE, now a new kind of PROGRAMMING.

    Can't wait for a new kind of LOVE.