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Google Engineer: We Need More Web Programming Languages

Posted by timothy on from the ok-make-it-a-1001-flowers dept.

itwbennett (1594911) writes Web applications may one day surpass desktop applications in function and usability — if developers have more programming languages to choose from, according to a Google engineer. 'The Web is always available, except when it is not,' said Gilad Bracha, software engineer at Google and one of the authors of Google Dart, speaking to an audience of programmers Wednesday at the QCon developer conference in New York. 'It isn't always available in a way that you can always rely on it. You may have a network that is slow or flaky or someone may want to charge you.' Therefore any Web programming language, and its associated ecosystem, must have some way of storing a program for offline use, Bracha said. The Web programming language of the future must also make it easier for the programmer to build and test applications.

3 of 309 comments (clear)

  1. Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    any Web programming language, and its associated ecosystem, must have some way of storing a program for offline use

    So what's the point of this being a "Web" language? Why not just keep downloading apps like we always have?

    1. Re:Why? by jythie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because developing new languages and ecosystems is fun, sexy, and gets you attention. Working in old fuddy languages with rich existing support requires reading books and bowing to other people who have already figured problems out. Bad for the ego.

  2. Re:Or maybe... by BasilBrush · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm a old fogey. And I welcome new programming languages. Because the existing ones suck so much.

    When do you suggest we should have stopped? With COBOL as the major language? or C? With PHP as the major web language? With PERL is the major scripting language?

    Bring forth every language anyone wishes to invent, and let the good ones rise to the top.

    Software quality is a different issue. And most of it is in unrelated to language. But on the language side, new languages can help. Take Swift vs Objective-C. Many or most fatal bugs and security vulnerabilities with C languages revolve around stray pointers, exceeding bounds, and omitting breaks in case statements or braces around if blocks. These are simply not possible in the new language. And thus software quality will be improved.