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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.

7 of 309 comments (clear)

  1. Re:No, we don't by mwvdlee · · Score: 5, Funny

    There are far too many choices now.

    JavaScript and VBScript.
    I agree there is atleast one choice too many.

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  2. The good thing about standards... by menkhaura · · Score: 5, Funny

    The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.

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  3. Re:Why? by putaro · · Score: 5, Informative

    Those do exist, for example Google Web Toolkit (GWT) which spits out Javascript and HTML from Java code that you write and manages the communications between the Javascript in the web page and the Java code running on the server. There are difficulties, though, because Javascript and HTML are really kind of sucky for running GUIs and it takes tweaking to get everything looking good in every browser.

    Personally, I think that running complex applications inside the browser is just plain stupid but it keeps on getting pushed at us.

  4. Oblig. xkcd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    http://xkcd.com/927/

  5. Re:Translation by NatasRevol · · Score: 5, Funny

    It should be called the Tower of Babbage.

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  6. 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.

  7. 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.