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Why Apple, Google, and FB Have Their Own Programming Languages
An anonymous reader writes: Scott Rosenberg, author of Dreaming in Code dissects Apple's Swift, Google's Go, and other new languages — why they were created, what makes them different, and what they bring (or not) to programmers. "In very specific ways, both Go and Swift exemplify and embody the essences of the companies that built them: the server farm vs. the personal device; the open Web vs. the App Store; a cross-platform world vs. a company town. Of all the divides that distinguish programming languages—compiled or interpreted? static vs. dynamic variable typing? memory-managed/garbage-collected or not?—these might be the ones that matter most today."
If I give you an algorithm, throw a dart at a page of programming languages to select one and if you cannot implement that algorithm in that language then you are nothing but a code monkey.
A computer scientist can implement any algorithm in any language.
Why are these companies using their own languages?
Coder lockin. That is the only reason to have your own language.
Work a few years at XYZ company working on their proprietary algorithms in their ABC programming language?
Good luck getting another job.
See, they learned the hard way with their stuff in Javascript - common language and coders - uh, I mean Javascript engineers - left for greener pastures because so many other companies were using that language.