My main fun language nowadays is Scheme, an IEEE standard and started in 1975. I see it learning a lot from Python — the first language I really liked.
The main evolution I see is Rust, which enabled faster implementations of , but I did not play with it, yet.
I see people do interesting things with Go, but I also begin to see articles about "what Go did wrong". And Python is showing its cracks as it is pushed into more domains. And I expect many of the new languages to show cracks, too, because it is much easier to build an elegant language when you don’t want to support all domains, but once you get big, many people will either push you into those domains or abandon you for other languages which they can use everywhere.
At work I now use Java, and it’s not that bad — but it got a lot better in the past 10 years. Though I found features people wish for that are already supported in Fortran.
And in tooling I see a lot of build tools which fail at delivering what autotools already does.
The main gripe I have with this is that we as a community are investing much more into trying cool new halfbaked things than understanding what already exists.
I still have a Common Lisp book at home though I forgot most of it. I used to play with SBCL on Ubuntu Linux.
I agree that the more domains you tend to cover the shorter the blanket is for some of them. Basically every domain has more specialized languages than the general purpose one but the power of the "good enough" is not to be underestimated, especially when it's now quite easy to have apps written with multiple languages (through embedding, FFI or client-server architectures). Let's also not underestimate the fact it can be hard finding actual developers for this or that technology (well, you can train them...)
My two cents of Java: I don't know, on the surface it seems like Java has been given a second life thanks to Android, on the long term I see it being abandoned there, though the JVM is a super solid technology and it will survive "forever and ever". I don't really follow the Java enterprise world (or what it's called now, I'm never sure) so mine it's an entirely superficial opinion, I will admit it.
The main gripe I have with this is that we as a community are investing much more into trying cool new halfbaked things than understanding what already exists.
Thank you for your answer! I share some worries about Java, mainly due to the breaking changes in Java 9+. But it’s what currently pays the bills, and it is much better than I had remembered from around 2004 ☺
Well, it's all fault of the millenials ahhahaha
I wish I could say that, but I used to do the same. And at some point I learned. I went from cmake over scons and waf and python build tools, until I finally settled on autotools, because all the rest turned out to be worse on the long term.
Maybe it’s more related to the massive growth of programming as a job, so organic information flow does not suffice, and those who advertise their tools a lot reach many people who don’t know the old (and free) tools.
And they build the tools you need.
I recently found the saying: "a million flies might be wrong, but they create the one-thousand tools you need".
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My main fun language nowadays is Scheme, an IEEE standard and started in 1975. I see it learning a lot from Python — the first language I really liked.
The main evolution I see is Rust, which enabled faster implementations of , but I did not play with it, yet.
I see people do interesting things with Go, but I also begin to see articles about "what Go did wrong". And Python is showing its cracks as it is pushed into more domains. And I expect many of the new languages to show cracks, too, because it is much easier to build an elegant language when you don’t want to support all domains, but once you get big, many people will either push you into those domains or abandon you for other languages which they can use everywhere.
At work I now use Java, and it’s not that bad — but it got a lot better in the past 10 years. Though I found features people wish for that are already supported in Fortran.
And in tooling I see a lot of build tools which fail at delivering what autotools already does.
The main gripe I have with this is that we as a community are investing much more into trying cool new halfbaked things than understanding what already exists.
Hi Arne, you brought up so many memories.
I still have a Common Lisp book at home though I forgot most of it. I used to play with SBCL on Ubuntu Linux.
I agree that the more domains you tend to cover the shorter the blanket is for some of them. Basically every domain has more specialized languages than the general purpose one but the power of the "good enough" is not to be underestimated, especially when it's now quite easy to have apps written with multiple languages (through embedding, FFI or client-server architectures). Let's also not underestimate the fact it can be hard finding actual developers for this or that technology (well, you can train them...)
My two cents of Java: I don't know, on the surface it seems like Java has been given a second life thanks to Android, on the long term I see it being abandoned there, though the JVM is a super solid technology and it will survive "forever and ever". I don't really follow the Java enterprise world (or what it's called now, I'm never sure) so mine it's an entirely superficial opinion, I will admit it.
Well, it's all fault of the millenials ahhahaha
Thank you for your answer! I share some worries about Java, mainly due to the breaking changes in Java 9+. But it’s what currently pays the bills, and it is much better than I had remembered from around 2004 ☺
I wish I could say that, but I used to do the same. And at some point I learned. I went from cmake over scons and waf and python build tools, until I finally settled on autotools, because all the rest turned out to be worse on the long term.
Maybe it’s more related to the massive growth of programming as a job, so organic information flow does not suffice, and those who advertise their tools a lot reach many people who don’t know the old (and free) tools.
And they build the tools you need.
I recently found the saying: "a million flies might be wrong, but they create the one-thousand tools you need".