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Kirk is a software developer who has filled most roles on the software developer team. He is the author of Java Design: Objects, UML, and Process (Addison-Wesley, 2002) and he contributed to No Fluff Just Stuff 2006 Anthology (Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2006). His most recent book, Java Application Architecture: Modularity Patterns with Examples Using OSGi was published in 2012. Kirk is a DZone Zone Leader and has posted 77 posts at DZone. You can read more from them at their website. View Full User Profile

The Future of Programming Languages

04.15.2009
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In this session, recorded at JAOO Aarhus 2008, Anders Hejlsberg provides fascinating insight to the future of programming languages. He talks extensively about dynamic and static languages, imperative and declarative languages, functional programming, concurrency, and metaprogramming. The discussion provides ample code samples that exemplify the advantages of the different paradigms and styles of programming.

To conclude, he makes some interesting predictions on what the future of languages has in store. Dynamic languages will provide more static typing capabilities while statically type languages will become more dynamic with implicit typing and type inference. Compilers will become more like APIs and services that you can use in your programs to dynamically compile and create code. And multi-paradigm languages are definitely the future. He also predicts that in 25 years, languages will still be primarily text-based.

If you have a spare hour, this session is definitely time well spent. For more information on JAOO, visit the JAOO Conference website.
Published at DZone with permission of its author, Kirk Knoernschild.

Comments

Jeroen Wenting replied on Thu, 2009/04/16 - 12:16am

bleh, in a few years noone will have to write code any more. Business consultants will just model their requirements in some application and a fully working system will come out.
Sellers have been saying it for 20 years, so it must be true :)

Philippe Lhoste replied on Thu, 2009/04/16 - 4:45am in response to: Jeroen Wenting

Good comment! :-)

The nice thing is that there will be no maintenance cost (except to update the models/business logic) because there will be no more bugs: the computers can't make errors, eh?

Jeroen Wenting replied on Thu, 2009/04/16 - 6:15am

yup, and no more need for expensive and temperamental programmers. All you need is managers.

Thomas Nagel replied on Thu, 2009/04/16 - 8:52am

And Electricity is made within the Plug.

And Milk is brewed in a TetraPak.

modern fairy-tales ;)

 

 

Liam Knox replied on Thu, 2009/04/16 - 5:37pm

I like the comparison of HelloWorld, Turbo Pascal vs C#, and using the to argue on the evolution of languages. I suppose if you ignore all that advances in languages like OO, Interfaces , AOP etc, etc, i.e. the actual evolution, we havent some very far have we ?

I suppose my ZX81 is better than my laptop if you base it purely on one metric of portability...

If someone who is head of language developement is coming out with rationale like this, God help us :-(

Jeroen Wenting replied on Sat, 2009/04/18 - 1:06pm in response to: Thomas Nagel

modern fairy-tales ;)
Which sadly many people believe. Saw a blog entry the other day about a vegan protest against hunting where the vegans argued that if you insist on eating meat, at least get it at the supermarket so no animals get killed to make it.

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"Starting from scratch" is seductive but disease ridden
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