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>To me modern programming is more the wider adoption of concepts borrowed from languages like Haskell: like pattern matching and safer null checks (like Maybe o
by Volt 9y ago
>To me modern programming is more the wider adoption of concepts borrowed from languages like Haskell: like pattern matching and safer null checks (like Maybe or Option types). It also includes easy to use coroutines or a good concurrency story. Programming with new languages comes with more compile time checking and linting, less chances to make simple stupid typo-like errors that take hours to debug.
How old are these concepts? When I read this, it reads more like, "things I was unfamiliar with before, but I've heard of recently".
- closeparen 9y agoSometimes it takes a long time for good ideas to percolate from academia/research to the day-to-day practice of the craft.
- coldtea 9y ago>How old are these concepts? When I read this, it reads more like, "things I was unfamiliar with before, but I've heard of recently". Well, the age of a concept doesn't matter much. What makes it old or modern is not the history of its invention or early years, but when it's popularized.
- z1mm32m4n 9y agoOne thing that came up often in my PL theory classes: "cutting edge" features of popular programming languages lag cutting edge features of research languages by about 30 years. The interesting consequence is: if you want to look for The Next Big Thing in programming languages, just go back 20 years!