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> and will keep doing so until the cost of developing and maintaining software or AI has dropped to zero. I have no idea about the progress of AI, but normal s

> and will keep doing so until the cost of developing and maintaining software or AI has dropped to zero. I have no idea about the progress of AI, but normal software will get an order of magnitude cheaper to develop as we slowly wake up from the Unix/worse-is-better/everything-is-text mindset and abandon the dynamically typed and imperative languages, broken systems abstractions, etc. that hold us back.

cm2187 9y ago
I think it's a more fundamental problem than the choice of languages (though I share your griefs!). To the vast majority of the educated population, software is very much a black art and people would have no idea of how to do even the most basic things. That's of course true for more senior people, but I find that it is as true for the generation who graduates today. They can do incredible things with their smartphone that I didn't suspect was possible, but wouldn't know where to start to code something. Until this skill gap changes dramatically, and that everyone gets out of high school with basic knowledge in programming, like they have basic knowledge of maths, biology, physics or history, this gap will never close.
eli_gottlieb 9y ago
May God will it that the heathens should see the light and come to Haskell ;-).
emodendroket 9y ago
I'm not holding my breath for that development
sadlion 9y ago
I sincerely would like to know what you think the alternatives are?
- goatlover 9y ago
  Sounds something like Haskell with a Smalltalk environment. Functional, statically typed with powerful type extensions, but with an image instead of text files that you modify. From just using Jupyter Notebooks, I can see the appeal of working with a live environment, and it's just a fancy REPL, not a full Lisp or Smalltalk environment.
  - cm2187 9y ago
    If it has to be a general public language, I'm afraid it will have to be light on special characters and abbreviations or acronyms that made sense 30 years ago. I'd say a Basic or Python-like language, but modernised, and with strong typing to enable the IDE to help a lot the users with auto-completion and error checking. But if you think about it, most business users are even intimidated by VBA. So it will have to be very fluffy, and I don't think you can spare the mandatory coding 101 teaching at school.
  - bpicolo 9y ago
    Programming is describing a solution space, and we describe things with words. I don't see how anything but text/speech would map to that aspect of programming.

cm2187 9y ago

I think it's a more fundamental problem than the choice of languages (though I share your griefs!). To the vast majority of the educated population, software is very much a black art and people would have no idea of how to do even the most basic things. That's of course true for more senior people, but I find that it is as true for the generation who graduates today. They can do incredible things with their smartphone that I didn't suspect was possible, but wouldn't know where to start to code something. Until this skill gap changes dramatically, and that everyone gets out of high school with basic knowledge in programming, like they have basic knowledge of maths, biology, physics or history, this gap will never close.

eli_gottlieb 9y ago

May God will it that the heathens should see the light and come to Haskell ;-).

emodendroket 9y ago

I'm not holding my breath for that development

sadlion 9y ago

I sincerely would like to know what you think the alternatives are?

goatlover 9y ago
Sounds something like Haskell with a Smalltalk environment. Functional, statically typed with powerful type extensions, but with an image instead of text files that you modify. From just using Jupyter Notebooks, I can see the appeal of working with a live environment, and it's just a fancy REPL, not a full Lisp or Smalltalk environment.
- cm2187 9y ago
  If it has to be a general public language, I'm afraid it will have to be light on special characters and abbreviations or acronyms that made sense 30 years ago. I'd say a Basic or Python-like language, but modernised, and with strong typing to enable the IDE to help a lot the users with auto-completion and error checking. But if you think about it, most business users are even intimidated by VBA. So it will have to be very fluffy, and I don't think you can spare the mandatory coding 101 teaching at school.
- bpicolo 9y ago
  Programming is describing a solution space, and we describe things with words. I don't see how anything but text/speech would map to that aspect of programming.