5 ms·

Most new things suck. But every now & then something new AND cool comes along, making all of the old stuff less relevant. For me, Elixir was yet another langu

Most new things suck. But every now & then something new AND cool comes along, making all of the old stuff less relevant. For me, Elixir was yet another language to learn, and was just a reimplementation of another language. But when I used it, I was like "whoa, this is sweet!" You gotta build something new when you can't find something old that does what you wanna do.

pron 8y ago
My point has nothing at all to do with what sucks and what's cool, but with the fact that transitioning to new languages does have a non-trivial cost, for individual organizations as well as to the industry as a whole. Moreover, productivity gains from new languages seem to have plateaued a couple of decades ago (except from some niches, such as system programming, that have seen little change in the past 20-30 years). I.e., we no longer see the same productivity boosts as we did going from Assembly -> FORTRAN, from FORTRAN -> C, or from C -> Java (and even then, the gains were smaller with each jump). Fred Brooks predicted in the '80s this would happen, and reality has shown even smaller gains than he had predicted. Part of the reason for the growing fragmentation is precisely because no language has stood out as a clear leader.
- burntsushi 8y ago
  > but with the fact that transitioning to new languages does have a non-trivial cost But this is completely uninteresting. Nobody has claimed that transitioning to a new programming languages doesn't have a non-trivial cost. You're countering a non-existent argument. I mentioned this in my initial reply to you: you're debating a point that is easy to refute. I don't know why, or where the source of confusion is, but you are. > Moreover, productivity gains from new languages seem to have plateaued a couple of decades ago (except from some niches, such as system programming, that have seen little change in the past 20-30 years). I.e., we no longer see the same productivity boosts as we did going from Assembly -> FORTRAN, from FORTRAN -> C, or from C -> Java (and even then, the gains were smaller with each jump). Fred Brooks predicted in the '80s this would happen, and reality has shown even smaller gains than he had predicted. This just sounds like a lot of opinion expressed as if it were a fact.
  - hyperpape 8y ago
    > This just sounds like a lot of opinion expressed as if it were a fact It's arguably overstated, but I'm curious if you would argue that there are languages created in the past 15 years that create as big of a productivity boost as Assembly -> C or C -> something with a GC?
    - burntsushi 8y ago
      I would not argue that, no. I could relate my own personal experiences over the last 15 years, but they wouldn't generalize and might not even be coherent themselves (because I am human and therefore haven't remained immutable).
  - pron 8y ago
    > Nobody has claimed that transitioning to a new programming languages doesn't have a non-trivial cost. I was replying to the argument that the work is not at the expense of anything else because it wouldn't happen otherwise. > This just sounds like a lot of opinion expressed as if it were a fact. I think it's pretty well supported. The cost of developing software from scratch has not decreased significantly since ~2000 (there have been gains due to the availability of lots of open source libraries). In the mid eighties, Brooks claimed that no single language improvement would give us a 10x productivity gain over a single decade. While at the time his prediction was seen as overly pessimistic, it's been three decadades and we still haven't gained a 10x boost with all improvements combined (barring, maybe, the availability of open source libraries, which has nothing to do with language improvements). You can see clearly that companies are not migrating en-masse to some new language (as they did with assembly->C or C->Java/C#). Instead, many languages are being used, none so far seems to have a definitive advantage that encourages the majority of the industry to migrate. You do see plenty of claims, but no major bottom-line impact that causes decision-makers to say, "we must use that!" as was the case with previous generations, where, BTW, significant advantages became apparent quite quickly.

pron 8y ago

My point has nothing at all to do with what sucks and what's cool, but with the fact that transitioning to new languages does have a non-trivial cost, for individual organizations as well as to the industry as a whole. Moreover, productivity gains from new languages seem to have plateaued a couple of decades ago (except from some niches, such as system programming, that have seen little change in the past 20-30 years). I.e., we no longer see the same productivity boosts as we did going from Assembly -> FORTRAN, from FORTRAN -> C, or from C -> Java (and even then, the gains were smaller with each jump). Fred Brooks predicted in the '80s this would happen, and reality has shown even smaller gains than he had predicted. Part of the reason for the growing fragmentation is precisely because no language has stood out as a clear leader.

burntsushi 8y ago
> but with the fact that transitioning to new languages does have a non-trivial cost But this is completely uninteresting. Nobody has claimed that transitioning to a new programming languages doesn't have a non-trivial cost. You're countering a non-existent argument. I mentioned this in my initial reply to you: you're debating a point that is easy to refute. I don't know why, or where the source of confusion is, but you are. > Moreover, productivity gains from new languages seem to have plateaued a couple of decades ago (except from some niches, such as system programming, that have seen little change in the past 20-30 years). I.e., we no longer see the same productivity boosts as we did going from Assembly -> FORTRAN, from FORTRAN -> C, or from C -> Java (and even then, the gains were smaller with each jump). Fred Brooks predicted in the '80s this would happen, and reality has shown even smaller gains than he had predicted. This just sounds like a lot of opinion expressed as if it were a fact.
- hyperpape 8y ago
  > This just sounds like a lot of opinion expressed as if it were a fact It's arguably overstated, but I'm curious if you would argue that there are languages created in the past 15 years that create as big of a productivity boost as Assembly -> C or C -> something with a GC?
  - burntsushi 8y ago
    I would not argue that, no. I could relate my own personal experiences over the last 15 years, but they wouldn't generalize and might not even be coherent themselves (because I am human and therefore haven't remained immutable).
- pron 8y ago
  > Nobody has claimed that transitioning to a new programming languages doesn't have a non-trivial cost. I was replying to the argument that the work is not at the expense of anything else because it wouldn't happen otherwise. > This just sounds like a lot of opinion expressed as if it were a fact. I think it's pretty well supported. The cost of developing software from scratch has not decreased significantly since ~2000 (there have been gains due to the availability of lots of open source libraries). In the mid eighties, Brooks claimed that no single language improvement would give us a 10x productivity gain over a single decade. While at the time his prediction was seen as overly pessimistic, it's been three decadades and we still haven't gained a 10x boost with all improvements combined (barring, maybe, the availability of open source libraries, which has nothing to do with language improvements). You can see clearly that companies are not migrating en-masse to some new language (as they did with assembly->C or C->Java/C#). Instead, many languages are being used, none so far seems to have a definitive advantage that encourages the majority of the industry to migrate. You do see plenty of claims, but no major bottom-line impact that causes decision-makers to say, "we must use that!" as was the case with previous generations, where, BTW, significant advantages became apparent quite quickly.