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The more powerful our languages get and more robust our programs written in them get (those go hand in hand), the easier it will be to compile languages from on

The more powerful our languages get and more robust our programs written in them get (those go hand in hand), the easier it will be to compile languages from one language to another without compromising code quality or legibility. I hope this will lead to a new golden age of programming and PL research where more software is not "trapped" in the language and era it is first developed, and we aren't constantly bouncing between the extremes of endlessly accumulating tech debt or naively rewriting.

firethief 7y ago
> The more powerful our languages get[...], the easier it will be to compile languages from one language to another I'm not sure about this. Don't languages get their power from restrictions and opinionatedness, that create a fundamental impedance mismatch between any languages that aren't redundant? You can do anything the processor can do in assembly, and the unstructured mass is about as powerful as muscle with no bone. But maybe I'm reading "powerful" too positively. As languages get kitchen-sinky, as JavaScript/C++/Java are with reckless abandon, it will be easier to use them as translation targets (and harder to reason about the results). But won't kitchen-sinky languages eventually give way to languages that haven't yet had time to tie themselves in knots, as C++ (which finished the kitchen and is now putting a second sink in the bathroom) is losing ground to Rust (which only just bolted on async), in an endless cycle of collapse and renewal?