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Look at the fragmentation in your comment above. It should start with math and formal verification (top down) rather than with the language (bottom up). Start

Look at the fragmentation in your comment above. It should start with math and formal verification (top down) rather than with the language (bottom up). Start here: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd10xx/EWD1036.PDF http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd10xx/EWD1036.PDF

yxhuvud 15y ago
The reason there is a lot of fragmentation is that there is a lot of different problems out there to solve. There are no pana cea that solves every problem at once. It should start with a problem and then formulating abstractions to make the problem easier to solve. Or in other words with defining a language and then see what properties it has. Starting with the verifications gives you very well defined properties, but it doesn't solve your problems because you will then optimize your language for the wrong thing.
Rusky 15y ago
I'm not sure what you're saying. Do you honestly expect every PL researcher to all work on the same magical super-language? No- they're going to work on the problem in their area of expertise and create/modify a language to show off their ideas. Then a language like Scala or Haskell or Clojure can come along and improve on them or combine them. Every field works this way. That's why there is more than one particle collider, more than one drug for each problem, more than one theory of particle physics, more than one programming language. Your link talks about radical change over gradual change in computer science. It seems to support the idea of creating new and dramatically programming languages. The idea that "small" changes have large effects discourages the gradual modification of existing paradigms and languages.
jerf 15y ago
You should read more of the links provided before just snarkily assuming that nobody in that set has a math background. To the contrary, it's hard to find people in that list who aren't coming at things from a formal angle. Also, trying to beat people doing real work about the ears with ancient Dijkstra quotes stopped being helpful about 30 years ago. He's not the ultimate authority on how a programming language should look in 2011. If you're so sure you've got a good bead on the problem, why don't you go solve it for us then?
naasking 15y ago
What do you think a formal language is if not mathematical? Researchers invent little languages to distill the problem to its simplest components so its solvable, and then they generalize to other domains, if possible. That's how math is done.

yxhuvud 15y ago

The reason there is a lot of fragmentation is that there is a lot of different problems out there to solve. There are no pana cea that solves every problem at once. It should start with a problem and then formulating abstractions to make the problem easier to solve. Or in other words with defining a language and then see what properties it has. Starting with the verifications gives you very well defined properties, but it doesn't solve your problems because you will then optimize your language for the wrong thing.

Rusky 15y ago

I'm not sure what you're saying. Do you honestly expect every PL researcher to all work on the same magical super-language? No- they're going to work on the problem in their area of expertise and create/modify a language to show off their ideas. Then a language like Scala or Haskell or Clojure can come along and improve on them or combine them. Every field works this way. That's why there is more than one particle collider, more than one drug for each problem, more than one theory of particle physics, more than one programming language. Your link talks about radical change over gradual change in computer science. It seems to support the idea of creating new and dramatically programming languages. The idea that "small" changes have large effects discourages the gradual modification of existing paradigms and languages.

jerf 15y ago

You should read more of the links provided before just snarkily assuming that nobody in that set has a math background. To the contrary, it's hard to find people in that list who aren't coming at things from a formal angle. Also, trying to beat people doing real work about the ears with ancient Dijkstra quotes stopped being helpful about 30 years ago. He's not the ultimate authority on how a programming language should look in 2011. If you're so sure you've got a good bead on the problem, why don't you go solve it for us then?

naasking 15y ago

What do you think a formal language is if not mathematical? Researchers invent little languages to distill the problem to its simplest components so its solvable, and then they generalize to other domains, if possible. That's how math is done.