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> And the programming landscape fragments further... This process is called evolution. There are only the two options when trying out new things: You fragment

> And the programming landscape fragments further... This process is called evolution. There are only the two options when trying out new things: You fragment your language, or the language landscape. Most languages don't want to have incompatible versions so as a result new languages get created during the evolution process.

sseagull 4y ago
While true, I feel the pace of evolution is too fast at the moment. I am involved in scientific programming, and it's getting kind of crazy. This is a domain where programming is purely utilitarian, and what you are programming is more important. Unfortunately, new languages are driven by people who love programming for the sake of programming, and are often employed in big corporations that can absorb the financial cost of ecosystem duplication and fragmentation. The time scientists spend on 'infrastructure' is increasing, and I'm not sure that's always a good thing. (Some is good, of course).
- carlmr 4y ago
  >I am involved in scientific programming, and it's getting kind of crazy. This is a domain where programming is purely utilitarian, and what you are programming is more important. In my experience this leads to a lot of bad programming by people who only care about the utilitarian aspect, not about maintainability, user experience or failure modes. Scientific programming would benefit the most from a stricter language that catches errors early on. Especially because most of the participants are usually not software engineers that have some semblance of a chance to catch errors in C++. Even they make a lot of mistakes.
blub 4y ago
In evolution, most branches are dead-ends (just like in programming languages). Carbon for example is by design an evolutionary dead-end designed to solve some problems for Google. They’re trying to sell it as a generic tool, but knowing Google’s track record it’s hard to say how many will bite.
- still_grokking 4y ago
  > Carbon for example is by design an evolutionary dead-end designed to solve some problems for Google. I would concur. This shows actually nicely that the analogy to biological evolution matches well. Google is building some kind of cave fish. Biology did also such things when they were right for a given ecosystem niche.

sseagull 4y ago

While true, I feel the pace of evolution is too fast at the moment. I am involved in scientific programming, and it's getting kind of crazy. This is a domain where programming is purely utilitarian, and what you are programming is more important. Unfortunately, new languages are driven by people who love programming for the sake of programming, and are often employed in big corporations that can absorb the financial cost of ecosystem duplication and fragmentation. The time scientists spend on 'infrastructure' is increasing, and I'm not sure that's always a good thing. (Some is good, of course).

carlmr 4y ago
>I am involved in scientific programming, and it's getting kind of crazy. This is a domain where programming is purely utilitarian, and what you are programming is more important. In my experience this leads to a lot of bad programming by people who only care about the utilitarian aspect, not about maintainability, user experience or failure modes. Scientific programming would benefit the most from a stricter language that catches errors early on. Especially because most of the participants are usually not software engineers that have some semblance of a chance to catch errors in C++. Even they make a lot of mistakes.

blub 4y ago

In evolution, most branches are dead-ends (just like in programming languages). Carbon for example is by design an evolutionary dead-end designed to solve some problems for Google. They’re trying to sell it as a generic tool, but knowing Google’s track record it’s hard to say how many will bite.

still_grokking 4y ago
> Carbon for example is by design an evolutionary dead-end designed to solve some problems for Google. I would concur. This shows actually nicely that the analogy to biological evolution matches well. Google is building some kind of cave fish. Biology did also such things when they were right for a given ecosystem niche.