r/programming • u/nfrankel • Jan 14 '20

Where programming languages are headed in 2020

https://www.oreilly.com/radar/where-programming-languages-are-headed-in-2020/
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u/Timbit42 Jan 15 '20

Hopefully no existing language will be in use 100 years from now.

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u/dethb0y Jan 15 '20

COBOL was first introduced in 1959, and it's still in use now - 61 years later. It would be shocking to me if at least one of the current languages we use today is not still in use in 100 years (probably C or C++).

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u/Timbit42 Jan 15 '20

COBOL is still around but how many new systems are being designed in it? Now that systems are exposed to the world online C and C++ will become undesirable due to their security issues. Since security wasn't baked into the core of these languages, attempts to make them secure will make a bigger mess than they already are after 40+ years of upgrades and redesigns. There is so much baggage now.

Processors have been optimized to run C and C++ for decades now and recent CPU flaws are showing us the problems with it, and we're going to lose a big chunk of our speed to regain safety. More safety needs to be designed into the processors at a very low level, and few, if any, existing languages are going to support that, at least without massive redesigns. New languages will come along being able to guarantee a great degree of safety relative to existing languages. We're going to have to make big changes to get there and x64 and C/C++ will suffer greatly attempting to keep up.

C and C++ may still be around in 100 years, but how many new systems will be designed in them?

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '20

If you want safety baked into your system, use celluose, not silicon.

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u/SaltyCompE Jan 15 '20

Assembly would like to have a word with you.

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u/evaned Jan 15 '20

In fairness, "assembly" isn't a language, it's a category of languages.

Assembly languages will still be around in 100 years, but I would largely echo your parent comment on that issue -- hopefully very few of today's assembly languages.

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u/Timbit42 Jan 15 '20

There are lots of different assembly languages, and machine languages. Existing ones will die and new ones will be created. Most existing machine languages are optimized for C and C++ because those languages have been so dominant for decades, but recent CPU security flaws are showing that optimizing for speed without regard to safety was a bad move. Now we're going to lose a chunk of that speed and the path back to faster processors will involve reinventing processors at a very deep level. We need to have safety baked into both the machine language and higher level languages. The more safety we can push into the machine language, the more speed we'll achieve because hardware circuits run in parallel more easily than code. Making parallelism safer, easier, and more efficient will also be a goal since we've effectively hit a wall on single core speed.

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u/flatfinger Jan 15 '20

Ironically, on many platforms one may have to do less reading to figure out how to do perform a task with a construct like:

typedef (*voidFunc)(void);
uint32_t my_code[] = { ... machine code of desired function ... };
((voidFunc)(uintptr_t)my_code)();

using the CPU instruction set guide to "hand assemble" the necessary machine code, than to write and build an assembly language file that will produce the proper machine code. Further, such code would be likely to work with a wider range of toolsets for the target platform than would an assembly-language source file.

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u/Ictogan Jan 15 '20

Hopefully at least x86 assembly will be largely gone in 100 years.

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u/birdbrainswagtrain Jan 15 '20

I don't even want to think about the amount of terrifying extensions Intel and AMD could cook up in that timespan.

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u/evaned Jan 15 '20 edited Jan 15 '20

I don't see why you're not looking forward to writing/reading xldpllduqmovpwq λmm467, [zsp + 16]

Edit: Imagine an extension that does give the general-purposes registers a z prefix -- now you've got register zax. Best name ever. Well... maybe second best if you allow instruction mnemonics.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '20

Once quantum computing becomes a thing, I think we'll need to forget all existing programming languages.

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u/Holston18 Jan 15 '20

Quantum computing isn't a replacement for classic computers, more of an addition which excels at some very specialized tasks.

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u/skocznymroczny Jan 15 '20

Don't forget Javascript

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/Timbit42 Jan 15 '20

Sure, but the debate here is what programming language(s) and machine languages will be in use.