The Next Big Language

I am really hesitating to mention this but maybe the discussion could help find a solution.<p>The submitter clearly pasted the correct URL and got a link to the original submission (1311 days ago) but went ahead and added "?" to the end of the url to fool the dup filter and submitted again. It is not even a case of two different urls to the same dynamically generated page!<p>I don't want to rush to accusation of karma whoring because maybe there is a value in reposting old article that some people might have not seen ... But something feels sub-optimal!<p>Maybe an automatic "best of this week in HN" page that shows the highest rated stories from a few years back that people can casually check for older interesting articles?

Ahh... I think we all miss Big Stevey. He role was never replaced and it's a shame for our entire community.<p>I'm glad this was posted. It was written four years ago (Feb. 2007), and his quote is, "[The NBL] is going to arrive very soon (timeline: 18-24 months ...)" He later gave away that he was thinking the NBL was to be server-side Javascript. You have to hand it to him; that was a great guess, even if the timeline was off.

Perhaps there won't really be a Next Big Language. One thing that's become clear to me in the last few years since 2007 is that it's a hell of a lot easier to make an awesome programming language now than it was then. LLVM, CLR, Mono, JVM (specifically how it's changed to allow for dynamics and now it's changing to allow for traits and so on): all of these things let mere mortals make potentially awesome programming languages and immediately workable for production environments. All in a tiny fraction of the time that it would have taken a few years ago. The explosion of seriously awesome languages onto the scene in the last few years is evidence.<p>Will there ever again be a single language that captures as much of the mindshare as any of the other big languages have in they heyday? C, C++, Java, even Visual Basic occupied a huge fraction of the developer community at their peak. Some of those may be rising still in eyeball hours per month, but definitely not rising in terms of total fraction of all programmer hours being spent.<p>Perhaps the future is really more about consolidation for virtual machines and compiler middleware, and proliferation of end user languages? Different strokes for different folks?<p>Today it's not unusual at all for a larger system to use a a mixture of Scala, Java, and Python, plus some Erlang via RabbitMQ or eJabberd or CouchDB, not to mention pulling in data sources from REST or RPC type sources. Do we see that kind of mixed bag of choices getting smaller in the future, or larger?<p>Maybe the future is <i>diverging</i> on technology choices at the end points, where applications are written, and converging under the covers, where the applications are compiled and executed.

I keep thinking that the Next Big Language will be a thing of <i>re</i>-evolution, e.g. someone going back to C and retracing steps of C++ but in a more sensible way.<p>Also, on a tangential note -- the garbage collection <i>is</i> a huge deal if an adoption of the NBL among C/++ programmers is considered. The only way is to have the garbage collection optional. Similarly to how D has it, but much much simpler. Something like adding new_gc operator (or a malloc_gc function) and to have two kinds of memory blocks - manually managed and garbage collected...<p>Anyway, it's just a thought from an old fart camp :)

I'm really asking myself when ECMA Script will take over the world. Everyone is talking about that it will be the NBL. It's not that I don't like ECMA Script but there is a shit lot to do to implement all those language features into ECMA Script.<p>All those stuff and sure much more have to be done:<p>- performance of eval() (yes, I even don't know if this is ever possible)<p>- tools (great-eclipse-visual-studio-like IDE)<p>- Destructuring bind (e.g. x, y = returnTwoValues())<p>- Standard OOP with classes, instances, interfaces, polymorphism, etc.<p>- Visibility quantifiers (public/private/protected)<p>- Iterators and generators<p>- Namespaces and packages<p>- Operator overloading<p>- Static typing and duck typing<p>- Solid string and collection libraries<p>Does anyone know if ECMA Script is going to implement half of the stuff?

Yeah, I was reading that going "Scala, Scala, Scala, dynamic typing? #$(^(*@)#$" I'm pretty sure that the NBL will continue to be whatever large and influential organization wants it to be.

I'm surprised no one here has mentioned the Cobra language (<a href="http://cobra-language.com/" rel="nofollow">http://cobra-language.com/</a>). It's basically identical Python syntax that wraps C# and has almost <i>all</i> the features Steve pointed out. It works on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X using Mono (.NET environment emulation for various platforms).<p>Similar to JVM languages, it can import C# libraries directly and allows you to effortlessly use all that's gravy about C# but in a much more Pythonic manner. It has static and dynamic binding, which you can turn on and off, and since it's on Mono, does not have a GIL.<p>I think it's definitely a language to consider in the future. It certainly has potential to become the NBL.

I didn't realize how old this was, which tells you something about how prescient Yegge's writing can be. I would have added "pattern matching", though. At a minimum, keyword arguments or syntactic sugar for them.

Sounds a lot like Mirah <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirah_(programming_language)" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirah_(programming_language)</a><p>Honestly i don't know, nor does it matter. The language doesn't matter until the kill app gets built with it. Once that happens switch, i switched to Ruby in July 2004, because Rails was released.

&#62;&#62;"If you want to spare yourself a lot of angst in deciding which programming language to use, then I recommend this simple rule: Go ugly early. C++ will go out with you in a heartbeat."<p>What's Perl to do, then?

The NBL is not going to be Javascript but Lua. It's got some of the same architectural strengths as Javascript (functions are first class citizens, closures, good scoping), it's very fast (LuaJIT), integrates well in any environment and is highly customizable. See <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1022560/subtle-differences-between-javascript-and-lua" rel="nofollow">http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1022560/subtle-difference...</a> for some differences....

I read throught it full of hope and expectations, Then saw the date. 2007. the NBL was said to show up within two years. Another lesson to a) check the sources. b) remember to be wary of the "I see the future" types of article.

I seem to recall an interview he gave in which he stated that NBL was Javascript 2.

Really an interesting article. One thing I don't agree with: ""one of the biggest reasons people haven't adopted Ruby or Python is the lack of IDE support""<p>I use PyCharm and RubyMine a lot and they do a very good job of dealing with two dynamic languages. They are commercial products but fairly inexpensive.<p>Also, disappointing that the NBL will not have a Lisp-like syntax :-)<p>EDIT: I didn't notice this was a 4 year old article

What is Steve Yegge doing nowadays? Is he still at Google?

This is exactly why I killed my own PL. My language was amazing for the class of problems I was solving until a new problem came in and I had to solve it down in the lower tier like a dog with my tail between my legs.

I wish I'd seen this four years ago. I'd have written a language called "NBL".

&#62; You won't be deported to Columbia<p>You certainly wouldn't want that to happen - I hear they still program in Pearl there.