“The Hundred-Year Language”

 

Let’s talk about the essay “The Hundred-Year Language”. How interesting is to think how the future will be. In a way we are already living in the future but when you imagine what may come next thing may get a little confusing, especially when thinking about technology. This essay makes very interesting points and opinions on what may come in the field of programing languages. I personally, have never thought about what will happen with the languages I am using now which now that I think of, maybe I should be! Many of my current professors have talk about how they started programing in something like Pascal or Fortran and now none of those languages are used.

I find very interesting how the author describes the evolution of programming languages, how some have branches and evolve while others simply die with time. And while those that die where very useful, they never found the right way to evolve. Something that caught my attention is how important it has become for every aspect of technology to make it simple. It seems that only the languages with simple designs and most importantly easy to understand will survive. For example, I totally agree when the author says that Java is a language that will die soon, even though it is very useful I find it impossible to read when the code get to big and complex specially if you compare it with other languages like Python.

Just like the essay in the future we are expecting to have much faster technology and for that sometimes you need to sacrifice efficiency for the sake of optimization. So, while the program may work wonderfully trying to read or write in the code would be incredibly tiresome (now I can imagine how my teachers feel when checking my codes).

Another point that the author makes, which to me it sounds more applicable, it to create more layers of software between application and hardware in order to get more flexibility. Each layer will have a simpler task for the layer above. Maybe like a compiler? Each layer translates something for the layer above it thus creating more code that is reusable.

To end, while we do not have the language that will be used in a hundred years, I do agree with the author that me might already have started to develop the roots. What we know is that the language needs to be easy and efficient enough to produce at least a workable first draft.