The ongoing discussion about Javascript as the “next big language” seems to assume that there will definitely be a next big language and it is simply a matter of clairvoyantly predicting which will be the one you should immediately begin placing all your eggs into.
Steve Yegge has arbitrarily, matter-of-factly hypothesized ECMAScript to be the chosen one without much justification. Others are gambling on Ruby. Meanwhile, Microsoft, the lumbering giant that no longer scares the shit out of people, is borrowing some features from the ML family for the next release of C#; it is definitely staying well within the boundaries of strong, static typing. The Java community has realized the folly of overly complex infrastructure like EJB2 and now are happily zooming along with their outstanding IDEs and XML-addicted frameworks; the smarter elements of them are looking for something beyond Java, preferably one that doesn’t involve abandoning the JVM altogether, like JRuby. There’s still so much informational asymmetry and inefficiency in how technologies are chosen and used that Java, C#, Ruby, and PHP aren’t leaving the scene anytime soon.
Doesn’t the lack of clear consensus here indicate that there might not even be a single winner to arise from all this? Even within individual communities, fragmentation is occurring. There’s already multiple Ruby implementations with more on the way. Ruby may fragment into 2.0 and pre-2.0 groups when the time comes. There is no clear winner for how to do object-relational mapping in .NET. Framework proliferation continues in Java, even for specific parts of the development stack; do you know how many Java template/view layer frameworks there are, not even counting the more popular ones like Tapestry, Velocity, and Wicket?
This along with the interest in domain specific language construction seems to clearly indicate that there will not be a single leading language that gains mass adoption.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding what is implied by “Next Big Language”, indicating that may be something wrong with the terms of discussion: do we even know what we’re speculating on?
Therefore, speculating about what will happen in the next few years (a futile exercise I try to resist, even though I’ve engaged in it several times in this post) should not be predicated upon an assumption that we will all gravitate towards one language like insects drawn to the light, especially when that once and future language might not even exist yet.
But, feel free to arbitrarily declare that your language of choice (Scala, Ruby, JavaScript, Erlang, …) is “the winner.”
The take in the above post seems to be that there might not even *be* a Next Big Language. My view on the matter is that even if there is a NBL, it doesn’t really matter for large swaths of the software development community. For instance, if you’re doing server-side development in a moderately enlightened organization, then you can really pick any language you want, as long as it has enough of a community to have a decent standard library. Anyway, more thoughts on this are here: http://coderific.com/blog/post/384
Comment by witten — July 21, 2007 @ 10:35 pm |
Why do these sexy shemales keep tempting me to do dirty with them? I just can’t help myself.
Comment by James King Auckland — July 21, 2007 @ 11:23 pm |
[...] has been suggested that there won’t be a “next big language”. This may be the case. However, I suspect that there may be a “next big language”, and [...]
Pingback by Neither JavaScript nor Ruby will the be the "next big lanuage". — July 22, 2007 @ 4:23 am |
“There’s already multiple Ruby implementations with more on the way. Ruby may fragment into 2.0 and pre-2.0 groups when the time comes.”
Not sure what you mean here, but you should believe in matz and his decisions. I do not at all believe that ruby will fragment anywhere as you implied with that sentence – there simply are no dissident groups that I know of
A next big language would have to beat php out from the www, and also be of a very clean syntax.
I am 100% sure it wont be a language that requires a developer to write so much like Java requires him to do so.
For time i hoped that Io could be the next big language, but IMHO its biggest problem is that it has not enough developers – i mean as thus, not enough development is happening.
So my next hope is for a standardized language that combines both ruby and python, but with less syntax, with OOP including AOP and prototyping (but still makes the language EASY to learn), a real focus on the www, including easy GUI bindings… and browsers which allow you to use non-javascript languages too. (Without browsers, javascript would be a dead language. Its so sad that browsers only understand javascript)
Comment by she — July 22, 2007 @ 4:23 am |
[...] Will there even be a next big language? The ongoing discussion about Javascript as the “next big language” seems to assume that there will […] [...]
Pingback by Top Posts « WordPress.com — July 22, 2007 @ 3:58 pm |
As an aside: Spring’s moving towards less XML with the “java config” subproject (more annotations and convention over XML) and with XML namespaces to greatly reduce the XML needed. I bring this up as Spring (like any good framework) can evolve. it also makes AOP a breeze.
I’m starting to get into wicket, we’ll see how it goes. I’m more familiar with Spring and JSPs and it is taking some time getting used to programming in a Swing way. Seems like it is the right tool for the job as it does a lot of the javascript and flow control that I need.
Comment by BlogReader — July 22, 2007 @ 9:50 pm |
I’m not sure I can agree.
I think there’s *a* potential for ECMAScript to explode, but it depends on a few key factors:
1. Programmers will have to learn to *love* JavaScript like Ruby programmers *love* Ruby.
2. Programmers will have to learn how to see the world in terms of lambdas, closures, currying, etc.
3. You need a killer app to illustrate JavaScript’s power.
4. Increased productivity must be clear and immediate.
If JavaScript explodes, it won’t be because of its syntax, rather libraries like jQuery will clearly demonstrate how JavaScript allows programmers to compress a lot of functionality into far fewer lines of code. If that happens, they’ll choose JavaScript because it is already ubiquitously implemented across many platforms.
Just because people haven’t built websites with JavaScript on the server, doesn’t mean it’s not on the server. We already know the Rhino is now built in to the JVM, but did you know Microsoft has supported ECMAScript on the server since ASP 1.0? They’ve also supported ECMAScript in .NET since its first release, and they’ve recently made some really significant improvements for JavaScript in the next version of .NET. BTW, Microsoft’s strategy isn’t blindly rooted in C#. They’ve invested a lot of time and money to support as many dynamic languages as they can, including Ruby, Python, and JavaScript – least not forget functional languages like F#.
My point, everybody who has a serious development platform is implementing or supporting ECMAScript, because none of them want to be left out in the cold if EMCAScript does in-fact become the next big thing.
Who knows. We’ll see.
Comment by Steve — July 23, 2007 @ 7:27 am |
[...] Will there even be a next big language? « Metacircular thoughts (tags: programming languages) [...]
Pingback by links for 2007-07-25 « Mike Does Tech — July 24, 2007 @ 4:50 pm |
The discussion about Javascript/ECMAScript is interesting. I never expected it to come up in TNBL discussion. I figure the only way it could become this was if there was a web app. framework for it. Well, I found one called Helma. Apparently it’s been around for years. Personally I expected Ruby to be it, but I think for that to happen it needs better tools.
Comment by Mark Miller — July 26, 2007 @ 4:27 pm |
We all know that COBOL is coming back, right? It PERFORMS, baby. It’s only one O away from being COOBOL.
Comment by Mike — July 28, 2007 @ 5:46 pm |