[Semi OT] The programming language wars

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 20 March 2015 at 18:31:07 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
> On Friday, 20 March 2015 at 17:25:54 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>> Ultimately, I think rodent-based UIs will go the way of the 
>> dinosaur.
>> It's a regression from the expressiveness of an actual 
>> language with
>> grammar and semantics back to caveman-style point-and-grunt. 
>> It may take
>> decades, maybe even centuries, before the current GUI 
>> trendiness fades
>> away, but eventually it will become obvious that there is no 
>> future in a
>> non-abstractible UI. Either CLIs will be proven by the test of 
>> time, or
>> something else altogether will come along to replace the 
>> rodent dead-end
>> with something more powerful. Something abstractible with the
>> expressiveness of language and semantics, not regressive
>> point-and-grunt.
>
> As for CLIs regaining their central place in the world of 
> computing, in a world going towards speech recognition and 
> touch interfaces, I very much doubt CLI use will increase.

What I was going to say too, neither CLI or GUI will win, speech 
recognition will replace them both, by providing the best of 
both.  Rather than writing a script to scrape several shopping 
websites for the price of a Galaxy S6, I'll simply tell the 
intelligent agent on my computer "Find me the best deal on a S6" 
and it will go find it.

As for touch, seems like a dead-end to me, far less expressive 
than anything else and really only geared for rudimentary 
interaction.  It may always be there but you likely won't use it 
much.  I do think some sort of hand gesture-based interface will 
stick around for when voice isn't expressive enough, ie you'll 
still want to use your hands when painting:

http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/19/jaw-dropping-magic-leap-demo/

That video is not the way it will be done, as waving your arms 
around Minority Report-style is way too much effort, but 
something akin to the small finger movements I make on my 
touch-based trackpad, but in 3D, will likely be it.