[Semi OT] The programming language wars

[Abdulhaq via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 30 March 2015 at 18:49:01 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> On Sunday, 29 March 2015 at 21:17:26 UTC, Abdulhaq wrote:
>> On Sunday, 29 March 2015 at 18:27:51 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>>>> would suffice.
>>>
>>> When you said "I think rodent-based UIs will go the way of 
>>> the dinosaur," you seemed to be talking about more than just 
>>> programmers.
>>>
>>
>>
>> I'm still waiting for The Last One (from Feb 1981) to reach 
>> fruition:
>>
>> http://www.tebbo.com/presshere/html/wf8104.htm
>>
>> http://teblog.typepad.com/david_tebbutt/2007/07/the-last-one-pe.html
>>
>> Once finished, there will be no more need to write any 
>> programs.
>
> Heh, that article is pretty funny. :) In the comments for the 
> second link, the lead programmer supposedly said, "For me TLO 
> remains the 1st ever programming wizard. Wrongly advertised and 
> promoted, but inherentlyt a 'good idea'."  Considering how 
> widespread wizards are in Windows these days, the idea has 
> certainly done well.
>
> I do think that that concept of non-technical users providing 
> constraints and answering questions is the future of building 
> software, it just can't be built by one isolated guy.  The 
> configuration and glue code can be auto-generated, but there 
> will likely always need to be core libraries written in a 
> programming language by programmers.  But the same automation 
> that has put most travel agents out of work will one day be 
> applied to most programmers too.

It was such an exciting time back then, but most of us who had a 
clue knew that it certainly couldn't be done (at that time, 
anyway). Around about the same time there was another article in 
PCW (a great magazine by the way) about a data compression tool 
that you could rerun over and over again to make files smaller 
and smaller ;-). I wish we could read the back issues like we can 
with Byte (on archive,org). Even the adverts are great to read 
for us old hands.

As to whether we'll ever do it, I agree with previous comments 
that it's related to understanding language - context is 
everything, and that takes an understanding of life and its 
paraphernalia.