[Semi OT] The programming language wars

[Laeeth Isharc via Digitalmars-d]

> Right, but it is likely that the nature of programming will ni
> change. In the beginning of the web the search engines had 
> trouble matching anything but exact phrases, now they are 
> capable of figuring out what you probably wanted.

As you implicitly recognize later, it's not either/or, in the 
same way that spreadsheets (ugh) constituted a new way of 
programming and people continued to program conventionally 
similar kinds of tasks even as spreadsheets exploded in usage 
(and now we are back to finding it often more convenient to write 
code again, plus the robustness that never went away).

HS Teoh is right about context, and the superiority of the 
written word for organizing and expressing thinking at a very 
high level.  The nature of human memory and perception means that 
is unlikely to change very soon, if ever.

Dr Iain Mcgilchrist (The Master and His Emissary) is very good on 
context, BTW.

> You also have areas like program synthesis, genetic programming 
> etc, where the computer itself generates the program to fit a 
> specified result. When the computer is capable of that you 
> might have a more "top down" programming model where you just 
> keep adding constraints until you are happy with the result.

No doubt these techniques will continue to grow in usefulness (I 
certainly hope so, and am making that bet), but the ultimate 
implications depend on your conception of what creativity is.