Which programming language you would bet on ?

[Claude Moore]

Hi to all,

if you would bet on an emerging technology / programming language, which would be your choice ?

[Aniruddh Joshi]

Problem Solving skills

[Bear Bibeault]

For what purpose? I'd have very different answers depending upon the answer to that question.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Off to MD with you!!

[Claude Moore]

Bear Bibeault wrote:For what purpose? I'd have very different answers depending upon the answer to that question.

For any purpose may come into your mind. For example, Java is a language used pratically everywhere... you can write enterprise apps as well as simple mobile apps. Which may be next Java ?
I've heard of Google's language Dart which seems promising to write web apps, for example...

[dennis deems]

Claude Moore wrote:I've heard of Google's language Dart which seems promising to write web apps, for example...

For web apps, Dart definitely looks like one to watch. I'm hoping to free up some time to start playing with it soon.

[Pat Farrell]

Claude Moore wrote:For any purpose may come into your mind. For example, Java is a language used pratically everywhere... you can write enterprise apps as well as simple mobile apps. Which may be next Java ? I've heard of Google's language Dart which seems promising to write web apps, for example...

Many mechanics use a hammer, screwdriver and pliers to do everything when repairing a car. This does not mean that they are the best tools for the job.

If I were to write code to do serious numerical analysis, I would NOT user Java, I'd use Fortran.

When writing code for embedded systems, I would NOT use Java, and in most cases, you can not use java. On a new project, I'd consider using Google's GO.

Dart is an attempt to fix the design flaws of Javascript. Some would argue that Javascript doesn't need fixing.

Every few years, yet another language/foundation is labeled as the silver bullet that will solve all problems. A very smart man, Fred Brooks, write "No Silver Bullet"
I've been watching this for 40 years, and so far, Brooks is right.

[Claude Moore]

Pat Farrell wrote:
Many mechanics use a hammer, screwdriver and pliers to do everything when repairing a car. This does not mean that they are the best tools for the job.

Pat Farrell wrote:
Every few years, yet another language/foundation is labeled as the silver bullet that will solve all problems. A very smart man, Fred Brooks, write "No Silver Bullet"
I've been watching this for 40 years, and so far, Brooks is right.

I agree with your position. I think that writing For any purpose may come into your mind was interpretated as "think of a silver bullet to resolve every problem", while what I meant was "Just think about a new language that, in your opinion, will be successful". I should have explained myself better, sorry.

Of course specialized languages like Fortran had and still have their own application domain: if you're thinking of numerical analisys, you'd probabily associate tasks envolving number crunching to Fortran language. I can't say if Dart deserves attention, if it's a good or bad idea; let's suppose that it has been targeted to become the language to program Web with: it would be, simply, a winning bet if Dart became a de facto standard for web programming.

A similar thing happened in my humble opinion with Objective C, which is gaining more and more popularity since is the "language of choice" to develop apps for iOS devices.

[Pat Farrell]

Dart can only gain traction of other (non-Chrome) browsers support it. So far, none do.

I know Brad Cox, the guy who invented Objective-C nearly 30 years ago. It was an OK language for its time. Its badly showing its age, and IMHO would have been retired if it wasn't that Next's NextStep used it. Which meant that OS-X used it when Jobs brought NextStep to be the new Mac OS. Any general purpose language that lacks garbage collection and expects the programmer to get it right is, IMHO, Neanderthal.

[Frank Carver]

If I were a betting man, I would be putting some cash on Rust right now.

Rust seems to be the only language in several decades which has been able to seriously challenge C for low-level and systems work, and its approach to security and robustness is the best in class at the moment.

[Tim Holloway]

Frank Carver wrote:If I were a betting man, I would be putting some cash on Rust right now.

Rust seems to be the only language in several decades which has been able to seriously challenge C for low-level and systems work, and its approach to security and robustness is the best in class at the moment.

Concurrence.

Although Go did achieve some small success. My local "github" (Gogs) server was implemented in Go. Lua has a small niche, including in some AVR-style devices and in the home automation server I use. Although neither of those 2 is really "emerging" any more. They're been around a while now.

[Les Morgan]

I have to say, I would keep my bets where i have placed them already, and that is:

1 - program ability: the ability to understand and break down complex problems into workable modules that can easily be developed and integrated into the desired product.

2 - whatever seems to be the emergent technology in the area i wish to live.  For me, right now that is:
 a) MS SQL Server
 b) C#
 c) Java

This has served me well for decades now.  One thing to remember: a language is only a tool used to express the ideas that you develop with the imagination and programming skills that you possess.  If you don't have the programming skills or the imagination, then a highly skilled code monkey you may be.

[fred rosenberger]

What odds are you giving?  I'll bet on anything if the potential payout is high enough.

[Tim Holloway]

Les Morgan wrote:
2 - whatever seems to be the emergent technology in the area i wish to live.  For me, right now that is:
 a) MS SQL Server
 b) C#
 c) Java

This has served me well for decades now.

These aren't "emergent" technologies, though — which was the original question. They are all established technologies. Safe bets, though.

[Liutauras Vilda]

Tim Holloway wrote:These aren't "emergent" technologies, though — which was the original question.

They were when the original question was asked (10 years ago) That's not true either...

[Tim Holloway]

I'm not sure I'd care what was "emergent" 10 years ago, anymore. In 1954, FORTRAN was emergent.

[Peter Rooke]

Web Assembly -

Wasm is designed as a portable compilation target for programming languages, enabling deployment on the web for client and server applications.

So not really a programming language, more of a runtime environment for many of the current popular languages.
Here's a github list of Web Assembly Projects

[Les Morgan]

Tim,

very true, but none the less, if you do not have any real emergent technology in your area... this is what i go with, and it's where the big money is right now too.

Les

[Tim Holloway]

Les Morgan wrote:Tim,

very true, but none the less, if you do not have any real emergent technology in your area... this is what i go with, and it's where the big money is right now too.

Les

Yes, but again, the question wasn't "Which programming language would you bet on?" That was just the thread title. The actual question was "Which emerging …?" So you're supplying an answer to a question that wasn't asked.

[Giovanni Montano]

Claude Moore wrote:Hi to all,

if you would bet on an emerging technology / programming language, which would be your choice ?

Hope in Clojure, reality is Python and JS rules all

The only safe bet is to learn 4-5 languages and see how the engineering concepts are reshuffled and full of syntactic sugar to substitute design patterns with dedicated arcane esoteric functionalities, then the safest bet is data structure and algorithms, because does not matter which language will come having  the two bold skills above will make possibly  languages a trivial choice

[Al Hobbs]

Rust is cool and all but i really doubt c is going anywhere. Other than that, JS for sure

[Les Morgan]

Tim Holloway,
quite right, many answers are given to questions that are not asked ;)

IMO: each new iteration of technology become emergent.  while SQL, in all of it's dialects, can be considered as a mature technology--each time any of the major players put out a significantly new version, it becomes an "emergent" technology because it gives the client a reason to escape the hold of that vendor and it does happen.  We went from Sun/Oracle to MS to Oracle and back to MS because of major changes in their products.  Same with Java... we went from MS (put your flavor here) when they went to .Net we move to Java when Oracle took over we moved back to MS with C# and when they moved to MS type of product development and release with Java we put a nail in the casket and said C# from now on.

i am a little bit of preference to PHP and Pearl, but then those are not "emergent" technologies either.  

one i see a mild influx back again is C/C++, but once again not "emergent".

i have to admit also that with the number of years left in the industry that i can count on the fingers of 1 hand, i am not inclined to jump out and champion the truly emergent languages... then most recent we actually use around here it R... but then, it's not "emergent" either, not any more.

the only languages that were not "emergent" when i picked them up, was Assembler and C... back before the formalization of the Internet and before the birth of the Web:)

Les

note: there was FORTRAN, BASIC, COBOL, ALGO60, LISP, Pascal, Modula 2, Prolog, and multiple others... but none of those are anything i've used other than in school.

[Prasad Saya]

With so many programming languages over the years it is difficult to pick one. It is a matter of personal preference. A programming language has many attributes of its own, and these have evolved over time. For example, one of the aspects of consideration is the paradigms a language supports - procedural, object-oriented, functional and reactive. Another aspect is the functionaity, or the specific problem the language can solve. Yet, another aspect is the voting counts on a popular forum.

[Les Morgan]

Prasad,

i have to say that job availability and continued employment has always received my vote.  while i have learned a few dozen languages to professional use level in my years in the industry, i have to say these are the ones that have always brought the pay check in:

SQL
Java
C/C++
C#
SAS
then the flavor of the month for web scripting--usually JavaScript.

Les