Programming

17389 readers

152 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Follow the programming.dev instance rules
Keep content related to programming in some way
If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities [email protected]

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

173

Why do they keep making new languages (lemmy.stonansh.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

121 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Why are there so many programming languages? And why are there still being so many made? I would think you would try to perfect what you have instead of making new ones all the time. I understand you need new languages sometimes like quantumcomputing or some newer tech like that. But for pc you would think there would be some kind of universal language. I'm learning java btw. I like programming languages. But was just wondering.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (13 children)

You can't easily improve a language and stay compatible with the previous versions. C++ does it but they are crazy.

you would think there would be some kind of universal language

It does not exist, but anyone is free to try and invent it. It should be low-level like assembly and high-level like BASIC, functional, object-oriented, and have weird stuff like traits, concepts, and alien features from Haskell. It must also have both the pointers/references of C++, and the borrow checker of Rust. And don't forget to make it as secure as Ada with pre and post conditions. But it must still be easy to use. Also you will have to write a compiler for every operating system ever (mainframe, server, desktop, iOS, Android, every phone, every tablet), and contain a universal GUI that pleases everyone. It's literally impossible to do right now.

Last but not least, Java was supposed to be this universal language that you can run everywhere. It failed and it cannot be run everywhere. It also had to be improved a lot, and it's missing a fuckton of features from every other language.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'd call it Paradox Lang, or PL for short. It even has features that are contradictory to each other, you just have to declare which mode you want at the top of every file. Can you imagine. :)

The only feature it doesn't have is "lightweight and minimal language".

load more comments (12 replies)