“Every computer programmer has a copious pile of opinions about
how their programming language of choice could be improved. Who
doesn’t want more syntactic sugar, better runtime performance, and
faster compilation? That’s one of the reasons why there are so many
programming languages. Creating a compiler is practically a rite of
passage for computer science students, and half of the top vendors
in the software industry eventually make their own programming
language or extend an existing one to the point where it’s
marginally recognizable.“Despite the large amount of enthusiasm for language design,
modern mainstream programming languages don’t fall far from the C
tree. The best that Microsoft, Sun, and Apple have to offer are
just variations on that theme, with the addition of predictable
object models and conveniences like garbage collection. The slim
minority of language geeks who have rebelled against bracist
tyranny and stumbled over to innovative languages like Haskell and
Erlang are doomed to toil in relative obscurity.”