The Last Programming Language

This is the keynote Uncle Bob gave remotely at ACCU 2011.
To see more about Clean Coders: cleancoders.com/
Over the last 50 years we've seen a lot of computer languages, from procedural languages, to structured languages, to OO languages, stack languages, logic languages, and even graphical languages, and languages based on the game of life. We've seen so many different languages, and different types of languages, that we need to ask ourselves a question: have we seen them all?
Are there any more types of languages that we haven't seen? Or have we completely explored the language space? And if we have, then isn't it time we pruned the menagerie of languages down to a manageable few-perhaps even one?
Other industries have done this, so why not us? Others disciplines have brought their notations down from dozens to one: electronics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, etc. And the benefits they reaped by doing so were significant! Perhaps it's time for us to follow suit.
If we did choose a language, what kind of language would it be? What features would it have? What syntax would it follow? What paradigms would it conform to?
#CleanCoders

[@sandywyper]

This is the weirdest episode of Star Trek I've ever seen.

[@QuadHealer]

LOL! I read your comment before seeing the whole video, and I was confused, but after having seen the video, I must agree :-) But does it not go beyond just Star Trek - I mean isn't it a sonic screwdriver from Doctor Who at one point? Or am I mistaken? In any case, thank you for making me laugh!

[@EvenStarLoveAnanda]

I know, the ray-gun was a dead giveaway. ;0)

[@shawno66]

This is the funniest YT post I've even seen. I now just say that randomly.

[@StephanHradek]

@@QuadHealer isn't there also Indiana Jones and Dallas referenced?

[@blahuhm6782]

*best episode of Star Trek

[@bjornkihlberg2103]

If we decide to choose "one language", we're going to find ourselves stuck with the popular option, not the right option.

[@rubenb8653]

ooof this comment needs likes. this is totally true.

[@insertoyouroemail]

Mr. Martin thinks it's going to be Clojure. It's not going to be Clojure. Sorry but if I'm told I have to use an untyped language, me (and many others) will simply take our ball and go home. The idea of the previous generation having picked a language for me to use today is frankly repulsive. I wouldn't want to impose my ideals on future generations like that.

[@rubenb8653]

@@insertoyouroemail yahh but its probably going to be very subjective anyway. I like C for example. gets a lot of hate.

[@excitedbox5705]

@@rubenb8653 C is a great language from the syntax but the feature set is very limited. If C++ had C syntax I would be soooo happy. I hate :: I think it ruins the look and conveys 0 meaning. Like -> or > or even . give you a hint at these things being related. Function syntax with (arg1, arg2) conveys meaning. In C# < > looks aggressive and is pointing away from your objects. _Keyword conveys that there is something that belongs to that. These types of syntax structures are important to make sense even when you know the language so you don't have to think and it makes the code flow much easier. If I told you from now on ? was to be used as a comma and = as a period every time you used them you would have to dedicate thought to that just like a door that you instinctively want to open the wrong way.

[@paulzheng7663]

@@insertoyouroemail You use fiat currency, drive a car on roads, work a job for fiat, go to your doctor to be prescribed poisons, eat food that lacks nutrition, believe what the goverenment wants you to believe .... We have been imposed on. what should we do? WHat will you do?

[@dialNforNinja]

"Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[@horusfalcon]

So that's why this Antoine guy was always taking things! Why, just the other day he stole my lunch! (Admittedly, my lunch was somewhat less than perfect.)

[@nik4520]

Time for assembly

[@sorvex9]

“If you achieve perfection, then something is wrong”

[@zyansheep]

@@nik4520 assembly is a dsl

[@chrisE815]

They clearly never designed a European automobile

[@spookypen]

The YT algorithm brought me here, staying for the whole thing. I don't know how to program a computer at all.

[@diamondtroller1253]

rip

[@excitedbox5705]

Never too late to better yourself ;D

[@adamnealis]

Before I watched this, I thought I had at least a basic idea as to how to programme a computer.

[@dewinchy]

That is what I call a tough guy!

[@jomar_macedo]

Almost same thing here, but i've already done some poorly executed working software in college. Not that it made me understand anything here any better, but i'm going for the whole thing.

[@tomrkba4685]

"What have we done with that power?" CAT VIDEOS!

[@TheNortonio]

Grand Theft Auto, Minecraft, Fortnite... sad to say. The cat videos are pretty cool though. Have you seen the cat vs cucumber videos? Awesome!

[@arnox4554]

A worthy use of power.

[@strictnonconformist7369]

According to a Seagate CEO, you forgot porn.

[@TheNortonio]

Strict NonConformist anathema!!!

[@lkledu2]

whole data center and infra structure of google to put nyancat 10h (i believe in the day we can do a live for a month only with it)

[@ericpmoss]

Grumpy Lisp programmer here... Common Lisp "won't die" because it's extensible and multi-paradigm, and not driven by super-cool, super-pure solutions to toy problems. There should be a way to (a) write a leveled Lisp where things like garbage collection are optional, and layered on top of simpler layers, (b) make a processing architecture that lends itself to it, such as cdr-coded caching; (c) pull some of the commercially driven, non-Lispy clutter out of it, and (d) put some big-time effort into improving the compilers and interpreters. For the price of a single stealth bomber, we could do some beautiful things.

[@derekfrost8991]

I love lisp, I use it for my personal accounts etc.. :)

[@UNR3S7]

lisp is eternal for the same reason as emacs. You put all the things into one thing, and have a good foundation at the very core of the thing. And you let people do whatever they want with it. If you have a good foundation all customization leads to realizing the good way. I think that the biggest mistake is assuming that people are not smart enough to realize the good. "you shall not rebind because our bindings are good" well, if you rebind and the original bindings were good then you will realize your mistake eventually. "you shall not assign because it is not pure" well, let them assign and suffer the consequences. Lack of confidence in the foundation is what leads people to restrict branching. (and some business reasons, but business will ruin everything)

[@dejohnny2]

I like Dr Racket.

[@rmsci4002]

Clojure already exists, runs on JVM, CLR. Can be compiled to JavaScript via ClojureScript. Next step is it running on LLVM. GRAAL compiler can help this. Common Lisp is missing this independence/interdependence, VM, etc.

[@joerogers4227]

I am now almost 80. I have a 4 year degree from San Diego State University in Office automation. During my time from 1981 to 1989 when I graduated at age 47 I studied through Jr. College and SDSU many languages. Basic, Cobol 2 semesters, Fortran, Prolog which at the time was called a fuzzy language, RPG II also. My biggest project was programming in Dbase III and iv. I wrote a labor accounting program for Public Works Department on Miramar Naval air station. (NAS). We compiled with clipper and it could go onto a floppy disk. I like that program because it had clear steps and modules I created to do the job. I did my best to not use what we called spaghetti code or jumps all over the place. Through my career I met people who were involved in the computer world as Pioneer's. One was Dr. Hershey and his specialty was fortran and he developed the Hershey fonts. I also meet Dr. Hamming the developer of the hamming code for forward correction of transmitted data. Dr. Hershey was retired from Naval postgraduate School, the Dr. Hamming was a professor there. I like programming in Dbase IV but diskiked working with Prolog as it was not as structured. I remember when I was at Mesa jr. College in San Diego I got one night at 2:00 am and worked remotely on my Cobol program and I got a return message from a tech there asking if I ever Slept.

[@makinggreatbread]

Entertaining. I started programming in 73 (Cobol, Fortran, RPG, Assembly, machine) and haven't given those days much thought until watching this. A trip back in time. Loved it!

[@RayDrouillard]

Twenty-two orders of magnitude more power. What did we do with that power? Argue with strangers, look at pictures of cats, and pr0n.

[@qwerty13380]

Have you been looking in my windows?

[@puppetsock]

That is true. Also, much that is plainly trivial or drab. Every episode of Giligan's Island, The Love Boat, MASH, and uncountable hours of discussion of them. Makeup tutorials. ASMR. But also there are: - Google maps - Many many thousands of hours of university lectures on line - Many many thousands of hours of quality entertainment such as symphonies, Shakespeare, etc., on line - Live web-cams of a family of falcolns that lives on an office tower in downtown Toronto - Computer language translation that, while laughably imperfect, can be useful to language learners - Downloadable classic books for free - Downloadable new books as cheap as reasonably achievable and fast - The possibility of learn at home and work at home for a significant fraction of the population Humans do a wide range of activities from the horrible to the exemplary, from the drab to the intense, from the forgettable to the unforgettable. And we starting to do this all on line.

[@mihailmilev9909]

@@puppetsock well said fellow human

[@clieding]

This is painfully funny as I am also guilty of often squandering this awesome resource by: “arguing with strangers, sharing pictures of cats, and looking at porn.” - trained computer programmer.

[@ShainAndrews]

Adding pet raccoons and foxes. Your comment is two weeks old, we acquired additional resources since then to support it.

[@Ed64]

I love the Commodore 64 showing up at minute “42”. Awesome talk as usual, Uncle Bob!

[@Gorgutzdaboss]

17min in and still engaged! You have a nice way to entertain and inform that is pretty rare in the IT field.

[@anthonyb9147]

went through the whole hour and didnt even notice it went by. He is great at public speaking.

[@Dmytro-kt3fr]

Astonishing video, terrific analysis on the programming, definitely went to a saved videos. Most of us did lost a track of what paradigms and languages are, drowning in the frameworks and tech choice but forgetting the basic ideas behind everything. Will need to prep a "ted talk" in my company covering the things cover by Robert

[@idiosinkrazijske.rutine]

Damn, guys from the '50s were smart.

[@franciscogerardohernandezr4788]

They had dreams of time travel and spaceships, but then the 70s drugs and the left relegated all these goals to fiction.

[@normanhenderson7300]

francisco gerardo hernandez rivera , we’re not some of them under the influence, and were practicing leftist- or actual leftist? This did not necessarily negate the power of analysis in these matters. Although I would not suggest being under the influence of LSD, weed(lab grown especially), and such things. Cocaine, methamphetamines.

[@franciscogerardohernandezr4788]

@@normanhenderson7300 Not only drugs, but day to day financial stress steer people's mind away from noble ventures.

[@greatbullet7372]

@@franciscogerardohernandezr4788 it turns out what u own, owns u :)

[@winstonsmith77]

Not all Boomers are bad

[@ww1593]

If this guy was my teacher in High School, I would've chosen a career in Computer Science 12 years ago ! Better late than never.

[@nick18303]

Misael d.w I’m 32 and just started learning this year and I too would have loved him as a teacher but atleast we have him now

[@ww1593]

@@nick18303 the power of the internet and youtube !

[@terrythompson7535]

You gotta love the way this guy talks. He's so excited and optimistic. You can tell he's very passionate

[@terrythompson7535]

@Peter Mortensen The science does not back that up. Now people who understand the release of dopamine and how it aids memory are saying that making the learning more entertaining results in people learning faster.

[@ww1593]

@Peter Mortensen I agree with you but the reason why I made this comment is also becaude of his breath of knowledge. He is the perfect balance in my opinion. Most CS channels are simply career youtubers that what to be celebrities.

[@yapdog]

Great video. First time viewer, but I just had to subscribe; I love your insights and we're of similar mind. I look forward to checking out your previous vids. This video really hit home because I'm in the middle of developing a platform that will make new language creation and integration very easy. So, if there are new language classes that can be discovered (I believe there are) they will likely be discovered on my platform since it will be accessible to many different kinds of programmers. Yeah, I know, big claims, no verifiable data. However, I actually *do* have some new classes that I intend to develop on it, but *anyone* will be able to create their own. When it's ready to roll, I'll contact you privately. Until then, wish me luck 😁

[@lfmtube]

I watched you video with great interest. Thank you for posting it. I used to work in Argentina with a PDP 11/04 with RT11 operating system. The CPU had 4K memory, an LA34 teleprinter with paper tape and a vt100 terminal. Over 40 years later, I still remember those great days. :) I was 19 years old and working reading magnetic tapes from mainframes and converting into Microfiches as a replacement for the huges printed lists that were generated in those days. All this at an speed of 36 thousand records per minute. It still amazes me how we could do all of that with such limited resources.

[@0xggbrnr]

“But, the materials we manipulate with our hands, the code, is virtually the same...” *Uncle Bob enters the Matrix suddenly and starts listing programming languages* 😂

[@karenparker3086]

A lot of this reminds me of physics circa-1880 or so. Physicists were seriously discussing the possibility that there was no more new physics to discover, just applications of existing stuff and engineering. Then along about 1890-95 X-rays and radioactivity were discovered, setting off a wild ride of new discovery that we’re still on to this day. Don’t be too quick to assert that there’s nothing new under the sun, in any field.

[@dontworrybehappy5139]

The new stuff, in my opinion, will be the computer programs doing the programming.

[@normanhenderson7300]

Don't Worry Be Happy , I dabbled in that idea, when I was introduced to the art. I am sure the more sophisticated programmers can accomplish that.

[@rmsci4002]

Those were part of it, but it was the ultraviolet catastrophe leading up to quantum physics that pushed the envelope.

[@rmsci4002]

@@dontworrybehappy5139 that is an old idea... from Lisp.

[@dontworrybehappy5139]

@@rmsci4002 It is a problem that just hasn't been attacked with vigor yet. I've worked in the field of computer programming for decades, and I would guess that 95% of the code being written today could easily be generated by intelligent software created in the very near future. The hardest part of the software would be the interface code that had to interface with and gather the requirements from the project managers (ha ha).

[@MotiviqueStudio]

Zen and the art of disdain for everything. Sometimes "we" want a proprietary language for "our" own reasons. So there's a lot that has to happen to get to where a last language is a discussion. Goto line 1

[@monkfoobar]

I met a guy who fixed his motorcycle using the pull top from a beer can.

[@jakykong]

Yeah, I think his argument is fundamentally based on the flawed premise that any general purpose language actually could encompass everything in real life (as opposed to theoretically). Even if you look in the algol-inspired family (of which C is a member - for someone going as far back as PDP-11's, I'm surprised he didn't mention algol. :P ), they express different concepts preferentially. For example, if the problem you're solving is in a domain that is cleanly solved by arrays, you're way better off writing it in Python than in Java. On the other hand, if the problem you're trying to solve is large-scale collaboration, Java has the rigorous type system to enforce contracts, so even though you'll be doing more array fiddling by hand (instead of being expressive with comprehensions and slicing), you can coordinate more developers since the boundaries and interfaces are less fuzzy. Clojure is interesting, for much the same reason most Lisp-family languages are (I'm pretty fluent in Common Lisp); they're good at metaprogramming. That is _why_ they are capable of doing pretty much everything: Nobody writes code in "pure" unadulterated Lisp. They write macros that write code in "pure" Lisp. And those macros are used to define subset languages much more akin to each of the various paradigm languages.

[@absalomdraconis]

@@jakykong : You arguably could make his "last programming language", but you'd have to reject his own rejection of assembly. Ultimately, the "last language" that he speaks of would be more naturally a derivative of Forth than of Lisp.

[@this-abledtheextravertedhe5299]

I’m 50 years old and learning something other than DOS for the first time since 1989 🤣 I choose Python for many of the reasons you listed. I’m off to explore Lisp and Closure. Thank you 😊

[@Evan490BC]

*Clojure

[@Collaborologist]

how you getting along with Clj?

[@brawndo8726]

43:29 The Dark Knight Falls

[@PatriceStoessel]

seems to fall asleep

[@brawndo8726]

@@PatriceStoessel lol

[@mikhailpopovic1705]

his central nervous system has capitulated ... I feel suddenly to be a flying rodent

[@Rebel101]

Lol

[@darnell8897]

Why do we fall, Bruce?

[@billbez7465]

Wow, this is classic. I've been a language junkie for years (actually, a couple decades), and Bob describes this more informative and interesting than I've heard for a long time.

[@CubOfJudahsLion]

Aside from constraints, some paradigms *did* add something. The functional, for example, came with pattern matching and unification, lambdas (aka anonymous functions) and functions as first-class citizens. The logical paradigm (aside from using matching and unification as well) also adds backtracking and domain-constrained searches. While non-imperative languages may seem academical, the truth is that some of those features of other languages have found a place in mainstream programming, and there are plenty of books about programming "functionally" in C#, JavaScript, Python, etc. It's more likely that we'll build an eclectic future rather than a strictly-imperative one.

[@aoeu256]

I can think of many more paradigms that delete things: total functions (functions must terminate), reversable programming (all functions must be reversable via always returning their input as well as their output), concurrency paradigms, linear types preventing you from duplicating vars, constraint based programming, etc...

[@mrright1068]

What a fun trip down memory lane. Always enjoy your talks.

[@tiagoweber9438]

Fascinating: entertaining and informative.

[@specex]

Been programming since 1975... mainframes through today. Enjoyed your video!

[@CARLiCON]

Awesome presentation, thanks for sharing.

[@ryanlyle9201]

I'm not sure why I'm here and I don't understand all of it but the personality of this channel is highly infectious. You are a fun guy to watch.

[@michaeladair6557]

Legit O.G. Nerd, I love this guy. Did you see the batman suit in the background! Subscribed!

[@robrick9361]

This is like the opposite of dementia.

[@larrydillard8163]

My thought exactly. If you are short on time, he takes the gloves off at 33:20 - and it gets more fun.

[@reallylordofnothing]

This comment is gold

[@NamNK_]

There're so much useful info and fun in this, thanks for the video 😀

[@MrBatraaf]

Great vibe! I subscribed right away.

[@ProgrammingMadeEZ]

Glad to see you posting more stuff Uncle Bob!

[@shableep]

44:11 WebAssembly and WASI are the thin layer virtual machine that abstracts the hardware layer (or, "host" as they put it), and almost any language can be compiled to it. All the languages can communicate to each other via WASI. It's a thin virtual machine that invites whatever language that compiles to it to bring their own runtime code if needed. Though it was designed for the web, it was the web that created the excuse for multiple mega corporations to cooperate with each other to agree on a standard language to compile to that would bring more native-like processing power to web apps. That technology is now getting adopted server side, and for many other environments outside of the web browser. It's really exciting technology and I think you should look into it if you haven't already.

[@RuslanKovtun]

Yeah, I'm also waiting for WebAssembly to mature. But I really sold on the point that the code is the data and the data is the code. We should definitely be able to modify the code on the fly (you can remember all sorts of macros running at compile time in rust, jai, nim, etc.). The problem is that programs aren't compilers and they can't produce code other than at compile time. Although, I guess Uncle Bob did logical mistake when he was talking about permissive languages and how unpopular they are and then assumed that the perfect language is permissive.

[@jrherita]

I’m more of a hardware guy with some bouts of programming since the early 1980s.. this is an amazing video and take on languages!

[@m.p.jallan2172]

Fascinating thanks. Prof D.Brailsford on the Computerfile series once said that the current low level binary/instruction set design is not likely to change much, already being the smallest way to convey information.

[@kevinfredericks2335]

"time runs in a single direction" Quantum Engineers: hold my beer

[@Dystisis]

The idea of time having a direction is a confusion based on a metaphor. Time is also not a dimension or a medium.

[@cybervigilante]

The purpose of time is to make sure you can't unscramble eggs.

[@Kasas90]

S = k ln ( Omega ). Here you go

[@stefanhensel8611]

@@cybervigilante Time is the way of the universe to make sure not everything happens at once. And space is the way of the universe to make sure not everything happens to you.

[@LaughingOrange]

He said dimension, which to my understanding is true even in quantum mechanics.

[@qu765]

After a bit of though, _I think_ that: 0) This is a very good video that I enjoyed a lot 1) I'm not so sure it will conform on one, but if it does then it will be a very big language in the sense that it can both handle the fine details and complicated stuff as well as assembly, but also the big overview of things as well as python 2) I think that the future is heading in more of a direction of increased usage of multithreading, not as a limit, but as something that is already needed. Due to the increase in neural networks and 3d graphics and undoubtedly others. 3) The syntax will be straight forward, it will run very fast, and running modification. 4) Maily most of the things mentioned in the video should be true, except they can be bypassed so that more hardware-level stuff can happen. So very very hybrid of all things. 5) It will be a textual language. (Although I will still advocate for the graphical programming of textual language.) So thos're my opinions with my limited knowledge.

[@maiaallman4635]

I'm so glad I found your channel!

[@solidstate0]

22 orders of magnitude and humans still urinate in telephone boxes

[@jorisherry]

The last programming language will come around the same time as the last spoken language.

[@clickrick]

Pretty much true!

[@1crazypj]

@Deep Throat Personally I've always thought a Mandarin/English hybrid far more likely.(for at least the last 40+ years) Historically, China has been forced to open borders for 'trade' but has always closed them again after throwing out foreigners . Today, they have too much of everything and the technology to do pretty much whatever they really want to, there is already speculation if US could take on a re-armed China (plus, China is where bureaucracy was invented and look how worldwide that is.)

[@alastairbowie]

I've had a growing interest in Common Lisp as of late. The metaprogramming aspects of Lisp is quite interesting to me. I also like the minimal syntax and how it feels like quite an expressive language. I've been writing a text based game using a Common Lisp REPL smartphone app I found which has been pretty enjoyable. Cool vid.

[@jamiesaunders3441]

I know absolutely nothing about programming but somehow I sat through the entire thing, riveted. Nice view from underneath as it flew straight over my head.

[@renderdreality]

I have never seen such a funny programmer and presentation of programming, hahahahaha. I subscribed and added notifications immediately.

[@Cleancoders]

Welcome aboard!

[@horusfalcon]

A great deal of the programming done to control real-world inputs and outputs is symbolic in nature, built in the form of a ladder logic diagram that uses symbols geared originally to be understandable by electricians and instrument technicians. A lot of these symbols are graphical, and their interconnect is very often expressed graphically. This was an interesting "keynote".

[@DanielBos]

Yay Forth! I've worked with a lot of niche language, but Forth was the one that blew my mind.

[@Mark.Brindle]

Used it commercially from 82 to 85. Loved it. These days, I would treat it as a high level assembler.

[@DaveRoberts308]

Every programmer needs to wrap their head around both Forth and Lisp. Once you do, you’ll really understand some profound truths about the nature of computation.

[@DanielBos]

@@DaveRoberts308 Haven't used Lisp itself much, but I did write in a Scheme dialect commercially for a few years. call/cc (call-with-current-continuation) is another eye-opener that can fundamentally change your understanding, once you grasp what it does.

[@DaveRoberts308]

@@DanielBos Yep, agreed.

[@ThePandaGuitar]

Dave Roberts Used LISP for years. what profound truths, stop circle jerking. It’s just a stack snapshot. Heck even Ruby has continuations.

[@paulborneo7535]

You are an engaging speaker. Thanks for the information.

[@77377]

Very enjoyable and inspiring to watch! Thank you! Graphical languages are valuable though, perhaps not as general purpose language, but if you look at FME or Pure Data., those languages are immensely powerful used for the purposes they've been built for.

[@DomainObject]

That was a fun talk. I love Clojure. I kind of wish it was statically typed and that fellow Clojurians would write more “readable” Clojure code. But other than that, it’s pretty great.

[@ilemming]

After using Clojure (and other Lisps) for a few years, I honestly can't go back to C-like syntax. Javascript looks unreadable, Typescript - same, and even Lua and Python. It's a matter of getting used to it. Idiomatic Clojure is extremely readable. However, just like with any other language, you can definitely write some obscure code. Heck, you can obfuscate the meaning even in plain English.

[@Collaborologist]

@@ilemming Imagine feeling this way in the mid / late 80's after Interlips / Zetalisp / Interlisp-D... :( I've been waiting for something like Clojure for decades! and now jumping in again with all 4 legs!!

[@saf271828]

"BASIC ... slow." No. Full stop. I'm not particularly a fan of BASIC for other reasons, but even I'm smart enough to not confuse a language (syntax, semantics) with its implementation (Microsoft 8-bit and 16-bit implementations). The very first BASIC compilers to come out of Dartmouth were **compiled**, not interpreted, and were, bluntly, fast. If you think BASIC is slow, it's because you've grown up using Commodore or Apple II BASIC interpreters, which were utter tripe as interpreter technology goes. Someone who advocates for VM-based language implementations should already know this, and it was a staggering punch to the gut to see this error made.

[@islandcave8738]

QBasic was the first general purpose language I learned. Prior to that, I did have a little bit exposure to the domain specific language, CNC. And prior to that I had exposure to the syntax of Word Perfect 5.1 markup language (I don't know if it is called that, but for lack of a better name, I am calling it that).

[@RBLevin]

Also, Python is BASIC 2020. Do people complain that Python is slow?

[@rameynoodles152]

@@RBLevin Yes. They do complain that Python is slow. Python is INCREDIBLY slow. It's so slow that I don't even know how it's possible to make a language that slow.

[@RBLevin]

Back in the DOS days, I used Microsoft BASIC PDS (Professional Development System). No IDE. Just a compiler. It was fast as hell. A C programmer at Unisys insisted that BASIC was too slow to do anything useful. I told him I could develop a telecom app with it that used Xmodem to transfer files. He laughed. We placed a gentlemen's bet on that. I won. Had it running in no time and it kept pace with the telecom apps of the time (Procomm, Telix, etc.). Doubt Visual Basic could do that today. Another incredibly fast BASIC was Borland's Turbo BASIC, which became Power BASIC. I think that's still around but it never made the transition to GUIs.

[@newstar346]

@@RBLevin There is a GUI version of PowerBASIC.

[@lindosland]

Great to see the stuff in the background. I once worked with a PDP8, and wrote to punched tape on one of those teleprinter things! I also programmed an Intel 4004 and 8008! The rest of this video just makes me glad I went on to other things, but I get the gist of it, and am fascinated, so thanks.

[@trustdivinemercy]

This is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much.

[@dojcubic]

UML for JAVA programmers seems to be his favorite book. He has a copy in every room and the most unusual places.

[@inxiti]

dojcubic I thought the same. I looked it up, and it turns out he wrote it.

[@pqnet84]

@@inxiti he has many unsold copies he uses to keep things from moving with wind inside his house :-D

[@CaedmonWalters]

@@pqnet84 lol

[@JohnSmith-ox3gy]

@@pqnet84 A "paperweight" made of paper. Amusing on two levels.

[@espenskeys]

The code is the data - the data is the code - we used to call that "speed programming" in the Scandinavian Demoscene back in the day

[@rubenb8653]

HMM a dude two, three times my age, just being himself and excited about talking about programming and sharing his lifes experience... Thats definetly worth a sub ^^

[@antonnym214]

Thank you! Bob, you are a national treasure! I started on the TRS-80 in 1977 with BASIC, Z80 and APL. (Yes, APL on the TRS-80!) then I wrote a language called R-code to control multiple "warbots" fighting each other in a virtual maze). Then I wrote a simplified Structured BASIC-like language called L.I.M. (Limited Instruction Model OR Less Is More). I'm convinced simple is best, even if it is less impressive to coders and their friends.

[@homelessrobot]

The observation that paradigms are subtractive does not suggest that new paradigms are always subtracting from the semantic space of the immediately previous generation. You can always go as far back in the stack of historical restrictions as you want to establish a new set. And construction is entirely subtractive anyhow. Constructing a mathematical theorem, you are eliminating all other possible/valid constructions in the theory to say/prove something specific. Constucting a theory, you start with axioms/suppositions who's function is to 'subtract possible preconditions'. When you write a program, you are subtracting from 'the set of all possible programs'.

[@kevinleesmith]

Very nostalgic and forward looking at the same time. Just how I like it. My past started in 1970 on a pdp11/34 running rt11 and programming in Fortran. Ahhhh. Heady days. Happy days. Working 48 hours straight was common place because when u were in the groove, you just kept going. For me, C was as good as it got. Now I'm depressed and will have to drink a lot of whisky :-(

[@Murph5456]

Poor guy. You needed the whisky then. RSX11M was the place to be.

[@TedSeeber]

I learned PDP-8 Assembly, emulated on a PDP-11, with our only attached printer an old teletype. Freshman Year of College. Long before OO, I was doing polymorphism in 6502 assembly on the Apple IIe. It was a neat way to get software sprites on a machine whose high resolution mode was just another memory space.

[@BillRodriguezIT]

Thanks for the provocative topic! It is interesting to ponder the parallels. I think of our spoken languages and the tendency of the world to gravitate toward a common language which appears to be English (e.g., air traffic controllers) and local languages (domain specific?). I also think of music. Musical notation has become standardized globally and very much abstracted from the machine. One other point about music that is interesting is the concept that there is no more "new" music. All music is a variant of another piece or it is a hybrid of other music. Different combinations, different implementations (instruments and equipment) and we perceive "newness," but fundamentally it's the same old notes. Again, thanks for the interesting mental journey.

[@jerelull9629]

LISP was SO fun within EMACS: the editor I never has to exit once I got logged in; compile, link, test & debug in one place. I could even do my email without exiting the editor. After all these years, I've realized that every language can do all the same things as other languages, albeit differently. a *REALLY* strange language was APL. very tight, difficult to analyze or debug, which is what I hated about it.

[@dahdahditditditditditditda7536]

Long live the EMACS. Does RMS still have anything to do with it? Been retired for a while ...

[@jerelull9629]

@@dahdahditditditditditditda7536 RMS would be a factor on VAX and possibly Alpha machines. A dozen year ago, before I retired, DEC had an editor as customizable as EMACS, and similarly self-documented, meaning we spent hours searching for features.

[@TuringTest37]

Check out Julia. It has light-weight syntax, is fully homoiconic, compiles on the fly using LLVM down to optimal machine code, interfaces easily with C, Java, R, Fortran and others. And speed? Within 10-20% of compiled C. Often 20 times faster than python for the same numerical problem.

[@galtbarber2640]

Python is way slow, even perl is much faster that python while still being slow.

[@devshashtag]

thank you for this very enjoyable!

[@davisgloff]

I'm not a programmer (at all,) but I was fascinated by this.. I kept hoping there would be something I understood. There wasn't, and just that fact kept me watching and interested... By the way, regardless of my ignorance, I LOVE your presentation!!

[@MarcoAntoniotti]

The favorite language of Italian programmers is "Monicelli". But there is NO way non-Italian programmers can grok its beauty :)

[@rmsci4002]

How is it generally beautiful then if it is limited to some natural language?

[@Evan490BC]

@@rmsci4002 Because Italian is a beautiful language. (I'm not Italian by the way.)

[@Rfc1394]

At about 8:30 is the statement, "I'm not at all convinced that there are any more surprising languages out there." Reminds me of the (probably apocryphal) story of the U.S. Commissioner of Patents who thought there won't be a need for the Patent Office in the future because everything that could be invented has already been, back in the 1890s. We have no idea what revolutionary change we can't even imagine is coming along that will completely blindside us (in a good way.)

[@jondor654]

Perhaps ironic. , notice the playdough .

[@mrspock2al]

Boy do you bring back memories... I'm a new subscriber and a retired programmer. I learned on a PDP 8 writing assembler and something called "Focus". Absolutely hated Cobol. Had to translate it to assembler to understand it. I've written assembler, Fortran, Snobol, Cobol, PL1 (liked it), IBM EDL, Pascal, Perl, Powershell, Basic, C and an assortment of shell languages. Got out of programming about the time "oo" became the rage - and never looked back. My career went into sysadmin, networking and virtualization and loved it. You've got the coolest toys... sonic screwdriver, phaser, communicator and a copy of Forbidden Planet.

[@alexmad69]

Scala is the best: strong functional support for immutability and functions as arguments, parallel collections, implicits, higher kinded types, powerful pattern matching, macros for metaprogramming

[@Blink_____]

The point of the "hot new thing" being decades old is kind of striking, when you consider other aspects of our culture. For the past decade "retro" has been a big boom. Movies and Vinyl especially. To a lesser extent fashion has been coming around too, and I'm pretty sure we are gonna start seeing coke bottle glasses again before the 2030s hits.

[@rmsci4002]

Has nothing to do with it being retro. It is because it was based on solid mathematical principles. Those don't wear out.

[@rudyardkipling4517]

sounds about right, the hot new thing would be in her 20s :p

[@benjaminmelikant3460]

Warning: text wall incoming Reflecting on the idea that we "need to pick a language and all decide to use it across the entire domain", I ended up with a few thoughts. Bob mentions biology, chemistry, mathematics, and others as domains where representation of information was eventually boiled down to a single representation rather than many representations. I see two issues with this. The first is that, even within these disciplines, I don't believe that to be 100% true. I can't speak much of most of these domains, but mathematics is an interesting case in my opinion. Certainly the notation of information for calculus is much different than the notation for basic arithmetic. Yes, calculus builds on basic arithmetic, but most people wouldn't understand a geometric, algebraic, trigonometric, or calculus formula simply by knowing the basic arithmetic operations. There are different representations in each sub-domain because each sub-domain has a unique goal in mind. And this is where my second point comes in. There are so many languages within the sphere of computer science because there are so many different things to express. I have seen it in other comments already, but I think most software developers will realize that the base language requirements for something like a game engine or a real-time embedded OS are much different than the requirements for a web UI. They are all within the domain of software development / computer science of course, but they are all unique sub-domains within that domain. I would argue that there is no such thing as a true "general-purpose" language; that is, that no single language is perfect for all programming tasks; rather, most langauges are, to one degree or another, domain-specific or specialized languages. If we all sat down and decided "okay, our one and only programming language is going to be a virtual machine language" for instance, in what language do we write the virtual machine? We would, at best, need two implementations of the same language; one targeting bare metal so that we could write a VM layer on top of the hardware (or at least a bootstrapper of sorts), then the language itself with its runtime within the virtual machine. The option would exist to move the virtual machine into hardware, but that only moves the problem of needing a "bare-metal" language to the domain of hardware development, it doesn't eliminate the issue. Furthermore, hardware-based language abstraction makes it impossible to harness the raw power of the hardware when you need it; you are throwing out the potential to utilize hardware to its fullest, unless your language does allow bare access to the hardware, in which case I would ask what differentiates this language from something like C, which can be used to write high-level software, but can be mixed with assembly to access hardware features that you may not otherwise be able to access? True, it isn't exactly the same, but I feel like it violates the concept you are going for. Certainly you couldn't do this in an ultra simplistic syntax language. I understand where you are coming from; if we could worry less about such and such language playing nice with this other language and reading source code would be simple because we all just know the same language, we could in some way eliminate issues with compatibility and such, but this is how I see the other side of that coin I guess. I enjoyed the talk a great deal and don't want to take anything away from it. This is just my "other side of the fence" perspective on this issue.

[@bertvanbrakel]

I think we need to make it easier to be more compatible. Our toolchains should probably align more. Look at the state of dependency management. There are so many different tools to do it, and so many ways it's implemented, however at it's core it's a rather simple problem. Either we can come up with a single component to do this and have it customisable per problem requirement, or we break it down into smaller parts and allow easier ways to interface multiple dependency tools in a sane way After decades of programming, I'm still finding one has to cobble together a bunch of random stuff and scripts to make things work together. It shouldn't be such a PITA. There are common themes across all the languages and tools I've come across, and it's always seemed stupid different software tribes just end up reinventing the wheel

[@absalomdraconis]

@@bertvanbrakel : The problem with dependency management is that you need to embrace the idea of multiple sources providing the same resource, which you then have to score so that you can choose between them, and potentially even cause a recompilation storm as your newly installed program or code provides some component that allows the other components which it depends on to themselves provide additional components- people rarely want to deal with this, including the people that should be writing the supporting tools. Among other things, it's naturally a logic language field, and the only things folks are normally aware of in that field are the oft-neglected Make and Prolog.

[@absalomdraconis]

A "last language" could probably be created, but it would fundamentally go against his rejection of machine code. In fact, at the end of the day it would probably be more of a Forth than his beloved Lisp variants.

[@superlative_custard]

Loved this video. It's a touchstone.

[@richardgreen7225]

Programming notations deal with different relationship concepts. A typical "language framework" contains at least 4 notations. > Procedure (steps to run when header is invoked) > Data (data-type, data-structure, sometimes meta-data) > input-output (mapping from storage [database] onto memory variables and vice-versa) > format (notation indicates how the programmer wants the data to be displayed) In addition, a framework might also include notations or conventions for: > Build (make) - How to assemble components. > Wiring - Identifies which actors will participate in a collaboration. > Dialog - Given a stimulus in a context, what is the response. (menu, chat-bot) > Plan tree nodes - Given a set of pre-conditions are true, what transitional code (if any) creates a post-condition. The "tree" has a root "goal". Many tree-leafs (threads) of a plan may be running simultaneously. - Almost all of these "notations" can be written in "simple English" - a notation that looks like written English with some structural conventions. Format requires a mark-up notation which allows the "fill-in-the-blank" convention to be expressed with minimal excursions from WYSIWYG.

[@ffggddss]

The only language I've encountered that I didn't hear him mention, is Ada. Or did he, and I missed it? "Anybody remember core [memory]?" Yes! And while I can't say I remember this, my dad related to me a time *_before_* there was core memory! (He got to do some thesis work on Johnny von Neumann's computer, ca 1950-51. I was just a toddler.) Fred

[@WilliamHostman]

I remember a number of odd things that are older than me... like rope memory and core memory. And the need to refresh them. I also remember typing punch cards for college students when in Jr. High, because the only time the thing was free was during their classes. I know that the average digital watch these days has a better CPU than my TS-1000....

[@ffggddss]

@@WilliamHostman To be clear, I wasn't saying that I remember things that are older than me; core memory came into being when I was alive, but too small to know what a computer even was. The first computer my dad worked on, before core memory existed, had some way of using a grid of "pixels" (not a term that existed then) on a CRT screen as random-access memory. I never quite understood what he was describing, but one of its pitfalls was that when some part of that screen got "burned in," you had to write your program so as to avoid that region of memory! My own first use of a computer was in college, when you typed your program on punch (Hollerith) cards, submitted your "deck," and hoped your output, on 14"(or 17"?)-wide track-feed computer paper, would arrive for pickup outside the computer room in a day or two. Fred

[@NUCLEARARMAMENT]

@@ffggddss It sounds like Williams Tubes to me.

[@WilliamHostman]

@@ffggddss Most of us remeber things from before our birth - because we have this thing called language, which allows us to share experiences we weren't present for. Like remembering that George Washington was one of the first US general officers. Video has made that even better than language alone. Remembering those isn't abnormal... at least not since the 1930's.

[@ffggddss]

@@WilliamHostman I adopt a narrower meaning of "memory." What you're describing, I would call a memory of hearing or reading or seeing a video or movie about it, not actually remembering the thing itself. Fred

[@Joel-mp2oo]

One main thing I take away from this, is I really need to start learning LISP... Oh and we all need to unite ! 😁

[@Nemesis816]

Let’s build LISP communism, my glorious comrades. I am in tears writing this now.

[@AndersJackson]

Start using Emacs, and you are running a REPL with lisp, that have an editor you can configure with Lisp. Then take a look at Magit and Org-mode with literal programming with Babel-mode (extension of Org-mode).

[@Collaborologist]

Clojure

[@Evan490BC]

@@Collaborologist Or Scheme/Racket.

[@valdisk3502]

Some salient features missing from Bob's talk: delimited continuations (Scala), Communicating serial processes (Go), sparse memory (human brain). These are all great features that are not mere restrictions on the venerable omnipotent LISP. Sparse memory also manifests itself as content-addressable storage, just wait for my Web3 platform to see. Also, I have two meta-features up the sleeve, one for processors (microcode-level programming) and one for the language AUM, my last language candidate, which offers order-of-magnitude more freedom than ML. In AUM, you can define 2+3 to mean: take the character "+", repeat three times and call the duplication function (called "2") on it, producing the two-element list ("+++" "+++"). It is supposed to be as fast as C after compilation, but more compact, both the binaries and the source. There is still room to improve the syntax and functionality of current languages, I am willing to share my research with qualified partners.

[@ElixirVitae]

I’m very intrigued by your comment. Can you tell me more about what you are doing and where I can go to learn about your work?

[@david203]

Very familiar introduction. My first computer in 1965 was the 12-bit word LINC, which evolved to the LINC-8 and PDP-12. Later I worked at DEC on the PDP-8 and OS-8. You could hear some bugs by listening to the speaker, which monitored one bit of the accumulator or address register. I clinched several job interviews by keying in a three-instruction program that displayed a pretty waterfall consisting of a giant parabola modified by roundoff errors.

[@Radioposting]

The fly in the ointment of language theory and practicality could be GTP-3 (Open AI). GTP-3 boasts to write code based on natural language explanations fed to the AI by non-programmers. Do we really want mid-level corporate managers writing code? In the words of Lt. Uhura (Star Trek III), "Be careful what you wish for... You may get it."

[@lfmtube]

I think the path will be in the direction of business specialists writing their own procedures using low-code based services. And true high-level developers are going to write the microservices or modules to use as the basis for those procedures.

[@Radioposting]

@@lfmtube Maybe the new model will be similar to airline pilots. Other than takeoff and landing, they really don't do much other than supervising the flight computer.

[@johnaweiss]

"Do we really want mid-level corporate managers writing code?" No, we want all humans writing code.

[@albertbatfinder5240]

“The code is the data, the data is the code”. Wasn’t the very first great insight the realisation that the code and data could live side by side in the computer, and the second breakthrough (debugging at 3am after the first great insight was implemented) that the code should never be treated as data? Call me conservative, but I never want the code being executed to be different to the code I wrote down. You might as well ask me to feed my code through an Enigma Machine before compiling it. Turing loved to modify a bit of code on the fly. Yeah, and Turing couldn’t see the need for subroutines. Axiom: if you’re settling on a language that Turing would approve, you have definitely gone wrong because the rest of us ain’t Turings.

[@absalomdraconis]

There is some actual value in what he's talking about (aka self-modifying code), but you tend to see it restricted to dynamically loaded libraries (which are so useful that they even existed in the DOS days, in the form of things like overlays) and things like Forth (which aren't really _languages,_ but instead _command interfaces_ that provide some specific language). Self-modifying code in real-world use is very rarified because it's rarely of value.

[@zyansheep]

Sounds like lisp

[@davivify]

I think the biggest revolutionary leap in programming languages, imo, is object orientation. By far. It's helped me to do things that would be very difficult without it. I started out with classes as containers and that was very good in terms of statically organizing my code/data. Thence onto inheritance, though I never really did much with that until... polymorphism. That was the key that allowed me to code abstractions. And helped me hugely in creating code that told you what it was. Allowed me to do a complex undo/redo system by designing the underlying architecture separately from the constellation of operations, each with their mate. And the beauty is it's extensible. Allowed me to create a token list for a lexer/parser, where I create the list separately from the gazillion token types I use or could create in the future. When designing complex software it's crucial, imo, to understand the design paradigm *before* committing to code. How much time I've wasted, how much trouble I got myself into without a full and thorough understanding of the problem domain. And therefore writing garbage code. Of course, an OOP doesn't do this for you. You need to put in the time with whatever design tools are available. Employ Use-Case charts, state diagrams, flowcharts, interaction diagrams. Use whiteboards, crayon on glass, dinner napkins, backs of envelopes, etc. Have long discussions with your bloodhound - whatever works, but get that paradigm understood ! Then design using the OOP structures, and thankfully they're there for just that purpose !

[@mattsimon4167]

For a good example of graphical/module there is Verilog and VHDL and it can program FPGAs. though they are both electronic and domain specific, and progress there is being focused on abstracting the graphical to traditional text language.

[@SimGunther]

44:04 I'm with the crowd on this one. The "write once, run everywhere" philosophy is ironically antiquated given that we're supposed to "run away from the hardware". GC without a large amount of lag or spike in compute time they has a smaller footprint than manually managed memory is a noble goal, but I'll stick with play in my pointer garden without a VM, thx. :) P.S. you still can get memory leaks in a garbage collected language, like WTF??

[@homelessrobot]

and even if you could completely eliminate memory leaks, memory is just a special case of resource management. there is no general strategy for automatic resource management. its basically the halting problem.

[@oysteinsoreide4323]

C# has a big advantage since it is compiled to intermediate language, and compiled to native machine code on the machine running the code.

[@oysteinsoreide4323]

SimGunther Garbage collection saves also things. But there are ways to optimize garbage collection.

[@oysteinsoreide4323]

SimGunther Yes GC is not a way to say that you don't have to think about resources. GC don't save bad code.

[@homelessrobot]

@@oysteinsoreide4323 the problem comes when you write a thing that is isomorphic to dynamic memory allocation, but its too abstracted from memory primitives for the garbage collector to infer this. Or, when something about your memory usage patterns prevents the freeing of memory from actually leading to being able to use the memory again later (memory fragmentation, generally). GC is /supposed/ to be a way to say that you don't have to think about memory management; but even this isn't really true.

[@DieterGribnitz]

Wow, this is the first time I ever heard the specs of a macbook read aloud that seems impressive with a reasonable price point. Turns out the trick is to compare it to a 3 or 4 decades old machine.

[@BattousaiHBr]

also, he VASTLY underweighted the CPU performance since he assumed the same IPC (instructions per clock). modern hardware is leaps and bounds faster than decades old hardware even when running at the same frequency.

[@JasonGabler]

This was fantastic, thank you. I haven't had this much pedagogical fun (where I wasn't actually typing) in decades. For those of you looking for when Deep Thought finally gets to answering the question: @33:23

[@dale116dot7]

My favourite programming language is assembly. Grew up on 6502 assembly. Moved to 68HC11 and 68HC08. Still program lots of assembly on MC9S08 and MC9S12.

[@Alkis05]

12:15 dwarf fortress hydraulic computer is turing complete. They implemented space invaders in dwarf fortress.

[@bloguetronica]

Props to this man. Thanks to his lecture on clean code, I managed to review a code I've written, break every long function into its components, and now my program improved substantially. I'll apply these principles in the future. They made the code far more readable and maintainable.

[@toddmiller5046]

IMO single responsibility is the key to building good software. If you follow anything, follow this.

[@petermaquine8173]

Hi to all colleagues. I remember auto-lisp (autocad) i use it to make script for plan for french Nuclear plants. I remember turbo-prolog, I used it to illustrate a project for a university. Good all times, because yes it's always the same things that we old dev. are seeing decade after decade. Who remember Fred?

[@you2449]

As a fiction writer (and non-programmer) I needed a programming language for a major plot point in a story. I chose Cobol w/out knowing anything about it. It just sounded right. And now your description of it's weirdness (and absurdity?) confirms it was the right, and only, choice. So glad. (Cuz I wasn't about to go back and change it.) Loved all the rest of this too.

[@utubewatcher806]

of course, Cobol gets bashed--and, yet, every $ transaction; every flight booked, etc, etc goes through a line of Cobol code.

[@you2449]

@@utubewatcher806 That's pretty awesome! Thx., Yet It Lives!

[@handris99]

I remember him saying elsewhere that "in the end we are all going to be programming in LISP" :) Edit: Just finished the thing. Looks like the apple didn't fell far from the tree xD Clojure it is for now. I should take a look at it.

[@absalomdraconis]

I'll make a prediction now: in the end, even if what we program in acts similarly to LISP or Clojure (which it probably won't in important ways), it'll look like C. Some people say that syntax is a solved problem and not an issue, but it is quite clear that the solution in question does _not_ look like Lisp.

[@KentHambrock]

I love how ADHD this keynote is. It makes great points while continuing to be very weird.

[@nikthefix8918]

Yeah he reminds me of Lewis Black the standup comic.

[@ricardo.mazeto]

I have ADHD, and I just noticed after reading your comment how I paid attention to the whole video without getting distracted, which is a rare thing. 😅

[@josephmeditz7956]

Great talk! Interesting, informative, clear and succinct. Who is this fellow?

[@bhangrafan4480]

For some decades I had understood that the next development in computing was going to be increasingly parallel architectures which would require some new innovations in programming for greatly parallel processing.

[@jitspoe]

"We want our language to run in a virtual machine." "We don't want to be close to the metal" "We want our language to be garbage collected" You've never done game development, where you have to fit an entire frame's worth of calculations in a 16ms (or smaller) budget with no spikes, have you?

[@homelessrobot]

The whole premise is bunk IMO. "We keep coming back to lisp", no, we really don't. "emacs exists" doesn't really support this either.

[@SimGunther]

@@homelessrobot GC imposed languages are like being trapped in a prison as one would not be trusted to make their own decisions. Just let us either turn off the GC ourselves or not impose it at all while the low level programmers write the garbage collectors that we can use wherever and whenever we want.

[@CodesGuide]

@@SimGunther That's actually a great idea. More freedom to us coders while we choose the tools best for the job at hand.

[@devcybiko]

I've written such code - and you're right. Programming on the bare metal gives the best results. But if your processor was fast enough, and you had enough memory - you could program in a more symbolic language. And don't forget - JVM-like languages can be compiled to machine code (and implement JIT compilation and Hot Spots). It's not unreasonable to contemplate a single programming language that meets Bob's requirements.

[@devcybiko]

Also, consider that Bob did allow for Domain Specific Languages. Real Time applications (of which I consider a video game to be) might require a language like C/C++ and they would then become a DSL.

[@ilemming]

I see lots of skepticism in the comments from people who seemingly never spent sufficient time writing Clojure. Those who scoff at Lisp because of parentheses, missing the significant point of Lisp. Just listen to any renowned computer scientist and a programmer (of the past and the modern times), be that Alan Kay, Yukihiro Matz, Guy Steele, Paul Graham, John Carmack, or even Donald Knuth. None of them, not a single one of them ever scoffed at Lisp. Those who complain there are no jobs and Lisp is not popular perhaps don't even know that Clojure is the most popular language in its category of programming languages with strong FP emphasis. It is more popular than Haskell, OCaml, F#, Purescript, Elm, Erlang, Elixir, and even Scala. It is being used in production and not for small things. Apple using Clojure (I think for their payments system); Walmart has built their massive receipt processing in Clojure; Cisco has built and actively developing their security infrastructure in Clojure; Funding Circle building a peer-to-peer lending platform; Nubank - the biggest digital bank in South America actively using Clojure; The list goes on: Grammarly, Pandora, CircleCI, Spotify, Pitch, Netflix, and even NASA. Clojure is a hosted language; it potentially can be extended to work on top of any PL ecosystem. It already works on top of JVM, .Net, and Javascript. These days Clojurists figuring out interop with Python and R. There are Clojure-like languages that work with Lua, Go, Rust, Erlang, etc. Bob is right, Clojure has some characteristics of the unifying language of the future. Whatever language you're using right now, I can assure you, there will be some Clojure-like Lisp dialect that can work on top of it, unless it exists already. Do you want to be a programmer, or do you want to be a programming language linguist who has to learn a new language syntax every six months? Like Rich Hickey once said: "Make programmable programs and solve problems, not puzzles."

[@matthoyt3240]

Give you one huge hint where languages are going. Go look at what's been added to Java and C#. Go look at Rust, Swift, and Kotlin. We are slowly marching down the path of ML family of languages (Haskell, SML, F#, and OCaml), not Lisp. Lisp is very good for some things, just like Prolog. What most businesses want is a language you can come back after a few years of not touching and be able to at least figure out what it does, and easy to edit. With a lisp, it could be even more problematic due to the macro system and lack of static type checking. The reason there are lisp like languages available everywhere is they are easy to write. BTW the most popular impure functional programming language is JavaScript by a lot. The most popular impure functional programming language on the JVM is Kotlin. We are seeing a new wave of programming languages due to the multi-core problem and security issues. Clojure is one of the earlier ones. The VMs are actually holding us back right now because the creators don't want to break backward compatibility, which is understandable. Hopefully, this will happen at some point with the success of Go, Swift, and Rust, where a large company willing to take a risk.

[@ilemming]

​ @Matt Hoyt Wherever languages "are going" - Lispers keep innovating as well. It may even feel sometimes that they are one step ahead. Most of those "new features" you mentioned, getting added to C#, Java, Kotlin, etc. are mostly syntax additions. Syntax, interestingly, complects meaning and order, often in a very unidirectional way. Gerald Jay Sussman makes that point in "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs," the book first published in 1979. And even today, it has not lost its relevance. I have never heard anyone, any single established and renown computer scientist ever (not 40 years ago, nor a decade ago, and neither today) saying that SICP is outdated and shouldn't be used to teach programming. You can argue all day long, about what's better - statically or dynamically typed PLs, languages with HKTs or without, generics or no, etc. But what usually doesn't get discussed much is the importance of the simplicity. And Clojure is one of the very few languages that made simplicity the cornersone of its philosophy. "Simplicity is hard work. But, there's a huge payoff. The person who has a genuinely simpler system - a system made out of genuinely simple parts, is going to be able to affect the greatest change with the least work. He's going to kick your ass. He's gonna spend more time simplifying things up front and in the long haul he's gonna wipe the plate with you because he'll have that ability to change things when you're struggling to push elephants around." And that's the ultimate truth about being a successful programmer - to strive for simplicity. And again, anyone who feels that programming is about learning new syntax every six months, sure, enjoy your ride. Programming is much more than that though. I'm not saying Clojure is the definitive answer and an ultimate silver bullet. I like other programming languages as well. But you seem to be measuring all Lisp dialects using the same yardstick. Lisp, as you (or most programmers) may have known - perhaps is slowly dying, yes, but more and more Lisps emerge every day. Those who don't see that, are usually those who chose not to care about those things, that's all. Lisp is not "very good for some things". It's not a discrete solution - it's an idea. One of the most magnificent ideas in computer science. And like Uncle Bob stated: "it just refuses to die". Because good ideas are not meant to die, they may evolve, but won't die.

[@KirillKhalitov]

@@ilemming "Gerald Jay Sussman makes that point in "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs," the book first published in 1979. And even today, it has not lost its relevance". mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/the_end_of_an_era_1/ But I think the book is still great.

[@frankgerlach4467]

If you look for a "standard language" to document algorithms, I suggest Algol, Pascal or Ada for imperative. LISP for functional. Prolog for logic.

[@sendthistojohn]

DEC pdp-8a/e was my 1st programming experience from 83-85. I used to run the diagnostic and debug the computer's hardware, via loading registers and single-step debugging through the code.

[@cybervigilante]

As long as it's not Java. "It's Tuesday. Let's make a new language."

[@blenderpanzi]

I guess the life times of Rust take away the same thing as functional languages do, but just not as much? And there is one more paradigm: logic oriented programming langues (e.g. Prolog). Those aren't based on lambda calculus, but on mathematical logic, if I remember what I learned at university correctly. Not sure how general purpose that is.

[@GunterZochbauer]

It seems he hasn't looked at Rust yet, but I think he mentioned Prolog early on in this video.

[@brymusic1542]

I used to program almost exclusively in Prolog. It can be general purpose though it's real strength is in symbolic processing. It didn't really catch on because there was little support for it in mainstream IDE's, so newer programmers aren't likely to be enticed by it.

[@MrJamesstarr]

Rust is probably the latest example of a new programming language with a new “thing”

[@brawndo8726]

Interesting observation. Rust is both generous, yet incredibly strict with assignment. Is it enough to be considered a new paradigm 🤷‍♂️

[@opendrivers]

Well spoken, thanx!

[@lorisg]

we, as industrial automation programmers, have already made our choice since 1993. the IEC 61131-3 standard defines a group of 5 languages and therefore we benefit from the advantages of the great unification. In the real world only 2 of these 5 are widespread: LD is a graphical language for simple applications. ST is a text language for complex applications.