Ask HN: Why there are so many programming languages?
5 comments
We have no idea what we are doing.
More seriously, Languages are linked to cognition and thought processes. I wouldn't go so far as to say they're a serialisation or marshalling of thought but you could see language as the rules that dictate the semantics of communication.
Like human languages, they simultaneously evolve and cross pollenate as we improve our 'vocabulary of semantics'.
More seriously, Languages are linked to cognition and thought processes. I wouldn't go so far as to say they're a serialisation or marshalling of thought but you could see language as the rules that dictate the semantics of communication.
Like human languages, they simultaneously evolve and cross pollenate as we improve our 'vocabulary of semantics'.
Anything that is "general purpose" can have many many variations. This is exactly the case with general purpose programming languages. Special purpose language (eg: SQL) doesn't lead to such situations.
Because people refuse to use hand-written machine instructions!
It's all about the transmission of ideas. "I'm going to take traits A and B from language X, and traits C and D from language Y, all while avoiding traits E and F from language Z." You try to isolate the good ideas from languages and suppress the bad ones -- but your new language is sure to have some bad ideas of its own, so somebody's bound to reinterpret it later if your language gets sufficiently popular. There's no language that's perfect for every single use-case, and there never will be, so this will probably continue on forever.