Computational Theology Gilad Bracha's Sun Weblog

A rough list in increasing importance: Ad "classical" linguistics: modern refactoring Java IDE's alleviate a lot of the pain that the imperfect language definition causes (type inference for a local definition, for example). You can read this in both directions: (pro language:) hints that an IDE can give nowadays should be implemented in the language definition (a ::= <expr> meaning the same as <expr> + Extract local: "a"), or vice versa, Java+IDE is actually good enough, concentrate your efforts on something else. One area to investigate: Spring has made it incredibly popular to describe one's "architecture" in XML definitions. It's painful, no static checking, yet, people prefer it over Java source. XML: I deal a lot with "semistructured" content. The roundtrip between Java and XML-Template languages is painful. Language constructs for dealing with something akin to "the infoset" are welcome. Ad hoc tuple types. C-Omega feels quite good. Paramount: address "system" issues: updating continously running systems, reconfiguration, reliable shutdown/reboot of subsystems. The current approach is pitiful and reminds me of cooperative multitasking OS's: "Library leaks resources? Please reboot the entire app-server." The Isolates effort will address some of it. .NET app domains look interesting, too. Language support? Value types w/ safe and efficient marshalling, proxies?

Posted by Matthias on September 05, 2005 at 04:13 AM PDT #

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Posted by 200.187.151.66 on September 06, 2005 at 12:29 PM PDT #

"...for the next-big-thing in programming languages." ...

IMHO it has already happened with Ken Iverson's programming language J: <url>http://www.jsoftware.com</url>

...and even with evolutionary OO versions of APL <url>http://www.dyalog.com</url>

Cheers

Posted by lophiomys on September 07, 2005 at 01:28 AM PDT #

Just a few more: * Language/VM support for dehydration of blocking threadsand rehydration on the event of unblocking. This would enable very scalable applications with respect to using threads. This is similar to what business process engines do. It would make it a lot easier to develop software parts that are conversation oriented such as userinterfaces, collaboration between systems/processes and protocols. * State-machine support at the language level. * Object-constraints. Language support for declaratively asserting constraints on objects; the obvious example being not-null support, etc. similar to the way it works in databases. Probably more interesting constraints on object-graphs could be invented; for instance constraints the describe clusters of objects. This can be implemented right now using aspects and annotations I guess.

Posted by Joost de Vries on September 08, 2005 at 01:02 PM PDT #

While I'm the sworn enemy of operator overloading in Java, I would be fascinated to see their implementation in some other language IFF their use could be intelligently limited to "number-like" entities.

I'm also curious to see if transactionality could be added at the language level - something like this hand-waving monstrocity, perhaps:

transaction(mydb,mymq) {
   Object foo = materialize(mydb);
   mymq.send(foo);
}

My two cents...

Posted by Dave Minter on September 11, 2005 at 11:45 AM PDT #

Some ideas:

• the language should not necessarily be small (because then you'll get large libraries anyway), but should rather be very expressive yet clean and easy to read. E.g. do not limit the combination of language constructs if not absolutely necessary. Why am I forced to wrap a lambda expression in an interface?
• syntax should be intuitive (actually do what it appears to be doing) and not hide certain consequences (e.g. things like aliasing should be clear, final reference type attributes should be immutable)
• do not assume the programmer is a bad programmer: allow him/her to do as many things as possible, so provide global variables, macros, operator overloading etc. I want to be able to add two BigDecimals together using a + operator! Good programmers can and will use these constructs properly, and bad programmers will write bad and unreadable code anyway. But don't include a goto statement. ;-)
• support for immutable objects and simple (data only) objects
• real types: 'interfaces' with attributes (Java interfaces already have (semantic) clashes with getters and setters, so there is no real excuse) and semantics (pre & post conditions, invariants) added
• classes that implement multiple, clashing interfaces should be able to give multiple implementations for the same method signature; the calling context (the declared interface of the object through which the message is called) should determine which is actually executed. E.g.

  class Cowboy implements Drawable, Shooter {
    as Drawable {
      draw(...) {...}
    }
    as Shooter {
      draw(...) {...}
    }
  }
  
  Drawable d = new Cowboy();
  Shooter s = new Cowboy();
  d.draw();  // calls draw() implementing Drawable interface
  s.draw();  // calls draw() implementing Shootable interface
  

• really nested packages with intuitive access rules (such as in UML)
• partial overriding of methods: method bodies contain an initial part, which is always executed, an overridable part, and a final part, which is also always executed. That way you can be sure that certain code is always executed, even when your method is overridden (e.g. a call to super.draw() first, cleaning up afterwards, logging, etc.) This makes many template methods superfluous.
• good concurrency support
• to be truly mythical: code should be able to modify itself when in God mode.......

  Posted by Henri Gerrits on September 16, 2005 at 10:30 AM PDT #

Interestingly, most of the things Henri Gerrits is looking for are native to or can be done easily in Ruby.

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