Hacker News Reader

Comment by awb | Hacker News Reader

> Python will still be used 20 years from now

So much technology has come and gone since 2000. If innovation continues to accelerate I'd be hesitant to predict what 2040 will look like.

Programming might become so simple and automated that we won't need StackOverflow to the extent we do today.

It's really hard to predict the next year or two let alone the next 20.

View on HN

Programming languages from 2000 remain, though. C, C++, Java, JS, Python, etc. Even Fortran, Cobol and Lisp remain in use. There’s been attempts since the 80s to popularize visual and and higher level approaches to programming, but the traditional languages still dominate. And the newer ones like Go, Elixir and Julia are like the traditional C, Lisp and Fortrans.

Sure, some do, but past adoption is not a guarantee of future adoption. 20 years in the future is a long time. Just look at Flash. Who knows, maybe a Quantum OS will dominate that doesn't support Python.

So yes, if someone will still be using Python in 20 years, I'm sure you're right. But Python just as easily could be relegated to a niche domain while other languages take over a broader range of applications.

Especially if someone's able to build a programming translator where you can easily port your code base from one language to another.

I'm more responding to the idea that programming might become simple and automated, and we can't even predict technological changes a year or two out. You're right that Python could be relegated to a niche language in 20 years. That does happen.

What hasn't happened is a fundamental change to programming languages since the 1960s, despite the incredible increase in computing power, ubiquity of computers and much better tooling and environments for programming languages. There's no evidence that this is going to change anytime soon. All the popular new languages are similar to the popular older languages. If people don't want to program in JS, they transpile from Typescript. Even web assembly is a means to use a language like Rust on the web.

There's no simple, automated PL on the horizon that is going to replace JS, Java, Python, etc. There isn't one for spreadsheets, either, which is a technology from the 80s.

> What hasn't happened is a fundamental change to programming languages since the 1960s

I think the rise of HLLs is an example of a fundamental change. It was still reasonable to be hand-writing assembler for lots of applications in the '60s.

Sure, but HLLs are decades old and ubiquitous by the 80s. There's no reason to think PLs are going to fundamentally change in 20 years. They could, but it's just speculation at this point.

The argument over whether C was fast enough to obviate the need to write in assembly raged across the pages of Dr Dobb's Journal and Byte Magazine well into the mid '80s.

And that supports the argument that PL evolution is slow and unlikely to fundamentally change in 20 years time. Anyway, while people where arguing over C vs Assembly, there were Lisp and Smalltalk machines that didn't become the future.

Which while true for home micros, was already a proven fact since the early 60's in the big warehouse mainframes, with the Algol derived systems programming languages.

>Sure, some do, but past adoption is not a guarantee of future adoption.

Not a guarantee but still the best predictor.

>20 years in the future is a long time. Just look at Flash.

Flash had a lot of things against it. Proprietary (aside from niche implementations nobody really cared about or used), single vendor, not owing its platform (browser vendors owned it), and not really that useful (aside from casual online games its main other use was small animations and intro pages).

And even then, it also took the combined effort of 3 browser vendors to kill it, and its public ousting from its mobile platform from the biggest company on Earth...

More than this, C is from the 70s, and C++ is from the 80s.

This is 50 years from now for C. So I'd say python is likely to be still here 20 years from now, given how popular it is.

Python will still be around, but how popular it'll be is an open question. For example, Pascal or Perl were huge in their prime, and while they continue to stick around, the torch has been passed on.

Sure, but if Julia relegates Python to a niche and Rust does the same thing to C, they're still the same kind of approach to programming, and not some high level, mostly automated thing. They don't fundamentally change how people program.

When you write idiomatic Julia ... not C in a Julia syntax, but actually leverage the native power of Julia, yeah, you write code differently.

Same with idiomatic Python or Lisp circa 1960.

>So much technology has come and gone since 2000. If innovation continues to accelerate I'd be hesitant to predict what 2040 will look like.

Not much core technology -- e.g. programming languages and their ecosystems.

Frameworks, or specific business cases or tools ('grid computing', 'big data', 'no sql' etc) sure...

> If innovation continues to accelerate

It won't; that is a naive view. Innovation can't keep accelerating forever, and I would be surprised if it even keeps up its current pace; far likelier it's a sigmoid curve - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmoid_function

I don't know if you're talking about like the heat death of the universe, and so like nothing is "forever", but I don't see signs of programming language innovation slowing down at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com