An article in Science magazine about the future of programming languages

An article in Science magazine about the future of programming languages

[Alexandre E. Kopilovitch]

Here is a reference:

>SCIENCE, Volume 303, Issue 5662, Evolution of Language  
>dated February 27 2004, is now available at:
>
>	http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol303/issue5662/index.shtml?etoc
>...
>
>Software and the Future of Programming Languages
>     Alfred V. Aho
>     http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/303/5662/1331?etoc
>     p. 1331

Re: An article in Science magazine about the future of programming languages

[Preben Randhol]

On 2004-02-28, Alexandre E. Kopilovitch <aek@VB1162.spb.edu> wrote:
> Here is a reference:

Can you give any hints what is said in the abstract/article. I cannot
access it.



-- 
"Saving keystrokes is the job of the text editor, not the programming
 language."

Re: An article in Science magazine about the future of programming languages

[Alexandre E. Kopilovitch]

Preben Randhol wrote:

>> Here is a reference:
>
>Can you give any hints what is said in the abstract/article. I cannot
>access it.

I can't access full text of the article as well (they charge $10 per article
for non-subscribers), but all abstracts are accessible there (with free
registration). So here is the abstract:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Software and the Future of Programming Languages 

Alfred V. Aho 

Although software is the key enabler of the global information infrastructure,
the amount and extent of software in use in the world today are not widely
understood, nor are the programming languages and paradigms that have been
used to create the software. The vast size of the embedded base of existing
software and the increasing costs of software maintenance, poor security, and
limited functionality are posing significant challenges for the software R&D
community.

Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------




Alexander Kopilovitch                      aek@vib.usr.pu.ru
Saint-Petersburg
Russia

Re: An article in Science magazine about the future of

[tmoran]

> I can't access full text of the article as well (they charge $10 per article
> for non-subscribers), ...

  You aren't missing much, IMO.  Here's my summary:

  Software is important - worldwide current investment of trillions of
dollars.  It has an error rate of 10 ..  10,000 /million lines, so there
are between 5 million and 50 billion bugs.  There are 5 million
programmers, producing an average 5K lines/yr.  [and presumably between 50
and 0.05 bugs/year]

  The "How Programming Languages Have Evolved" section gives a 600 word
history of programming languages.  Ada is not mentioned.

  Trends mentions Simplicity, Robustness, Portability, Internet
compatibility, and Concurrency.  It mentions C# and Java.  Part of
Simplicity is having a syntax familiar to C and C++ programmers.

  Languages of the Future mentions application specificity and research on
speech, gesture, etc.  "Each field has at least one language that is used
primarily by the practioners of that field.  Most college students today
are familiar with languages for editing documents, formatting papers,
creating presentations, and performing calculations."

Making Software Systems More Reliable mentions things like N-version
programming but "...programmers tend to make the same kind of mistakes
even if they don't communicate with one another."  "Researchers are
actively exploring many techniques to make more reliable software systems,
keeping the frailties of human programmers in mind.  Static type checking
and model checking provide promising avenues for detecting errors earlier
in the software life cycle."  Resilient, or even self-correcting, software
will take some time.

Re: An article in Science magazine about the future of

[Chad R. Meiners]

<tmoran@acm.org> wrote in message news:Wor0c.148720$jk2.582015@attbi_s53...
> > I can't access full text of the article as well (they charge $10 per
article
> > for non-subscribers), ...
>
>   You aren't missing much, IMO.

I second this opinion.

Re: An article in Science magazine about the future of

[Amir Yantimirov]

Great site for language developers:
http://www.artima.com

Many of my thoughts occar not new:
http://www174.pair.com/yamir/programming/citations.htm

Amir Yantimirov