Every language gradually evolves towards the neatest, least ambiguous, and the cleanest possible way for the statements to be expressed.
Unfortunately, this process requires external consciousness to keep using the language.
The only conscious beings capable of using languages to date are puny humans. Deeply unfortunately for computer languages, upon being used by puny humans, mere mortals themselves also evolve — towards becoming blind to universal ugliness of each particular language.
Which ruins the whole purpose of language evolution, when it comes to mainstream programming languages. Universality is unreachable in computer languages as of early 21st century, much like universality in computation was unreachable two thousand years ago: there was no critical mass of people who have internalized the need for it.
In essence, this annoying adaptiveness of human beings is that very reason we can't have one good language, but have to go through plenty of bad ones, with relatively short and predictable lifespans.
For instance, after engaging in a conversation about immutable strings, I am now certain there's a nonzero number of software engineers in the world who would argue that
Thus, it's not Java or PHP that suck.
#PEBCAK
Unless, of course, you believe computer languages were all created five thousand years ago, in their present form.
∼ ∼ ∼
From 2015 as well.
Unfortunately, this process requires external consciousness to keep using the language.
The only conscious beings capable of using languages to date are puny humans. Deeply unfortunately for computer languages, upon being used by puny humans, mere mortals themselves also evolve — towards becoming blind to universal ugliness of each particular language.
Which ruins the whole purpose of language evolution, when it comes to mainstream programming languages. Universality is unreachable in computer languages as of early 21st century, much like universality in computation was unreachable two thousand years ago: there was no critical mass of people who have internalized the need for it.
In essence, this annoying adaptiveness of human beings is that very reason we can't have one good language, but have to go through plenty of bad ones, with relatively short and predictable lifespans.
For instance, after engaging in a conversation about immutable strings, I am now certain there's a nonzero number of software engineers in the world who would argue that
Integer.Add(Integer(2), Integer(2)) is cleaner than 2+2.Thus, it's not Java or PHP that suck.
#PEBCAK
Unless, of course, you believe computer languages were all created five thousand years ago, in their present form.
∼ ∼ ∼
From 2015 as well.