From: "David A. Boyd" Date: 2006-08-09T19:24:27+09:00 Subject: Re: Language chatter ------=_Part_35280_9513238.1155118950959 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline > But now that I've declared Lisp to be a fascinating part of computing's > past (), the question is: what lies ahead? It > would be charitable to compare our current computer technology, and the > applications we put it to, to the model T and the candlestick telephone. > The more interesting challenge is to go beyond the solved problem of > Turing-complete computations, and figure out how to linguistically and > metaphorically express the large-scale information-driven processes that > humans work with every day. Someone upthread started hinting at that. > There are already some beautiful but flawed examples of this new > thinking (Erlang for one, the original conception of Smalltalk for > another), but it's till very very early. Avast ye landlubbers, it is not early, it is too late! We are caught in the Straights of Lotsof Microprocessor Real Estate and are doomed! To port lies the Land of Threads where many a ship will wreck for indeterminate reasons ( http://www.computer.org/portal/site/computer/menuitem.5d61c1d591162e4b0ef1bd108bcd45f3/index.jsp?path=computer/homepage/0506&file=cover.xml&xsl=article.xsl). To starboard lies the Land of Oz where multiparadigm core languages ( http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/book.html) may save us. Ahead, if we make it, is plain old Ruby running downwind powered by a single, immensely fast core named Deep Thought. Now, when Deep Thought and Ruby calculate the answer (which everyone knows is 42) to the ultimate question, the utimate answer will be that, since the ultimate question is (as every knows) "What is 6 x 9?" we must redesign Deep Thought (are you following this?) to reach the Singularity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near). Don't know if this area is inhabited by Daleks or the Borg, but I think I'll take the Land of Oz. Hard to starboard, Matey!! DavyB ------=_Part_35280_9513238.1155118950959--