That is, "notation" evolves a lot more slowly than "technology". One reason I can think of is that notation is communication -- it requires 2 sides to agree. So just like we're using ancient network protocols and OS interfaces (e.g. the Unix syscall interface), we're also using ancient programming languages.
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Trivia: Awhile back I watched a talk by Larry Wall about Perl 6, and he actually said that this 2003 essay was one of the inspirations for Perl 6! I was reminded of that during the thread about Redis a week or so ago.
Languages evolve slowly because they're not really technologies. Languages are notation.
The Hundred Year Language http://paulgraham.com/hundred.html
That is, "notation" evolves a lot more slowly than "technology". One reason I can think of is that notation is communication -- it requires 2 sides to agree. So just like we're using ancient network protocols and OS interfaces (e.g. the Unix syscall interface), we're also using ancient programming languages.
----
Trivia: Awhile back I watched a talk by Larry Wall about Perl 6, and he actually said that this 2003 essay was one of the inspirations for Perl 6! I was reminded of that during the thread about Redis a week or so ago.