Wow - what's driving the quest for new programming languages? Is there a gap that is still not addressed by the existing languages?

At the core, there is only one control statement (GOTO) and a few operations that work on values in memory - IF, READ, WRITE, ADD etc. Anything else is a recipe that uses these ingredients.

▲ mpweiher 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's all just Turing machines, or Lambda calculus, or NAND gates

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAND_logic

Even FORTRAN was unnecessary.

Or maybe...maybe...we're having some problems that our current programming languages aren't addressing:

https://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/publications/media...

And so we should:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689492.3690052

	▲	justin66 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		It’s all ball bearings nowadays.

▲ ModernMech 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's like asking "What's with all these people writing books? Is there a gap that is still not addressed by existing books?" Programming languages are fun to write, it's not more complicated than that.

▲ cmrdporcupine 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

REBOL is 28 years old.

	▲	brabel 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		And Red has been around since 2013.

▲ wiz21c 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

languages are not about what you can do but what you can safely (that is, without introducing bugs) abstract while remaining productive (you can code easily) and conducive of human organizations (you can organize team communication around the code).

▲ Gormo 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Wow - what's driving the quest for new programming languages? Is

People having an interest in exploring the topic.

▲ novosel 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

True, true. But maybe somewhat reductive? What about complexity? The one arising from the growing code, and the other in the brain using the language? I feel new languages try to strategize in the domain of complexity management.

	▲	anonzzzies 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Are they? Examples (this (red/rebol) are OLD)? I see more crap. We already have ways to manage complexity; we have VERY advanced type systems that are finally feasible (my joy) but no one can work with them, and llms not yet. You can manage resources, logic, proofs etc all with typesystems. Rust is a step (people like it as they can make changes to large codebases without leakage somewhere you 'forgot' is there and others like it because there are less footguns), but we have the future already in a bunch of other languages it's just not used. So what do you mean with " I feel new languages try to strategize in the domain of complexity management."? (Disclaimer: I think the GP comment is of a level that I don't think should even be considered replying to, so I didn't)

▲ petralithic 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Languages are for humans, not for computers, who read binary anyway.