New Languages: Brave New World

The tech world has seen a number of languages emerge, grow, and become super popular, but equally it has seen its fair share of failures and things that make you ask yourself “just why?” We initially had the dominant set of languages introduced to us many years ago (in the 80s), which are still popular and widely used; these include C++, C, Fortran, Erlang, Pearl, SQL, Objective C, and so on. There is nothing to suggest these languages will die out completely or even lose their market share, but the world of programming really came to life in the 90s in an era known as the “Internet age” where a new set of languages came to the party.

During this period, a set of “special” languages emerged and I personally would go as far as to say they revolutionized the way we programme. These were languages like JavaScript, Python, Java, R, Haskell, Ruby, and PHP.

What’s more interesting is that you see a huge demand for these languages currently on the market (even after 20 years!) and you certainly wouldn’t categorize them as new; so why are they still so popular? Has the tech market stalled? Have developers not moved on? Do we have everything we need from these languages? And what’s next for the future?

The following image helps explain the introduction and growth of these languages, in terms of use and adoption; it’s based on Redmonks’ analysis which compares the popularity of Stackoverflow tags and Github repositories:

This graph shows a number of languages with the movement from left to right as a positive one. It’s apparent that the languages that were introduced in the 90s are at the forefront of programming; there are even few from the 80s, which supports my earlier statement that older languages don’t die out but seem to improve and adapt over time.

However with time and the ever changing tech market, new demands always arise and where there are problems, there are developers with solutions. Recently and over the past few years, we have seen the emergence of new programming languages. Interestingly they seem to be very similar to the older ones, but they have that extra oomph that makes them so popular.

I would like to introduce you to a set of languages that may be around for many years to come and may even shape the tech world in the future. Could they be the next generation?

Scala is a multi-paradigm programming language supports both object-oriented and functional programming. It is a scripting language used to build applications for the JVM. Scala has seen increased adoption from Java developers due to its flexibility, as it provides the ability to carry out functional programming capabilities. Could Scala replace Java?

Go, introduced by Google, is a statically-typed programming language with syntax similar to C. It has been compared and seen as a viable alternative to major languages such as Java or C++. However, Go is different thanks to its inherent support for concurrent programming, where it independently executes tasks, and computations are designed to interact with each other that can be run on a single processor or multi-core processors.

Swift is Apple’s new programming language, unveiled in June 2014. It is set to replace Objective-C as the lingua franca for developing apps for Apple operating systems. As a multi-paradigm language, it has expressive features familiar to those used to working with modern functional languages, while also keeping the object-oriented features of Objective-C.

F# is a multi-paradigm programming language that encompasses object-oriented features but is predominantly focused on functional programming. F# was developed by Microsoft as an alternative to C#, touted as a language that can do everything C# can but better. The language was primarily designed with the intention of applying it to data-driven concepts. One of the greatest benefits of using F# is the interoperability with other .NET languages. This means code written in F# can work with different parts of an application written in C#. 

Elixir  is a functional programming language that leverages features of the Erlang VM and has syntax similar to Ruby. Elixir offers concurrency, high scalability, and fault-tolerance, enabling higher levels of productivity and extensibility while maintaining compatibility with Erlang’s tools and ecosystem. 

Clojure is a dynamic, general-purpose programming language that runs on the Java Virtual Machine that offers interactive development with the speed and reliable runtime of the JVM. It takes advantage of Java libraries, services, and all of the resources of the JVM ecosystem.

Dart, introduced by Google, is a pure object-oriented language with C-style syntax. Developers look at Dart as a JavaScript competitor that offers simplicity, flexibility, better performance, and security. Dart was designed for web development and to scale complex web applications.

Juliais an expressive and dynamic multi-paradigm language. It’s as fast as C and it can be used for general programming. It is supposed to be a high level programming language with syntax similar to Matlab and Fortran. The language is predominantly used in the field of data science, and is one to keep an eye out for as it’s tipped to rival R and Python in the future.  

D is another multi-paradigm programming language that allows developers to write “elegant” code. There’s demand for D as it’s a genuine improvement over C++, while still offering all the benefits of C++. D can be seen as a solution for developers who build half their application in Ruby/Python and then use C++ to “deal with the bottle-necks”. D lets you have all the benefits of both of these languages.

Rust is another multi-paradigm systems language developed by Mozilla. It has been touted as a valuable alternative to C++. Rust combines strong concurrent programming, low-level abstraction, with super-fast performance, making it ideal for high-level projects. Rust’s type system ensures memory errors are minimized, a problem that is common in C++ with memory leaks. However, for the moment Rust isn’t designed to replace C++ but improve on its flaws, yet with advancements in the future you never know…

From this list of new languages, it’s clear that the majority of them were created to solve issues of previous languages. They are all subsets of a similar language, but better refined to meet the modern day developer’s needs. There has been an increase in support for functional languages and there’s also been a steep rise of multi-paradigm features, which suggests the need for flexible programming. Whether we’re looking at the new “class” of languages for the future remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure: they were designed to make a difference in an increasingly new and brave tech world.