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The Next Big LanguageJune 10, 2008
I read an interesting blog post tonight, and it looks like I've found a blog that is my cup of tea. A guy who's really interested in programming languages and has lots of commentary. The post about NBL (the fabled "Next Big Language") was interesting. Part of what got my attention was the assertation that basically everyone who attempts to create NBL "will almost certainly fail". And he's right. But that shouldn't discourage people, because the point of developing a programming language shouldn't be to create NBL -- at the very most, it should be to develop new ideas, which some day have an impact on a later NBL. Here are some of my reasons for developing a programming language: 1. | Love: For me, it's because it's something that is a lot of fun. It's mostly the journey, not the destination, that makes it worth while. |
| 2. | Ideas: The impetus for creating a new language should be giving your ideas a place to grow and flurish. Creating NBL is less about new ideas and more about "not sucking", which means your language has to adhere to a long list of qualities which involves many thousands of hours of work. |
| 3. | Personality: We're all different, and part of life is finding ways to express what makes you uniquely you. The point of writing a book isn't to create "the best book ever", it's to give your inner voice a medium to express itself, to make something that is unique and beautiful, and representative of who you were made to be. That's not unlike authoring a programming language. |
Prediction: The cloud
June 10, 2008
This one isn't exactly rocket science in 2008, but here goes: In the future, your information will be, for the most part, "in the cloud", which means, it won't exist on just one device, like a PC, but on several. Lots of it will be at your home, some of it will be on your person, and almost all of it will be on a server somewhere. But the point is this: That it won't matter whether you're using a PC at home, a PC at work, a mobile device on the run: Your data will always be with you, and device boundaries will be almost non-existant. Of course, it will be the Internet that will power this, allowing information to flow and sych from place to place as needed, transparently.
This kind of thing has developed a fair bit over the last 10 years, but it's got a long, long way to go. Here are some use cases:
 | A personal media library, including music, movies, etc. which are "in the cloud" and transparently accessible from your TV, your desktop PC, any one of your family member's laptops or handheld devices, even your car. View or buy from any location. Connect your hand held device to a friend's TV and watch your movies there. |
| Personal documents in the cloud + search. |
| Work documents accessible from home or on the run just as easily as if they were at work. |
Put a number on it: I think by 2025 the cloud will be pretty fantastic.
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iPhone 2.0
June 10, 2008
This week, Apple presented a keynote at WWDC that focused on iPhone 2.0 software. With this release, Apple is targeting the enterprise, and it looks like they've been pretty busy! This video of the keynote is well worth the watch. Impressive stuff.
I share a lot of Apple's design philosophies... and yet I've never owned a Mac. hmm.
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