In 2040 someone will discover Haskell, shed tears on why C#++.cloud is so widespread instead in the industry, and use it to conclude the sorry state of the world. Seriously, don't compare what was published in papers 50 years ago with what business uses today, compare it with what is in papers now, and there are lots of interesting things going on all the time, when was the last time you even checked? Probabilistic programming? Applications of category theory to functional programming? Type theory? Software transactional memory?
Woody Allen did this great movie some time ago, "Midnight in Paris", where the main character, living in present times, dreams of moving back in time to the 1920s as the best time for literature ever. When the occasion to really go back appears though, he discovers the writers of the 1920s thought the best literature was done in 1890s, and so he has to go back again, then again, ... This talk is like this, sentiment blinding a sober assessment.
I feel like you missed the fact that he is obviously aware of the market/hardware reasons that caused programming to evolve in this manner, but it doesn't change the fact that this current model of programming may be a false evolutionary pathway.
He is pointing out experts tend to deny a perfectly valid way of exploring technology, because it doesn't follow the defined community-accepted standards built on assumptions of hardware and efficiency.
He's not not knocking the current model, he's not even saying these other models shouldn't have died, he's saying they shouldn't be forgotten and should often be reexamined in light of new technology which might make a better home for it.
Yes, he is actually, repeatedly. For instance, at 9:30 in the video: "There won't be any, like, markup languages, or stylesheet languages, right? That would make no sense".
Industry is screwy. My perspective is always from heavy industry, where we consider upgrading to PLCs that run on Pentium 90 architecture _amazing_. There's good reason for that reactionism; never fix what ain't broke.
But the same philosophy is used in the softer analytics, where using state of the art really is better. Sure giant clunky Excel sheets _work_, but we can build far better charting tools. We can run statistics easier than MiniTab. Data can be interactive, searchable, and computable instead of rituals and incantations to lousy proprietary one-off enterprise buzz-word-a-tron programs.
We _could_ be using analytical tools that shape themselves to the data. Instead, we have to convince management that it's _possible_ to analyze and map data easily in these new ways. But once they see how much more powerful these ideas are - how much faster and cheaper they work - lower mgt. is thrilled. And if upper management is profit oriented, they'll like it too.
But by this argument, no one is ever allowed to criticize the current state of the world compared with the past, lest he be accused of nostalgia-clouded vision.
I don't follow. The notion put forward was "hey people who like haskell, stop improving haskell and start adding visual studio support or else $BIGCORP won't use haskell". Nobody cares if $BIGCORP uses haskell, they are free to cripple themselves if they want. If $BIGCORP actually seriously wanted to use haskell, they could afford to pay someone to add visual studio support for haskell.
Well, there must be a reason why research keeps discovering new ways of computing and programming while the industry is stucked with the outdated methods.
I loved that movie, but I don't think it is too relevant here. I mean, you can rediscover and read any literature written in the 20s or the 1890s, which is exactly what our field is not doing.
It's simple: industry and academia are too far apart today.
Look at the languages that come out of academia, then look at the languages that have been invented over the last few decades which have gained traction. The latter list includes a lot of crazy items, things like Perl, PHP, Javascript, Ruby, and Python.
Some of them with their merits but for the most part hugely flawed, in some cases bordering on fundamentally broken. But what do they have in common? They were all invented by people needing to solve immediate problems and they are all designed to solve practical problems. Interestingly, Python was invented while its author was working for a research institute but it was a side project.
The point being: languages invented by research organizations tend to be too distanced from real-world needs of everyday programmers to be even remotely practical. Which is why almost all of the new languages invented over the past 3 decades that have become popular have either been created by a single person or been created by industry.
LLVM and Scala come to mind as PL projects born in academia and enjoying wider adoption. Not all researchers are interested in solving the "real problems out there", but some do, and are successful at it.
Woody Allen did this great movie some time ago, "Midnight in Paris", where the main character, living in present times, dreams of moving back in time to the 1920s as the best time for literature ever. When the occasion to really go back appears though, he discovers the writers of the 1920s thought the best literature was done in 1890s, and so he has to go back again, then again, ... This talk is like this, sentiment blinding a sober assessment.