SYS-CON Events announced today that nfina Technologies, a provider of highly reliable cloud server products, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
nfina Technologies develops, manufactures, and markets highly reliable cloud server products, designed to solve the most demanding data center requirements in mission-critical cloud applications. Nfina’s staff has decades of experience in co...| By Udayan Banerjee | Article Rating: |
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| October 3, 2012 10:45 AM EDT | Reads: |
36,279 |
Do we need programming languages?
You may think that the answer is no. But, if you go by the recent trend you may need to change your mind.
Consider for example the following questions:
- Why is Google working two (GO, DART) new programming languages?
- Why has IBM (X10), Cray (Chapel) and Red Hat (Ceylon) working on creating a new programming language of its own?

- Why did the attendees of a recent conference in London select 5 (HTML5, DART, Scala, Clojure, Node.js) new languages as the most important software development trends for 2012?
- What does Neil McAllister mean when he says that these 10 (DART, Ceylon, GO, F#, OPA, Fantom, Zimbu, X10, Haxe, Chapel) programming languages that could shake up IT?
- Why did Anders Hejlsberg of Microsoft, the creator of Turbo Pascal, Delphi and C# launch TypeScript?
Are new programming languages getting created just to satisfy the creative urge of somebody or has the technology evolution created the need for new way of programming and hence these new languages?
If you look back...
There are 3 periods in history when there was a burst of new programming languages. Each of these periods is linked to a critical point in technology evolution.
| Period | Driver | Languages |
| 1957-64 | Invention of compiler and the era of 3GL | (1) Fortran, (2) Algol, (3) Lisp, (4) Cobol, (5) RPG, (6) APL, (7) Simula, (8) Basic and (9) PL/1 |
| 1978-84 | Invention of RDBMS and the era of the 4GL | (1) SQL, (2) dBase, (3) C++, (4) Oracle Forms and PL/SQL, (5) Informix 4GL, (6) Gupta SQL, (7) Unify Accell and (8) Ingress |
| 1990-95 | O-O & Multi-tier programming and the era of WWW | (1) HTML, (2) Haskel, (3) Python, (4) Power Script (Power Builder), (5) Visual Basic, (6) Lua, (7) Ruby, (8) Object Pascal (Delphi), (9) Java, (10) Java Script and (11) PHP |
Other important languages which was created outside these time period are: (1) Pascal – 1970, (2) C – 1972, (3) Prolog – 1972, (4) Smalltalk – 1972, (5) Erlang – 1986, (6) Perl – 1987 and (7) C# – 2001. As you can see, they are very few.
Are we entering another period which on hindsight will be classified as another period of technology transition? Only time can tell.
Does cloud computing got anything to do with it?
It most certainly does. But that is not the whole story – there is more to it.
What could the Technology Drivers be?
If you analyze the primary motivation behind these languages, you will see several common themes emerging.
(1) Distributed/Parallel computing:
Programmability of parallel computers (Chapel from Cray, X10 from IBM), Concurrent programming (Clojure, Fantom, Go) and single language for complete cloud stack (Opa)
Cloud computing is all about distributing your process across multiple CPU and running them in parallel or concurrently. Current programming languages are not very well suited for that.
Hence this attempt to create languages tailored for parallel processing.
(2) Multi-paradigm programming:
Languages which support object oriented programming as well as functional programming (Clojure, F#, Fantom, Scala)
Functional programs are relatively easy to parallelize. However, pure functional languages have not been very successful.
Hence this attempt to create multi-paradigm programming language.
(3) Multi-platform programming:
Languages that has implementation for both JVM and CLR (Clojure, Fantom, Scala) and several other platforms (Clojure & Fantom on JavaScript engine, Scala on Android, Haxe on several platforms)
Well this is a dream which we have been chasing for decades. Will it ever be a reality? We never know.
Hence this attempt to create multi-platform language!
(4) Programming at Scale:
Readability, Modularity (Ceylon), Speed of compilation (Go, Zimbu), Suitable for large team (Scala), Meta-programmability and extensibility (Ceylon, Scala), Concise (Scala, Zimbu)
Cloud provides almost unlimited computing power which encourages us to build larger and more complex application. Building such application will require large teams and the code has to be easily maintainable.
Also, the focus on frequent integration requires the process of compilation to be speeded up.
Hence this attempt to create programming language for large application.
(5) Client side programming:
Replacement for JavaScript (Dart), same language for both client and server side (Naxe, Opa, Zimbu)
Cloud computing requires client side code to seamlessly run on multiple client devices. Though JavaScript has become a standard, nobody really likes it!
Hence this attempt to create languages which is better than JavaScript and which can run on multiple client platforms.
Quick overview of the 12 new languages mentioned earlier
Here are the 12 languages listed in an alphabetical order. (I am not including HTML5 in this list as it is strictly not a new language and I have excluded Node.js as it is only a server side JavaScript engine)
| Language | Who is behind it? | Primary Driver | Licensing |
![]() |
Red Hat - Home page | Readability, Predictability, Tool-ability, Modularity, Meta-programmability.Runs on JVM | GPL v2 |
![]() |
Cray - Home page | Programmability of parallel computersRun on Cray supercomputers and various high-performance clusters.Portable to most Unix-style systems, Mac OS X and Windows | BSD |
![]() |
Rich Hickey - Home page | Concurrency using Functional programming paradigm.Runs on JVM, CLR, and JavaScript engines | EPL |
![]() |
Google - Home page | A replacement for JavaScript on the browserFaster, easier to maintain, and less susceptible to subtle bugs.Dart VM needs to be compiled – can run on Linux, Mac and Windows | New BSD |
![]() |
Microsoft - Home page |
Multi-paradigm: Functional + Imperative + Object-oriented.Runs on CLR and Mono 10 Reasons Why It`s a Hot Programming Language for Developers |
Apache |
![]() |
Brian Frank, Andy Frank - Home page | Portability, support for functional programming and concurrency.Runs on JVM and CLR. Is also compiles to javaScript. Future targets might include Objective-C for the iPhone | Academic Free License |
![]() |
Google - Home page | Compiled with the ease of programming of a dynamic language, concurrency and communication, speed of compilation.Compiler available for Linux, Mac OS X, Windows | BSD style + patent grant |
![]() |
Nicolas Cannasse - Home page | Multi-platform support.Compiler for JavaScript, Flash, NekoVM, PHP, C++. C# and Java support is expected | GPL v2 |
![]() |
MLstate - Home page | Targeted for cloud computing. Client-side UI, server-side logic, and database I/O are all implemented in a single languageRuntime environment own Web server and DBMS.Runs on 64bit Linux and Mac | AGPL |
![]() |
EPFL - Home page |
Scalability for multicore and distributed computing. For large team. Multi-paradigm: Functional and O-O. Extensible.Runs on JVM, Android, CLR |
BSD |
| IBM - Home page | Designed specifically for parallel programming, performance and scale.Runs on IBM AIX, Linux, Mac OS X, Windows | EPL | |
![]() |
Bram Moolenaar - Home page | Aims to be fast, concise, portable, and easy-to-read and support GUI application to an OS kernel.Compiles to ANSI C | Apache v2 |
Finally...
What is most interesting is that all the 12 languages are available under some form of open source license.
Interesting articles on history of programming languages:
- The History of Programming Languages [Infographic]
- Programming Language History
- A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages
- Modern books on multiple programming languages
Statistics on Language usage
Published October 3, 2012 Reads 36,279
Copyright © 2012 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.
More Stories By Udayan Banerjee
Udayan Banerjee is CTO at NIIT Technologies Ltd, an IT industry veteran with more than 30 years' experience. He blogs at http://setandbma.wordpress.com.
The blog focuses on emerging technologies like cloud computing, mobile computing, social media aka web 2.0 etc. It also contains stuff about agile methodology and trends in architecture. It is a world view seen through the lens of a software service provider based out of Bangalore and serving clients across the world.
The focus is mostly on...
- Keep the hype out and project a realistic picture
- Uncover trends not very apparent
- Draw conclusion from real life experience
- Point out fallacy & discrepancy when I see them
- Talk about trends which I find interesting
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JayaramKrishnaswamy 05/09/12 11:40:00 PM EDT | |||
Nice review. |
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SYS-CON Events announced today that OpenStack will exhibit at SYS-CON's 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York. OpenStack software controls large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a datacenter, all managed by a dashboard that gives administrators control while empowering their users to provision resources through a web interface.
OpenStack powers some of the most widely-used SaaS app...
“Social, mobile, analytics and cloud can’t be looked at as distinct technology trends; they are facets of the same movement and an everyday reality for consumers and businesses alike,” said Craig Sowell, IBM VP of SmartCloud Marketing, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “This means that businesses need to start looking at trends as one: cloud is the delivery, analytics is the unique insight, social is a shareable service, and mobile is the ubiquitous access.”
...
With Cloud Expo New York | 12th Cloud Expo [June 10-13, 2013] hurtling towards us, let's take a look at the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference coming up June 10-13 at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City.
We have technical and strategy sessions for you all four days dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, wha...
The new open source cloud orchestration platform called OpenStack is the promise of flexible network virtualization, and network overlays are looking closer than ever. The vision of this platform is to enable the on-demand creation of many distinct networks on top of one underlying physical infrastructure in the cloud environment. The platform will support automated provisioning and management of large groups of virtual machines or compute resources, including extensive monitoring in the cloud.
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Dave Eichorn, Global Data Center Practice Head at Zensar, will share a case study describing how a utility services company handled the migration of its Microsoft platform to the cloud. Challenged with the time-consuming task of opening operations out of temporary offices, this company struggled with the need to simultaneously access data that was accumulated from a vast amount of data-intensive jobs. Zensar migrated the company’s application ...
At pennies per virtual machine-hour, the economics of cloud computing are both compelling and daunting to replicate. Whether you are building your own cloud infrastructure, building a public cloud or choosing a cloud service, there are key strategy and technology decisions that make the difference between success and failure.
In his General Session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Jason Waxman, VP in the Intel Architecture Group and general manager of the Cloud Platforms Group within Inte...
You're getting pitched every day from your legacy enterprise software and hardware vendors about "cloud." They're doing an amazing job of convincing your CIO and CTO about what cloud is and how you should use it. The reality is they're defending their shrinking market share and keeping you on the legacy treadmill for as long as they can by selling you solutions that aren't "cloud."
In her session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Niki Acosta, Cloud Evangelista for Rackspace, will talk thro...
The rise of cloud computing has exposed hard drive-based storage as the new data center bottleneck. Combating this, data center managers have deployed SSDs to gain the performance needed to provide real-time access to data. However, due to budget constraints, many have turned to consumer-grade SSDs without understanding that they wear out quickly when processing enterprise workloads. In this session, Esther Spanjer will discuss recent endurance advancements in SSD technology that enable usage of...
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