>I'm curious if you can imagine a single programming language which you /would/ prefer for all of the different kinds of programs you've written. Not that it does exist, but could it?
>However, if the one true language already existed,
The one true language can't exist because we want to use a finite set of characters to express convenient programming syntax. (A previous comment about this.[0])
It might be possible to craft a single optimal language for only one particular programmer but I even doubt that limited scenario is even realistic. Consider trying to combine syntax of 2 languages that many programmers use: (1) bash (2) C Language
In bash, running an external program is a first class concept. Therefore the syntax is simple. E.g.:
gzip file.txt
rsync $HOME /backup
Basically, whatever one types at a bash command prompt is just copy-pasted into a .sh file.
But in C Language, external programs are not first-class concepts so one must use a library call such as "system()":
main()
{
system("gzip file.txt");
system("rsync $HOME /backup");
}
In C, we have to type out "system("")" that surrounds each external program. We have to add the noisier syntax of semicolons after each line. It's ugly and verbose for scripting work.
In the reverse example, C makes it easy to bit-shift a number using << and >>.
y = x << 3;
How would one transfer that cleanly and conveniently to bash? Bash uses a bunch of special symbols for special functions.[1] Bashes uses << >> for input output redirection. Therefore, bash would need to have noisier syntax such as "bitshiftleft(x, 3)"
So, if we attempt to create a Frankenstein language called "bashclang" that combine concepts of bash and C, which set of programmers do we inconvenience with the noisier syntax?
What if we just tweaked C's parsing rules so that naked syntax to run external programs would look like bash? Well, what if you have executable binaries with names like "void", "switch"? Those are reserved names in C Language.
Same thing happens with other concepts like matrices. In Julia and Mathematica, matrices are first class. You can type them conveniently without any special decoration. But in Python, they are bolted on with a package like NumPy. So one has type type out the noiser syntax of np.full() and np.matmul().
Convenient syntax to enable easy-to-read semantics in one language leads to contradictions and ambiguity in another language.
To add to munificent's comment, I also don't see how one language can offer both garbage-collected memory and manual allocated memory using convenient concise syntax _and_ and zero-cost runtime performance-penalty for manual memory. Those two goals contradict each other. When I want to write a line-of-business type app, I just use C# with GC strings. On the other hand, when I'm writing a server-side app that's processing terabytes of data, I can use C++ with manually allocated strings with no virtualmachine runtime overhead for max performance.
I've never used it, but based on what I have read about it, this language seems fairly radical (well, not completely - LISP could be considered a prototypical form?):
https://www.jetbrains.com/mps/
It is open-source, too:
https://github.com/JetBrains/MPS
It seems to have active development, and - interesting aside - it is written in Java.
But again - it purports to do what you seem to be explaining here, and a bit more: It's a system that lets the programmer define the programming language as they use that same language, for the specific purpose at hand (aka, DSL - Domain Specific Language).
As I've noted - I've not used this tool, but I've kept it in the back of my mind as the concept seems very fascinating to me (I don't know if it is practical, workable, or anything else - but I do think it's a "neat" idea).
> So, if we attempt to create a Frankenstein language that combine concepts of bash and C, which set of programmers do we inconvenience with the noisier syntax?
I won't speak for others, but I can make that choice for myself, and I'm willing to give the C-like language the upper hand. If bash like things were high enough priority, I might change the name "system" to "run" so it was just a bit more concise, perhaps taking multi-line strings to tidy it all up. I'm not saying one language to rule them all, I'm just saying I could have one language for nearly everything I've done or want to do.
What I was talking about was more like what features does the language have. For instance, I like algebraic data types (sum/product types). I like generics/templates. I want an "any" (variant) type. I want complex numbers and matrices. I like operator overloading so I can implement new arithmetic types. I want simple and immutable strings. I want structs and unions. I want SIMD types. I could also list things I don't want.
Anyways, I could go on, but all of those fit in a single efficient and expressive language. Some current languages come close, but get important details wrong.
> I also don't see how one language can offer both garbage-collected memory and manual allocated memory using convenient concise syntax _and_ and zero-cost runtime performance-penalty for manual memory. Those two goals contradict each other.
There are a lot of details that matter, and I can already anticipate some of your objections, but I would be very happy with automatic reference counting on a type system which precludes reference cycles. I would not use atomic increments or decrements (which is one of the more costly aspects of reference counting), and I would not let threads share data directly. This provides deterministic memory management and performance not too short of what you get in C, C++, or Rust.
So not "zero-cost", but damned close. It's also simple enough to think about the implementation so you can easily keep the non-zero-cost parts out of the inner loops.
Of course someone else would disagree and say they can't accept this (minor) compromise.
Ousterhout had a famous quote about needing both a high and low level language. For him, that was Tcl and C. I think I could have everything I need/want for high and low level tasks in a single elegant language. You're not alone in disagreeing :-)
Have you ever considered what a VR programming language could look like? A language doesn't have to be black and white text. C and Bash don't have to directly overlap if technology creates simple syntax that expands beyond how keyboards type.
> A language doesn't have to be black and white text
I agree. I'd like to be able to insert pictures to explain data structures and algorithms, or equations for the mathy bits. I'd like to be able to choose different font sizes for different parts of the code to indicate their relative importance. Instead of files in directories, I'd like to be able organize functions clustered 2D parts of a page. I'm not sure what you mean by VR (3D?), but I'd be curious to see it.
> C and Bash don't have to directly overlap if technology creates simple syntax that expands beyond how keyboards type.
I distinctly don't want a polyglot catch all set of languages. I mean you can almost do that in the .Net world where a project can use many languages. I don't have any idea what would be better than a keyboard or touch screen for entering the syntax.