Programming: We're doing it wrong!

Talks

'Programming: We're doing it wrong!' presented by Steven Pemberton 2017-01-12 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands at isoc.nl New Year's Event

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Event details

Date:
– Central European Standard Time
– Coordinated Universal Time
Location:
Speakers:
Steven Pemberton (CWI)
Category:
Developers
Website:
https://newyear.isoc.nl/2017/

'Programming: We're doing it wrong!' presented by Steven Pemberton 2017-01-12 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands at 'isoc.nl New Year's Event'.

Slides are available.

Programming languages were first developed in the 50's. In those days computers were vastly expensive (and slow), and comparatively, programmers were free.
And so programming languages were designed to save computer costs. It didn't matter if a programmer took weeks to write a program: computer efficiency was the key.

But now the economics are reversed, by what can be called Moore's Switch: programmers are expensive; computers almost free.

And yet, put a bit of Python next to a bit of Algol 60, and they look pretty much the same: we are still programming with languages directly descended from the languages of the 50's.