> >> You can't merge all of them without making a language that's > >> suboptimal at most of those tasks - probably, one that's woeful at all > >> of them. I mention SQL because, even if you were to unify all > >> programming languages, you'd still need other non-application > >> languages to get the job done. > > ... > > But this has nothing to do with being "suboptimal at most tasks". It's > > easy to make a language that can do everything C can do, and also > > everything that Haskell can do. I can write an implementation of this > > programming language in one line of bash[*]. The easy way is to make > > those features mutually exclusive. We don't have to sacrifice anything > > by including more features until we want them to work together. > > Of course it's POSSIBLE. You can write everything in Ook if you want > to. But any attempt to merge all programming languages into one will > either: > > 1) Allow different parts of a program to be written in different > subsets of this universal language, which just means that you've > renamed all the languages but kept their distinctions (so a programmer > still has to learn all of them); or > > 2) Shoehorn every task into one language, equivalent to knowing only > one language and using that for everything. Good luck with that.
In a much simpler context, isn't this what .NET's CLR does? Except that instead of converting each language into each other it converts everything into a different language. I have trouble in my mind seeing how what you suggest would not end up with badly coded versions of a translated program. Never yet seen a program that could convert from one paradigm/language directly to another (and do it well/maintainable). > The debate keeps on coming up, but it's not just political decisions > that maintain language diversity. Not a bad thing in my opinion. A tool for each problem, but I can see the appeal of a multi-tool language. Ramit Ramit Prasad | JPMorgan Chase Investment Bank | Currencies Technology 712 Main Street | Houston, TX 77002 work phone: 713 - 216 - 5423 -- This email is confidential and subject to important disclaimers and conditions including on offers for the purchase or sale of securities, accuracy and completeness of information, viruses, confidentiality, legal privilege, and legal entity disclaimers, available at http://www.jpmorgan.com/pages/disclosures/email. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
