The Programming Language Wars
Andreas Stefik (University of Nevada, Las Vegas)
CSE 520 Colloquium
Thursday, November 20, 2014, 3:30pm
EEB-105
Abstract
The discipline of computer science has a long and complicated history with computer programming languages. Historically, inventors have created language products for a wide variety of reasons, from attempts at making domain specific tasks easier, to technical achievements, to economic, social, or political reasons. As a consequence, the modern programming language industry now has a large variety of incompatible programming languages, each of which with unique syntax, semantics, toolsets, and often their own standard libraries, lifetimes, and costs. In this talk, I will discuss the programming language wars, a term which describes the broad divergence of language designs, their impact on the world, and the communities that support them.
Bio:
Andreas Stefik is an assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He completed his Ph.D. in computer science at Washington State University in 2008 and also holds a bachelor's degree in music. Stefik's research focuses on computer programming languages and development environments, with an emphasis on how competing language designs impact people in practice. He won the 2011 Java Innovation Award for his work on the National Science Foundation funded Sodbeans programming environment and is the inventor of the Quorum Programming Language.