Stephen Wolfram Developing New Programming Language 168
Nerval's Lobster writes "Stephen Wolfram, the chief designer of the Mathematica software platform and the Wolfram Alpha 'computation knowledge engine,' has another massive project in the works—although he's remaining somewhat vague about details for the time being. In simplest terms, the project is a new programming language—which he's dubbing the 'Wolfram Language'—which will allow developers and software engineers to program a wide variety of complex functions in a streamlined fashion, for pretty much every single type of hardware from PCs and smartphones all the way up to datacenters and embedded systems. The Language will leverage automation to cut out much of the nitpicking complexity that dominates current programming. 'The Wolfram Language does things automatically whenever you want it to,' he wrote in a recent blog posting. 'Whether it's selecting an optimal algorithm for something. Or picking the most aesthetic layout. Or parallelizing a computation efficiently. Or figuring out the semantic meaning of a piece of data. Or, for that matter, predicting what you might want to do next. Or understanding input you've given in natural language.' In other words, he's proposing a general-purpose programming language with a mind-boggling amount of functions built right in. At this year's SXSW, Wolfram alluded to his decades of work coming together in 'a very nice way,' and this is clearly what he meant. And while it's tempting to dismiss anyone who makes sweeping statements about radically changing the existing paradigm, he does have a record of launching very big projects (Wolfram Alpha contains more than 10 trillion pieces of data cultivated from primary sources, along with tens of thousands of algorithms and equations) that function reliably. At many points over the past few years, he's also expressed a belief that simple equations and programming can converge to create and support enormously complicated systems. Combine all those factors together, and it's clear that Wolfram's pronouncements—no matter how grandiose—can't simply be dismissed. But it remains to be seen how much of an impact he actually has on programming as an art and science."
Just Call It "Wolf" (Score:4, Funny)
that way if we make a programming error we can just comment "Bad Wolf" (too much exposure to Dr Who recently) :P
His next project is interesting (Score:5, Funny)
Oh boy. (Score:5, Funny)
First a new kind of SCIENCE, now a new kind of PROGRAMMING.
Can't wait for a new kind of LOVE.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Funny)
Hrm, another programming language...
Attempts have been made in the past to automate programming, it's never worked very well (or at all in some cases)
Too many people think that programing is "just a lot of typing". Which leads people to believe that they should create a "new programming language" where you can just type "Make a new better version of Facebook" and be done with it.
Which leads to a lot of crap with "Visual" in its name. Hey look, you don't have to type. Just drag this widget from here to here. And we've seen how sell that turned out.
Re:His next project is interesting (Score:4, Funny)
I know you're trying to be funny by implying he's reinventing the wheel, but ironically, there's more than one way to clean your ass. In some countries, they use water streams rather than TP. There's not just one unique solution to each problem.
You just made my point. There are already multiple and satisfactory ways to clean one's ass.
"Wolfram Language"? (Score:5, Funny)
This fellow needs to work on his self-esteem.