I wonder if the proliferation of programming languages we saw in the last decade is due to the fact that nowadays it's extremely easy to create one or that existing ones sucks?
I think it's because (a) it's become a lot easier to create languages and (b) we're stuck.
I am hoping (a) is straightforward. For (b), I think most of us sense at least intuitively, with different strengths, that our current crop of programming languages are not really good enough. Too low-level, too difficult to get to a more compact and meaningful representation.
LLMs have kinda demonstrated the source for this feeling of unease, by generating quite a bit of code from fairly short natural language instructions. The information density of that generated code can't really be all that high, can it now?
So we have this issue with expressiveness, but we lack the insight required to make substantial progress. So we bounce around along the well-trodden paths of language design, hoping for progress that refuses to materialize.
I think it's closer to an availability thing. A lot of businesses used to run on privately built programming languages. And everyone had their own BASIC implementation that wasn't quite compatible with everyone else. But transferring the private language across to someone on the other side of the world was difficult.
It did happen over early things like IRC and the like, but the audience was limited, and the data was ephemeral.
For example, Byte Magazine has an article on writing your own assembler in 1977 [0]: "By doing it yourself you can learn a lot about programming and software design as well as the specs of your own microcomputer, save yourself the cost of program development, and produce a customized language suited to your own needs or fancies."
Programmers have been creating their own languages since the beginning. It's part of why we lean so heavily towards standards - so other people don't break the things we've already built.
Neither. It’s always been easy to create a language. What’s been hard is promoting that language.
The things that’s changed is that these days you have a combination of more people using computers plus more convenient forums (like this) for people to promote their new language.
Is there really a proliferation of PLs that hasn't been the case before? I recall many new languages back in 00s as well, it's just that most of them didn't live long enough for people to remember them now.
