[etherealG]

that's true, but back then we probably all used fax machines for sending messages. times move on, and so does the level of interaction with the machines. eventually the number of people who understand this will be even smaller than now, that's not a bad thing, it's a sign of progress.

[philwelch]

Bullshit. Fax machines are obsolete because we have email now, but C and debuggers still haven't been replaced. "Level of interaction with the machines"? No, kernels and upper level language runtimes aren't magic, they're made of C by programmers just like you or me.

[etherealG]

fax machines are obsolete because the newer techs are more convienient, in just the same way that not having to worry about type in a loosely typed language is more convienient than having to worry about it in a strictly typed language.

that doesn't mean that we won't ever need fax again, or morse code, it still exists and has it's place, but for the majority of users it's not needed, and the same will happen with all technology, including programming. eventually almost noone will need or use something low level like C, just like most people right now don't need or use assembly, or even lower level, machine code, or even lower level... I don't even know what's lower level. Point being as things move along the lower level, while still being there, is understood and used by less and less people.

[kentnl]

That's still partially rubbish, because you don't build technology on top of a fax machine. Many of the technologies at the higher level are directly written in C, and its going to be a while before the C goes away.

I.e.: its like a world where all our cellphones/email still, under the covers, run over fax, and we still need a fax machine in every house to make this possible. =P

Without people to write the languages in C, and without people to hack on the kernel in C, there will be no more languages, and existing C based languages will get no more features.

The best you can do now is write one high-level language in another, and that tends to be reasonably slow.

Just because you don't understand something, or because you don't know anybody who does, that doesn't mean that technology is disappearing, it just means you're in a selective circle.

[etherealG]

I was specific to not imply any level of the levels of complexity would ever go away. That's like saying assembly has gone away. It has for the vast majority, but not for those who actually code compilers or reverse engineer software. That group is extremely small compared to the rest, hopefully we can agree on that. I expect that eventually languages like C will be similar to the way cobol is now :)