[cmdshiftf4]

>The renewed interest in C++ and other compiled languages is an indication of the need to get more efficient.

I kind of disagree with this based on intuition alone. Most developers, professional developers, are using web tech (JS stack in particular - Node and hyped front-end frameworks). Yet we"re seeing "interest" in compiled languages such as Rust, despite almost nobody using it professionally and almost nobody doing much with it outside of simple proof of concepts.

To me it points toward a developing sense of insecurity in modern professional developers that simply being a JS dev isn't really programming/development and they've to "prove" themselves with lower level tech.

Something that indicates that, for me, is in StackOverflow's 2019 survey [0] the most used tech was JS and that which surrounds it, followed by Python and other easy-to-get-going-well-supported tech. Yet the "Most Loved" was Rust.

I could be wrong, and I'm open to being, but I intuitively I don't believe the interest in performant technologies is in the face of the sheer bloat we've seen, particularly from the web-front.

>Programmer skill will become more important in the future.

My prediction on this, not so AI specific, is that developing and deploying web-tech will continue to become easier and easier, meaning it'll take less people to do it. Sure, work may arise from developing countries/economies to supplant a drop in demand for it in the developed world, but maybe not.

Combined with a potential bubble burst in tech, I think those relying on web dev for a living could be in trouble in the coming decade.

I don't foresee much in terms of companies trying to optimize operational costs by instructing their devs to write their code more efficiently with memory/performance in mind to reduce operating costs, and thus spur a push toward jumping on compiled languages. If anything, cloud computing will continue to get cheaper and cheaper as the big 3 continue to try and absorb as much marketshare as possible.

[0] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#overview

[Shorel]

At first we optimized languages for memory and CPU use, because there was so little of it.

When we could, we optimized for ease of writing code, and it lead to bloated and slow systems. This is the current status of things.

We are optimizing again for performance, but we want to have our cake and eat it, we want both the performance and the ease of writing code. And the reduction of bugs in the end result.

This change takes time, perhaps decades. Longer than bubbles and market growth. It takes time because we are curious, and we want to test all possibilities. We want fast games, easy abstractions, zero bugs, the whole package.

But it will happen, at some point. Rust, Go, D, may be one of these languages will replace Javascript, or may be it will be a totally new language.

[throwaway17_17]

The following is not a particularly deep thought, and that is why it is stated simply:

The way to maintain the easy abstractions, or even increase the level of abstraction while still increasing performance is to ditch the proliferation of massive general purpose programming languages and adopt specific DSLs that fit the problem domain. I feel like the language-oriented programming paradigm that Felliesen of Racket champions is certainly in this spirit, but I would like to see a language core that is specifically tailored to performance concerns.

Not that this is important to the general concept, but this is the current focus of my language design efforts, hoping for first public showing in April 2020,

[steveklabnik]

Rust is used for far more than proofs of concept, and is deployed at some of the largest tech companies in some of their key products.

[cmdshiftf4]

Not disagreeing with that.

Although, in re-reading the above, I have made a grave mistake above, contrasting most used with most loved. SO's "most loved" is measured by "of those professional using this language, how many responded that they love using it", so in the case of Rust it's 83.5% of the 3% using it professionally.

In retrospect I think my point would be better made by pointing at the difference between the technologies being used professionally and the technologies "most wanted", where Go and Rust are in the top 20% of wanted but the bottom 40% for Go and bottom 20% for Rust.

I'll leave the original intact for posterity but what's cited is done so erroneously.

[steveklabnik]

Yeah, it’s tough; the “most loved” thing is interesting. It’s name kinda indicates a scope that’s different from what it’s measuring, but I’m also not sure what else I’d call it.