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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. |
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,