But the syntax is precisely the only thing a language can give you that a library cannot.
This might be true on a similar level to all Turing-complete languages being equivalent, but I’m not sure how useful it is beyond that level. For example, the features that a language provides as directly supported building blocks and the guarantees a language makes about how certain entities will or won’t behave and relate to each other profoundly affects the developer’s experience. That remains true even if some of those features could eventually have been recreated with a library modulo syntax and even if a perfect programmer would always use them properly and never rely on the language to prevent a mistake.
Right, but that means it has to be implemented by someone. It could be a language builtin, but almost nobody is going to switch languages for such a feature (if it could even exist as a language feature anyway). Or it could be a library, in which case the question of better languages is again moot.
The idea that the compiler could somehow pick "the right" implementation of a sparse unordered map based on a list of constraints that combine to create potentially dozens of versions strikes me as far-fetched. Even specifying "lock-free" for example is very, very far from providing enough detail about what is actually required. Wait-free? Readers-not-blocked-by-writers? Writers-not-blocked-by-readers? etc. etc.
I don't dream of a future when compilers (or something) can somehow do all this, and I'm not convinced it will arrive. But I've been (very) wrong before.
Fair points. It would need to be a meta langauge of sorts, with compilation stages, stuff like that. Maybe a compromise can be reached with customizable compilers. PaulDavisThe1st's meta-compiler may know which sparse lock-free doodad you want. Even a CnC machine can't just spit out anything under the sun. Key thought here is industrialization of software production. It will (has to) happen (not that I'm pining for it :o) And our little chat here is whether programming languages will have a role to play here.
This might be true on a similar level to all Turing-complete languages being equivalent, but I’m not sure how useful it is beyond that level. For example, the features that a language provides as directly supported building blocks and the guarantees a language makes about how certain entities will or won’t behave and relate to each other profoundly affects the developer’s experience. That remains true even if some of those features could eventually have been recreated with a library modulo syntax and even if a perfect programmer would always use them properly and never rely on the language to prevent a mistake.