It seems to me that he is arguing that languages do not have a total ordering. As such, novices will argue that a language is strictly better than another, when a broader perspective will reveal that this is only true for some use cases.
The "no free lunch" theorem would indicate to me that there is no ultimate language, merely languages that are better for common (to you) use cases.
pg's argument reminds me of plato's dialogues where socrates confronts sophistry and searches for a universal truth. At first sight, it seems hard to make a primary ordering of programming languages, because they focus on different areas (ease of use, speed of development, performance etc) and ordering those disjunct areas against each other seems to be impossible. However, it is still possible for a programming language to focus and excel on all those areas at the same time. I am still hopeful of a language for the next 100 years; be it Arc or something else.
As a happy user of Ruby, Ruby excels in many of its promises. I wish Ruby-MRI focuses a bit on performance in coming versions. The ruby community needs this guy who developed the V8 javascript engine to do the same performance leap here too.(Maybe Rubinius or JRuby already do) That said, let us not forget that Twitter performance requirement is kind of extreme for most startups, and most JVM based languages and foremost Java lag in ease of use, speed of development etc to be a viable option for a startup. (I exclude here Clojure, Scala, JRuby etc). For most startups speed of development is what matters.
> At first sight, it seems hard to make a primary ordering of programming languages, because they focus on different areas (ease of use, speed of development, performance etc) and ordering those disjunct areas against each other seems to be impossible. However, it is still possible for a programming language to focus and excel on all those areas at the same time.
I disagree. There's more than ease of use, speed of development and performance to determine if a language is "better" suited to a problem than others. And they're all trade-offs to some point. So to excel at one means that you fall behind on others. Prolog is still used heavily in some areas since it's a natural fit to logic problems. It's just pure logic theory modeled in a programming language. It's a pityful language to solve most "real world" problems, but it excels at what it was made for. So is it "better" than ruby? I don't think so. Is it possible to write a language that models logic problems so nicely as Prolog and still keep the ease of use of ruby? I very much doubt that.
That's not what he's saying at all! The "wise programmer" uses the right tool for the job because it IS a better tool for the job. In the same way, we'll continue to see an increase of programming languages, as opposed to a consolidation, as computing advances and languages improve.
I think all languages have strengths and weaknesses that matter based on the context.
For example, I hate manually managing memory in C/C++. Java, Ruby, etc automate all of that for you, but it comes at a cost of using a lot more memory. That's not a big concern for many applications, but if you're doing embedded software or real-time systems it can be a deal breaker.
So in this example, is C++ better or worse than Java? The answer is that it depends what problem you're trying to solve, what environment you're running in, and what resources you have available on your development team. Personal preference matters too in terms of programmer satisfaction, but just because you like one language's constructs more than another doesn't mean it's well suited to every problem space.
As to the original article, I think it's great to learn about how different companies change their software stack, but not because "w00t Twitter hates Ruby - Java rocks"; rather it's interesting to see how business context changes over time and the implications that has on the technology. Seeing how other businesses have dealt with these hurdles can help you keep an eye out for them in your own business. I just wish that this was the lens that it was written in rather than "OMG - Ruby = Fail Whale."
If you're a language designer then it's good to hear about the complaints and preferences of programmers so that you can design a better language (and thus a better tool). And like any tool, there will be times when it's better to use one language rather than another.
I can't speak for him/her but it seems to me the point is that computer languages, while being all-purpose, are products of countless conscious design decisions of their creators. And thus by the nature of design, tradeoffs are inevitable.
So I think the (even just sometimes) discussion of "good language" should be limited to the context of purpose and goal of the said language, which is similar to "choosing the right language for the task".
I do not think the continuum of language can be mapped along one dimension when considering individuals. Constant development of languages, patterns, and idioms are global manifestations of individual frustrations.
Ideally, every person would have their own programming language (or culture), grown from their own personal experiences and desires. In that case, a qualifier for a good language is one that most easily allows expression of new languages or cultures at the individual level.
For a language designer, this could be an impossible problem due to the unique learning models of each individual. Their best hope may be in attracting those whose mental models have some overlap with their own.
> because it's impossible to improve a programming language
Well, since "improve" is a relative and a matter of taste, it is impossible to improve a language, isn't it? Make it run faster, and it will either take up more memory or be slower to develop with. Make it faster to develop with, and it will run slower or have some other tradeoff.
Hence, "use the right tool for the job". And when your focus shifts from "quickly building a product" or "quickly adding new features" to "rock-solid stable and fast", then you need to switch tools. Simple as that.
Could you please tell me what fortran is the good tool for ? :)
As much as I agree it's delusional to think one language may be adapted for virtually any kind of tasks, it seems way too much consensual to me to tell there is no such thing as bad or deprecated languages.
If your software is Twitter, then you're constantly rewriting the stack anyway just to keep up, and switching to different languages, frameworks, technologies, and tools component-by-component is often the best way to do that.
If so, it's impossible for a language designer to do a good job, because it's impossible to improve a programming language.