Last year I first started thinking about what the future of programming languages might look like now that agentic engineering is a growing thing. Initially I felt that the enormous corpus of pre-existing code would cement existing languages in place but now I'm starting to think the opposite is true. Here I want to outline my thinking on why we are going to see more new programming languages and why there is quite a bit of space for interesting innovation.
In 1983 I asked my parents for an Atari for Christmas, instead I got a Commodore 64... Needless to say, I was very disappointed until I discovered how much cooler Wizard of Wor was than Combat. To their credit, my parents thought a computer was a better investment than a video game. I used that C64 through my sophomore year of college until I replaced it with a 486; my first real investment.
The first computers weren't coded with words or languages, but by manipulating physical entities to do fairly basic calculations. "Programmers" would plug wires into sockets, set switches, turn dials, and spin rotors. It was, at the time, considered "women's work" because it was mostly clerical. But setting that aside, it was all mechanical in nature. These workers didn't call themselves "programmers" but "operators" because they physically operated the machine.
ArTEMiS is a highly scalable, automated assessment management system, programming language independent, and expects test runners to produce results adhering to the Apache Ant JUnit XML schema.
"You cannot do industrial programs in English," Skrygan says early on in our conversation, directly challenging the notion popularized by Nvidia's CEO that even the toughest coding tasks can become approachable through natural language alone.
Herb Sutter emphasizes that programming languages like C++ are evolving tools essential for maintaining efficiency and speed in technology-heavy firms like Citadel Securities.
"Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated that 20%-30% of the code within their repositories was generated by AI, highlighting the growing integration of artificial intelligence in software development."
