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Infinite Negative Utility
September 28, 2014
Apparently, I ve got a theme going of Weird Syntax. Let s run with it.
Konrad Zuse was an early pioneer in computer science, although his name is perhaps somewhat less well-known than others. Zuse holds the honor of having built the first programmable computer -the Z3 -back in the 40 s, as well as several other computing firsts
1. Of particular interest to this blog post is his early unimplemented programming language, Plankalkül.
Plankalkül was, like the Z3, in many respects ahead of its time. Zuse s explicit goal was to be able to describe programs at a high level, which meant he included control structures and datatype definitions
Is there still research to be done in Programming Languages? This essay touches both on the topic of programming languages and on the nature of research work. I am mostly concerned in analyzing this question in the context of Academia, i.e. within the expectations of academic programs and research funding agencies that support research work in the STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). This is not the only possible perspective, but it is the one I am taking here.
PLs are dear to my heart, and a considerable chunk of my career was made in that area. As a designer, there is something fundamentally interesting in designing a language of any kind. It’s even more interesting and gratifying when people actually start exercising those languages to create non-trivial software systems. As a user, I love to use programming languages that I haven’t used before, even when the languages in question make me curse every other line.