I think it's true that there's too much in the way of faddy tools and products, frameworks, libraries, ecosystems.. and at the same time people are perhaps not investing enough into theory/fundamentals.
Where programming languages fit on this spectrum is a bit controversial. I think most people treat learning a programming language as an ecosystem problem, but that's only because these people tend to consider only mainstream languages that just don't have a lot going for them in the "language proper."
The result seems to be that if you propose a programming language a competent programmer can't pick up in a weekend or three (mostly by learning the syntax & types and then just applying prior knowledge from other languages), there's going to be a lot of complaining and whining about it. Maybe it's justified as long as we don't see advanced languages that really change software engineering in a big way; 'til then, a language is just another (more or less faddy) tool.
If we had a language that could offer guaranteed productivity boost (without any nasty tradeoffs other than the required up-front mental investment) for anyone who takes a few months to study it, then hell yes we should!
So it boils down to: is there really enough values in those ideas or not? I think not, or else both academia and the entire industry is just extremely dumb for not seeing that value. And I'm dumb too :(
The other point to note is that some valuable concepts just slowly creep into mainstream languages over time. Like mainstream languages today have a decent set of constructs that you primarily associated with functional languages 2-3 decades ago. Those things are probably not valuable enough in isolation to justify switching languages.
> So it boils down to: is there really enough values in those ideas or not?
Up front, it depends one which ideas "those ideas" are. If you're referring to monads etc, I don't know. It's not obvious to me either way. In the broader sense, I hope what we're seeing with things like rust's ownership stuff, or haskell's hardcore folks dreaming up new ways to do generic things soundly, the zig and co folks separating compile time code from runtime code, or even the bleeding edge dependent type folks letting you write provably correct code, I hope it's just the beginning. In terms of programming language developments, it seems like there are a lot of new ideas happening now. It's not that academia and the industry are dumb, it's just that this shit is hard and we're just starting. So I worry when I see "it's another thing to learn, and there's already to much, so no" as a justification against the hard parts in new ideas. I can't wait to see what the next few decades of languages and tooling bring us. Who cares whether it means we have to study?
> I think not, or else both academia and the entire industry is just extremely dumb for not seeing that value.
I don’t think we should discount that possibility, although I don’t think it’s true that academia doesn’t see the value in more sophisticated technology.
Industry, yes. I can accept the idea that a large proportion of industry is just extremely dumb. This isn’t an original idea though.
Where programming languages fit on this spectrum is a bit controversial. I think most people treat learning a programming language as an ecosystem problem, but that's only because these people tend to consider only mainstream languages that just don't have a lot going for them in the "language proper."
The result seems to be that if you propose a programming language a competent programmer can't pick up in a weekend or three (mostly by learning the syntax & types and then just applying prior knowledge from other languages), there's going to be a lot of complaining and whining about it. Maybe it's justified as long as we don't see advanced languages that really change software engineering in a big way; 'til then, a language is just another (more or less faddy) tool.
If we had a language that could offer guaranteed productivity boost (without any nasty tradeoffs other than the required up-front mental investment) for anyone who takes a few months to study it, then hell yes we should!
So it boils down to: is there really enough values in those ideas or not? I think not, or else both academia and the entire industry is just extremely dumb for not seeing that value. And I'm dumb too :(
The other point to note is that some valuable concepts just slowly creep into mainstream languages over time. Like mainstream languages today have a decent set of constructs that you primarily associated with functional languages 2-3 decades ago. Those things are probably not valuable enough in isolation to justify switching languages.