Evolution or stagnation programming languages
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Daniele Esposit discusses the evolution of modern programming languages, focusing on Python and JavaScript. While Python has introduced significant improvements in its 3.x version, it lacks backward compatibility, hindering its evolution. In contrast, JavaScript has successfully grown without breaking changes, allowing seamless updates and coexistence of old and new code, providing valuable insights into language development.
Evolution or stagnation programming languages
- 2. Data Platform Lead Daily playing with: Python, JavaScript & Java @expobrain github.com/expobrain Daniele Esposti
- 3. I’ll not talking about the history of programming languages...
- 4. I’ll talk about modern programming languages
- 6. “The method of communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way” https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/language
- 7. Does it apply to programming languages as well?
- 8. Yes!
- 9. Languages evolves by the requirements of whom spoke them
- 10. If a language is not useful anymore or become stagnant fewer and fewer people will use it
- 11. Let consider two very popular programming languages
- 13. Python 3.x
- 14. Python ● print() as a function ● All strings are unicode ● Renaming of standard libs (six.moves on the rescue)
- 15. Python ● async / await ● f-strings ● Delegating to a Subgenerator ( yield from )
- 16. Python ● very few additions in the 2.x series ● core language is still the same ● changes in the 3.x series are backward incompatible
- 17. Python Some features are backward compatible, must be activated with: from __future__ import <feature>
- 18. Python However a huge amount of improvements: new packages, better performance and lower memory usage
- 20. JavaScript ● Setter / getters ● New methods on Object and Array ● const / let ● Block scoped variables and functions
- 21. JavaScript ● Arrow functions ● Lexical this ● Default parameters in functions ● Spread / rest operator
- 22. JavaScript ● Template literals ● Property shorthand ● Computed property names ● Method properties in objects
- 23. JavaScript Destructuring: ● Array matching ● Object matching ● ...with default values and deep traversal
- 24. JavaScript ● import and export ● Classes ● Iterators and generators ● Map / Set and WeakMap / WeakSet
- 25. JavaScript ● Typed and shared arrays ● Promise and async / await ● Proxying and reflection ● Collation
- 26. JavaScript A lot of new addition to the language No backward incompatible changes* Code can be run on any browser* *more on this later
- 27. Compared to Python JavaScript’s evolution in the same timescale has been more successful
- 28. What happened?
- 29. From Guido van Rossum: BDFL Python 3 retrospective: ● We didn't build any runtime compatibility features ● We didn't know how to create fully-automated conversion tools ● We didn't make enough compatibility allowances ● We did a few things half-heartedly (i.e. the stdlib cleanup) Python
- 30. JavaScript ● The TC39 committee is careful to not break the Web ● ES5 code is still valid in ES6, ES7, etc. ● Features are provided by polyfills ● Babel transpile any version of JavaScript down to ES5
- 31. Which means: ● Old code is still working ● New code works on older interpreters via transpiling ● Can mix new and old code ● Can write code in ES.next via transpiling JavaScript
- 32. Lessons learned:
- 33. Developers are more productive when upgrading the programming language is painless and seamless
- 34. Tooling is important: 2to3 failed where Babel succeeded
- 35. Old and new language must coexist
- 36. Explore how other languages approached the same problem
- 37. The language should be ergonomic end evolve fast to be close to the developer’s needs
- 38. Python is one of the most successful language but it’s evolution is restrained
- 39. We don’t want to see it stagnant We want so see it thrive!