On the Evolution of Programming Languages

TL;DR

This paper explores the evolution of programming languages by drawing parallels with biological evolution, analyzing how new languages inherit and improve upon features of older ones, and proposing future directions for language development.

Contribution

It introduces a theory connecting language evolution with biological evolution and analyzes prominent languages to identify feature inheritance and future trends.

Findings

New languages incorporate strong features from older languages.

Evolution of languages mirrors biological evolution patterns.

Proposes experimental languages for multi-core architectures.

Abstract

This paper attempts to connects the evolution of computer languages with the evolution of life, where the later has been dictated by \emph{theory of evolution of species}, and tries to give supportive evidence that the new languages are more robust than the previous, carry-over the mixed features of older languages, such that strong features gets added into them and weak features of older languages gets removed. In addition, an analysis of most prominent programming languages is presented, emphasizing on how the features of existing languages have influenced the development of new programming languages. At the end, it suggests a set of experimental languages, which may rule the world of programming languages in the time of new multi-core architectures. Index terms- Programming languages' evolution, classifications of languages, future languages, scripting-languages.