Microsoft Denmark has made available a very nice video of Anders Hejlsberg covering the future of programming languages (page in Danish, video in English) by starting with the 25 years old Turbo Pascal he originally wrote. He demos Turbo Pascal 1 at the beginning.


He mentions that we are still programming using text files, something he wouldn't have predicted 25 years ago. He tells that the power today comes from libraries and tools, more than changes in languages. Covers dynamic languages and domain specific languages, both external DSLs (including XSLT and XAML) and internal DSLs (including fluent interfaces for APIs and lambda expressions). Spends time on functional programming, of course. Claims that static and dynamic languages are going to merge, at least in part. Praises Ruby for meta programming. (By the way, all of the dynamic features of C# keep reminding me Delphi is so close to that I don't understand why we cannot have full dynamic programming support right now). Mentioned parallel programming challenges.


Very, very interesting (taking about 60 minutes before Ballmer kicks in, interrupting Anders abruptly, and then resuming later on for 10 more minutes and Q&A). This was also referenced by Jim McKeeth and commented on (interesting points) by Lars Dybdahl, but it seemed too interesting not to mention in my blog as well.