Rule #1: C-like syntax

This is because programmers are lame, but hey, it’s your target audience. Give the people what they want.

Rule #2: Dynamic typing with optional static types.

Adding in optional static types is the ideal solution. It helps with performance, it helps with code reliability and (possibly) readability, it helps IDEs navigate your code, and most importantly, it helps combat the incredible FUD that dynamic languages inspire in people who come from static backgrounds.

Rule #3: Performance

Generally speaking, NBL will have to have a much greater focus on performance than so-called “scripting languages” have had in the past. I mean, if it’s really the Next Big Thing, it’ll have to run on mobile devices, game platforms, and all sorts of other hardware-constrained devices.

Rule #4: Tools

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say they wouldn’t use Ruby because it lacks automated refactoring tools. Ruby doesn’t actually need them in the way Java does; it’s like refusing to switch to an electric car because there’s no place to put the gasoline. But programmers are a stubborn bunch, and to win them over you have to give them what they think they want.

Rule #5: Kitchen Sink

Here’s a short list of programming-language features that have become ad-hoc standards that everyone expects:

1. Object-literal syntax for arrays and hashes
2. Array slicing and other intelligent collection operators
3. Perl 5 compatible regular expression literals
4. Destructuring bind (e.g. x, y = returnTwoValues())
5. Function literals and first-class, non-broken closures
6. Standard OOP with classes, instances, interfaces, polymorphism, etc.
7. Visibility quantifiers (public/private/protected)
8. Iterators and generators
9. List comprehensions
10. Namespaces and packages
11. Cross-platform GUI
12. Operator overloading
13. Keyword and rest parameters
14. First-class parser and AST support
15. Static typing and duck typing
16. Type expressions and statically checkable semantics
17. Solid string and collection libraries
18. Strings and streams act like collections

The most disturbing thing about his post is the insinuation that he has some inside information that leads him to believe he knows what that future language might be. I tried to guess what he was talking about while I was reading and couldn’t come to any conclusion. None of the languages I’ve worked with (C++, Java, C#, VB.NET and Python) seem to fit the bill. They are all either too restrictive or too slow to actually become the next best thing. As much as I love Python, it was designed to be “glue” between components written in C and C++ and most of its speed-critical libraries are still written in those languages and that doesn’t seem likely to change in any near future (even with PyPy). And for a language to become truly popular it isn’t enough for it to be merely good, fun or fast. It needs to be endorsed by somebody big. As much power as we think the open source movement might have, the really big endeavors need money to succeed and that can only be provided by large businesses. And no, I don’t see a major bank’s IT department developing a Zope- or Rails- based information management system any time soon. They need someone to blame and to buy consulting from if (or more likely, when) things go wrong, so they’ll probably go with Java or .NET (or Fortran :) ).

The comments to the aforementioned post reveal a worthy contender however. I’ve never written a line of JavaScript in my life, spending most of my time creating desktop applications, but I’ve heard a lot about it being a surprisingly expressive languages with all sorts of cool language features like closures and generators. So, can JavaScript be the next big thing? It just might. Adobe contributed the sources of their ActionScript (which is the language used in Flash) Virtual Machine to Mozilla which promptly launched the Tamarin project which is going to implement version 4 of ECMAScript (upon which both ActiveScript and JavaScript are based with differences being mostly in the libraries). That version is rumored to have almost every feature listed in Stevey’s list above. If you’ve taken a look a the participants in the Tamarin project, you’ve seen that it consists of an equal number of Mozilla and Adobe (presumably former-Macromedia) people. That is a serious combination of efforts. The folks at Mozilla are serious hackers and have proven their ability to motivate a community of volunteer hackers, and Adobe can provide the financial backing and the brand that will help adoption in the suit-and-tie IT environment. That, in combination with ES4’s alleged superiority, might prove powerful enough to make its adoption by the masses possible.

But that’s not all. It seems (and I’m probably very late to find out about it), that Adobe’s Apollo project is supposed to be everything Java Applets and .NET’s Zero Deployment should have been – a secure sandboxed environment for running applications downloaded from the web to be run on the local computer with no more hazard or installation pain than visiting a web site. I’ve previously written that desktop applications could fight back the current wave of moving everything to the web. I wrote that post under the assumption that the tools for creating web applications will develop in a linear fashion through slow evolution of what we have today. And what we have today isn’t much – creating a responsive AJAX application that works across platforms and browsers is still too hard, much harder than creating a desktop application with, say, wxPython, that does the same thing. If Apollo does deliver an out-of-the-browser platform that will actually work, and you’ll be able to code to it using a language that doesn’t feel like bootcamp all over again, desktop applications will probably disappear.

And if Adobe does pull that off, they, along with their technology will become the next big thing.

1. It has a fantastic user interface.
2. My feeds are available for me both from my home computer and at work, and whatever feeds I signup here, I can read there as well.

It’s very hard to build a convincingly responsive UI using web technologies even with all the Ajax buzz, and Google is among the few companies that can actually pull it of. It’s so much easier to build desktop software even if you’re dealing with support for multi platforms (and as I’ve recently discovered it’s no fun for web app developers either). The problem with desktop software is that wherever you install it, you have to configure it, usually from scratch. My home Thunderbird configuration isn’t quite exactly what it is in the office, even if all of my actual email messages are on an IMAP server, and my address books aren’t in sync in an especially annoying way.

It doesn’t have to be that way though. Do you know what roaming profiles are? This is a not-well-known feature of Windows that allows the entire user configuration (including the My Documents folder) to be stored on a remote server and copied to the local HD whenever the user logs on. When it works correctly (and it rarely does), it allows you to use any computer in a company and (hopefully) not even notice that you’ve changed computers because everything (down to the wallpaper) has moved along with you.

Okay, so that’s a little ambitious, but IM clients have been doing that on a smaller scale for quite a while now. ICQ, MSN Messenger and Skype all store the contact lists on a server, and it’s very handy.

One of the reasons for which web replacements for classical desktop applications are so populate ability to move from one computer to another and having all your information and configuration at your fingertips. The other is the fact the desktop software needs to be installed, but even my mom can do the “next, next, next” dance. However, people don’t roam aimlessly between computers. There are actually three levels of mobility possible:

1. You may have a single computer you always work on.
2. You may have two or tree personal computers – one at home, one at work and maybe a laptop.
   Each is personal in the sense that you install the software that you like and configure it just so.
3. You don’t own a computer and only use airport internet stands, internet cafes and the like.

I think we can safely assume that most people fall in categories 1 and 2 and use a small number of computers they consider their own. I would appear that BeInSync realized that, but they’re talking about synchronizing files and I’m talking about synchronizing the way you’ve personalized your computer and the applications on it.

Such an ability (either on the application or on the operating system level) could bridge the gap between web applications and desktop applications by mixing the power of the rich UI with the seamlessness of the Internet. In the battle between desktop applications and web applications, the web seems to be winning, and it shouldn’t – at least not for everything. There’s so much the desktop can offer in terms of responsiveness and user experience that it’s a waste to confine yourself to the boundaries of the browser. I think however, that desktop application developers and the companies they work for haven’t yet learned to harness the power of the internet and instead view it as a rival that should be feared. Even applications such as Firefox don’t use the net to it’s full potential. Why can’t my bookmarks be stored on a server somewhere? Why can’t the list of extensions I’ve installed and the options I have configured for them be stored at the same location?

There are some issues(security comes to mind) that need to be taken care of, but I think the moment desktop application developers realize that the only thing that actually needs to be on the desktop is the compiled code itself and put everything else (documents and settings) on a server, the tide might change and the futile attempt to create web-based spread sheets and movie editors will cease.

P.S. The photo at the top of this post has nothing to do with the subject at hand. It’s just a nice photo by David Aaron Sercel whose Google widget has a place of honor on my Google homepage.

Turns out it’s already been done, sort of. The quickmail.php tool can connect to any POP3 email server and create an RSS feed for all of your email. It just needs a bit of filtering options to do what I like.

On the other hand, I’m beginning to feel swamped with all the information flow.

So maybe not.

But that’s really not what I wanted to talk about.

As I was reading the standard (which is very incomplete) I realized I would like to keep tabs on what’s happening with it. However, the lovely RSS icon was nowhere to be found. But wait a minute, I thought to myself, all I want is to be notified when the web page changes. And I would like to be notified via RSS, because that’s where I, err.., get notified.

How hard can it be to implement something that keeps a version of a page I register, checks back with it once in a while and generates an RSS feed from the changes? Shouldn’t be too hard, but as far as I know there isn’t such a service. There are some sites that promise to inform you by email if a web page changes, but no RSS feeds and my experience with them wasn’t all that great.

I guess I’ll have to make to time to code this one myself.

[Update] In these modern times, you can’t possibly have an original idea anymore.