Programming Languages
Why did we move from punch cards to programming languages? What does that tell you about the purpose of programming languages?
From the video example of Computerphile it is very clear that we moved from punch cards to programming languages due to the fact that programming languages are much more understandable than punch cards. They are also far more organizable and can be fixed much more easily due to the fact that you would be able to tell the right order of operations from looking at the few sheets of code compared to more than 100 cards and having to sort each and every one. This tells me that the purpose of programming languages is to be simple, understandable, and efficient.
There are hundreds of different programming languages out there. Why do you think we need so many?
I think we need so many programming languages because a lot of them were created to suit different needs, also competition in the development of better programming languages is healthy as it makes each programming language strive to be better than the other instead of being stagnant and becoming obsolete.
What are some drawbacks of a programming language you use? How would you like it to be different? Think of specific examples.
I will use Python as an example. Python is an interpreted language so it is much slower when compared to compiled languages. This makes it inefficient for programs such as video games. Python also uses a lot of memory and is not very good for programs that need to manage memory efficiently.
If you were going to create a new programming language, how would you start? What do you need to define?
If I were to create a new programming language, I would start by defining a syntax, the type of progamming langauge I would like to make, it's purpose, and whether it would be an interpreted or compiled language. Next I would implement a standard library and create a compiler. Finally, I would like people to use this language so I would either add language to support to an existing text editor like Sublime Text 3 or make my own text editor.
References
GeeksforGeeks
Strumenta
Computerphile