Eta – A powerful language for building scalable systems on the JVM
i feel like each "new" general-purpose language project is just nipping at the boot-heels of the much bigger problem of constructing large-scale systems that can be fully understood by a few (2-3) people.<p>VPRI's research has shown that one important method for constructing large-scale systems that can be understood by small teams is to have a pipeline of problem-specific languages that express major portions of the system. they were able to reduce LOC for a typical OS with networking and graphics by 3 or 4 orders of magnitude.<p>general-purpose languages can't compete with DSLs in terms of expression, and yet we keep inventing them. i think our lack of imagination is starting to show. compilation and language design will need to become much more common-place if we expect to continue scaling up.<p>a tower of babel in computing is <i>healthy</i>, no matter how much employers want us to be easily-replaceable cogs in an IT machine.