On Programming Language Futures

One of the things that I think is so cool about the CLR is the fact that it is multi-language… The first commercially successful multi-language runtime environment. One of the things that I think is neat about that is we have to potential to survive the next paradigm shift in software development… That is when the next “big language” comes out from someone’s nights and weekend coding or a side project at some large company it could run on the CLR... giving it immediate access to a huge framework of functionality.

I want to do everything we can to make sure the runtime is ready for that language and the many other “small languages” that will come about. That is why we invested in Reflection Emit, ILDASM, CodeDom, and other compiler support features (there are even books on the subject)

JasonZ (the head-cheese on the CLR team) recently posted a little about what we did in Whidbey and asks about dynamic languages. I think there is a very good chance that dynamic languages could be the next big change in the computing world. Xml and web services are making applications much more about arrogating and sorting through data and that is one thing these languages rock at… And certainly we are seeing results perf as the recent info on IronPyton suggest.

What do you think? What is your favorite language? If you had to bet, would language would you say is going to “as popular as C++” in 5 years? 10 years? Do you think the CLR will be in a position to support that language?