Douglas Crockford is one of the best-known JavaScript developers and lecturers, as well as the originator of the JSON format. He is also a leading thinker on the advantages (and disadvantages) of JavaScript’s various features, and on the future of the language. In this talk from 2013, Crockford lists the many things that JavaScript does well, which have led it to be (as he describes it) the world’s most popular programming language.
Everyone who uses a computer benefits from high-quality C and C++ compilers. For many years, the standard open-source compiler was GCC. But in the last few years, a new set of a compilers have become popular. You might have heard the terms “LLVM” and “Clang,” for example. But what are these technologies? How are they different from GCC and other compilers? What benefits to they provide? And what is their future?
In this talk, Alp Toker describes Clang, a modern C, C++, and Objective-C compiler. How is it different from its predecessors, and what advantages does it give to programmers using it? Even if you’re a user of dynamic, high-level languages, this talk gives a good introduction and overview of the architecture of a compiler, and the considerations that go into its writing and maintenance.
The Julia programming language has positioned itself as a high-performance alternative to R, NumPy, and Matlab. People point to its combined easy syntax, high performance, and built-in functionality for analyzing large quantities of data. In this tutorial, David Sanders introduces Julia, showing its advantages and why people have been excited to use it.
The PHP language has existed for quite some time, and has been used on large sites such as Yahoo and Facebook. However, the performance of PHP isn’t as good as compiled languages, such as C++. The Hip Hop Virtual Machine (HHVM) is a new implementation of PHP has been providing very good performance at Facebook, giving users what appears to be the best of both worlds — easy development and high performance. In this talk, Stefan Priebsch introduces HHVM.
The D language describes itself as, “a language with C-like syntax and static typing. It pragmatically combines efficiency, control, and modeling power, with safety and programmer productivity.” This talk, given by D language creator Walter Bright, introduces D, and describes its advantages for programmers.
Joe Armstrong, one of the inventors of Erlang, discusses the current state of computers and programming languages, and the challenges that we face in trying to use, maintain, and extend them — while making them scalable and fault tolerant. He mentions Erlang, but most of his talk is spent describing the issues facing modern software engineers, with a strong emphasis on the amazing complexity that arises from putting modern computing power on people’s desks.
Steve Deobald, in this talk, describes the differences (and similarities) between Ruby and Clojure, and why Rubyists should feel comfortable experimenting with Clojure.
Reuven Lerner (that’s me) gave this talk at the online hack.summit() in December 2014. In this talk, I compare the syntax of Ruby and Python, and consider the language design trade-offs that have been made, as well as the relative strengths of each language.
Stephen Wolfram is a well known scientist, thinker, and software developer. His most recent invention is the Wolfram language, which he claims will make many types of programs easier to develop and maintain. In this talk, he unveils the language, and describes parts of its implementation.
Haskell has a reputation for being a great programming language, for the handful of people who can understand it. In this talk, Andrew Rademacher introduces Haskell to programmers who have never seen it before, demonstrating that it’s easier to understand than you might think.