Friday, May 02, 2008

Long tail of programming languages

While I'm sick of long tail blahs, I recently came across the idea that programming languages follow the same power laws found in other areas. This particular long tail this should be encouraging for those who have a disdain for the current mainstream computer languages, "Rather than finding ways to create an even lower lowest common denominator, the Long Tail is about finding economically efficient ways to capitalize on the infinite diversity of taste and demand that has heretofore been overshadowed by mass markets."

Furthermore, "There is a long tail because the more specialized a language is to a domain, the better it fits to solve problems for that domain. These niche languages trade off generality for efficiency in a domain and they are simply better and more efficient tools for that domain."

No comments: