I dont know chewy check this out
if they can make a blind man see using computers then they are already interfacing with the brain
Or this
So really i dont think we are to far away from being to think and operate computer since we kinda are already doing it...Next step "Matrix" instead of dying people will just be hooked up to a computer and kept on life support while they live out their fantasies forever. Virtual Heaven. Unless this is already a reality and we just dont know it(play impending doom music).

But really the whole voice thing would probably be pretty simple to use, it would just take some very complex real coding to make it happen.

yeah, theres also a news clip on CNN.com that talks about a 70 year old engineer who went to Protigual <sp?> to get a camera hooked up to his left brain lobe so he could see again. was rather cool to watch. he can distiguish objects last i heard, maybe he can do more. but back to the subject....

This is all very primitive stuff. The kind of thing you see on Star Trek, where you can actually have a conversation with a computer is a very long way off.

Human languages are a great deal more complicated than programming languages. Some progress has been made in parsing them, but interpreting the meaning of natural language sentences accurately is a problem that's going to take a very long time to solve. Speech recognition has obviously coming a long way, but of course the computer is just responding to certain patterns of words, it's not really understanding what you're saying. One problem is that we're not really sure how humans manage to understand each other (this is what people studying "pragmatics" think about), so building computers that can work out what people mean when they're just talking normally is a really immense problem.

Alex

we're not talking about haveing a conversation with the computer, we're talking about programming using a voice recognition system. not trying to start small chat or ask it on a date, just program by speaking the commands to the computer.
so realy your not speaking in a natural language at all, your just saying the commands instead of typing them in. thats what we're talking about. nothing to do with having a conversation with the computer.

OK then I think we agree...

Alex

I believe in the next few years we'll see a more gradual shift towards more hybrid languages that bare more features from declarative languages. Python, Ruby, etc, will increase in popularity. Also 'pure' XML support in languages is going to appear, sort of like in Xen, the extension language to C#.

yes, just a bit of a misunderstanding i guess

To get back to the main subject: I think that most languages can be both compiled and interpreted. In the '80s, most people thought that BASIC could not be compiled, but currently m$ visual basic does exactly that. And I'm sure that if I had the time for it, then I would be able to write a C++ interpreter for instance. Talking about efficiency is a different subject, but it *is* possible.

I think that these classes of languages will grow together in the future, when you will e.g. be using a p-code, java-like system at development time, which allows you to do easy debugging, and a compiled version for the distribution towards end users. The languages themself will evolve towards more high-level languages, which will provide more rapid application development. The low level languages (down to assembly) will still be used for things like kernel development.

I have had the opportunity to watch and experience thirty years of computing technology. This is a re-occuring question, with a 6 year average cycle. While I must agree that C/Cobol/C++ and many other languages are not going to die or be relegated to just specialized roles like kernels. It is still the goal of the business users and hobbyist to augment human knowledge with the content and context of actionable information.

Computers extend a unfullfilled promise of timely and relevant information. However, the issue has always been - How long will it take? C/C++/Cobol were attempts to shorten deliver times over ASM/machine code. Java/php/... took another interation on that theme. I suspect there will be yet another major language-like push - in fact there is one on the horizon now "UML" UML with the right "business modeling framework" like SOA will greatly reduce delivery time of new 'actionable information(relevance implied)'. Imagine producing the equivilent of a ERP system in 30 days, and adding RFID two days later.

Companies and individuals with this kind of dynamic capability will definately have a business and/or knowledge advantage. The last three big waves got lost in their own shorts; namely Object-Oriented, Client/Server, (Web)/Network Computing. A part of the human (read 'mine's better) condition is to argue over irrelevant details until the real value of such a thing is mis-directed toward the technology and not the communal value.

As technologist, artist, and professionals we have an opportunity to re-direct our passion to providing real value to the people who support our habits and hobbys; Keep a healthy pallette of tools available - make 'reuse' work - and try for a ten day or less delivery window for every request. After living through Y2K, and knowing that some of those programs were written by me, I am emabarrased to admitt that I spent a week or more trying to shave 1M of disk and 10K of memory off an application. Twenty years later that extra time, no matter how elegant, seems really stupid. Don't be afraid to spend CPU cycles, Memory, and disk space.

Qt is a great example of "all our systems knowledge" being condensed into a useable and re-useable framework; Now if we could do that for invoice writing, pricing, scheduling, claims management, etc... this would give new meaning to '60 lines of code to create..."

Good business relevant Design, and Quick & on-time Delivery is where I spend my time.

So much to say, so little time!

I agree, but there is the other side to this medal...

I'm 16, but my dad is always complaining, that every time he buys a new computer, everything just seems to work even slower than it did last time.
15 yrs back, he had a goldstar laptop, which i "inherited" as my playing machine, (proc 386lx, 20 meg HD, 640 + 384 KB ram, grayscale LCD screen) and the thing runs DOS 6.20, has a boot time of 15 seconds, has NortonCommander, Dosshell, a few games (volleyball, some frp, Ski or Die), WordPerfect, and a custom c++ text editor by me. It was definitely suitable to do office work and no program starts in more than 2 seconds.

Now we have programs with about 100 times more features and 500 times faster computers with 512 times more RAM (at the least) and I really don't want to talk about graphic / soundcards because there weren't any,
yet starting MS Word takes about 10-15 seconds, starting up windows takes 2-5 minutes and running any other interpreted thingie still longer.

Where is my 1-second startup OS? Where is my 20/100 second startup texeditor? (count Vim and all other shell-based ones out)

Where is that?

Optimization just went out the window with MS... Go GENTOO!!!

One word - Bloatware

I note that your fifteen year timeline appears to produce no significant result in performance. However, you have discounted the fact that your Dos machine of 15 years ago was mainly a single tasking single user platform. Today for the same user performance you get multi-tasking, multi-user, features out the wa'zoo, not to mention the addition of graphics and multi-media. Somewhere in there was a productivity boost. A great example is print spooling, can you imagine what it was like to have to wait for your five page document to print before you could start your next task or paragraph. All this additional capability is delivered to the typical desktop user for 1/5th the cost. In 1980 an IBM PC with 64KB, 2 320K 5.25 Diskettes, 1200bps modem, rotten dot matrix printer and decent monochrome display cost and average of $5500 new. If you spent that kind of money on a system today - I think you could achieve your 15 second or less performance.

This is a great opportunity to compare the performance and useability of Linux (any distro) and MS. My view is MS based systems are wrong-headed in many different ways; causing all users to be shorted their expected gains. Linux better represents the techical knowledge of the last thiry years of learning, and a more diverse technical community (read quality). Your ability to control the investment vs performance equation with Linux is superior to your ability to do so with MS systems.

Note also, that few of us would actually be willing to pay for hardware that would boot an OS in 1 second. My modern systems boot in 30 seconds.

Compiled vs Interpreted! I make the assertion that to take advantage of today's and future hardware improvements you need a Right-Headed foundation of code to build on. MS based systems do not provide that as a general rule.

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...dad is always complaining, that every time he buys a new computer, everything just seems to work even slower than it did last time.
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reload it with linux and live free.

How true...

Thank you for making my point complete and objective. The thing is, i really did not know how much the systems cost 15 yrs back and was suspecting some1 would write the history complete. Let me thank you again.

But with reloading with linux there is a little problem... My dad kinda likes windows because he really does not want to learn linux.

I ofcourse have linux on my machine, but i share it with my brother and he doesn't wanna learn linux either. + i hate redhat i have, because i really feel like it's restrictive. do not know all the locations of the config files and all and when i wasn't able to set up apache2 with php support as a sapi module and mysql, i went back to windows and am currently waiting to get my new comp which will only run gentoo and XP as a gaming-only system. I plan to do a stage 1 install (since i have ADSL and an another machine to look at the documentation it's gonna be oh-right)

Now i'm going to reboot and watch a movie in linux (u have to love mplayer...)