[est31]

LLMs (or LLM assisted coding), if successful, will more likely make the number of compilers go down, as LLMs are better with mainstream languages compared to niche ones. Same effect as with frameworks. Less languages, less compilers needed.

[cube2222]

I mostly disagree.

First, LLMs should be happy to use made up languages described in a couple thousand tokens without issues (you just have to have a good llm-friendly description, some examples). That and having a compiler it can iterate with / get feedback from.

Second, LLMs heavily reduce ecosystem advantage. Before LLMs, presence of libraries for common use cases to save myself time was one of the main deciding factors for language choice.

Now? The LLM will be happy to implement any utility / api client library I want given the API I want. May even be more thoroughly tested than the average open-source library.

[achierius]

Have you tried having an LLM write significant amounts of, say, F#? Real language, lots of documentation, definitely in the pre-training corpus, but I've never had much luck with even mid sized problems in languages like it -- ones where today's models absolutely wipe the floor in JavaScript or Python.

[phendrenad2]

See, I'm coming from the understanding that language development is a dead-end in the real world. Can you name a single language made after Zig or Rust? And even those languages haven't taken over much of the professional world. So when I say companies will maintain compilers, I mean DSLs (like starlark or RSpec), application-specific languages (like CUDA), variations on existing languages (maybe C++ with some in-house rules baked in), and customer-facing config languages for advanced systems and SaaS applications.

[jibal]

Yes, several, e.g., Gleam, Mojo, Hare, Carbon, C3, Koka, Jai, Kotlin, Reason ... and r/ProgrammingLanguages is chock full of people working on new languages that might or might not ever become more widely known ... it takes years and a lot of resources and commitment. Zig and Rust are well known because they've been through the gauntlet and are well marketed ... there are other languages in productive use that haven't fared well that way, e.g., D and Nim (the best of the bunch and highly underappreciated), Odin, V, ...

> even those languages haven't taken over much of the professional world.

Non sequitur goalpost moving ... this has nothing to do with whether language development is a dead-end "in the real world", which is a circular argument when we're talking about language development. The claim is simply false.

[WhyOhWhyQ]

This seems like a case of moving the goalposts because Zig and Rust still seem newfangled to me. I thought nothing would come after C++11.

[anon291]

Bad take. People said the same about c/c++ and now rust and zig are considered potential rivals. The ramp up is slow and there's never going to be a moment of viral adoption the way we're used to with SaaS, but change takes place.