Bridging the Gap Between Languages (with Martin Johansen)

If you ever feel overwhelmed by the number of different programming languages, this week’s episode might just offer you some solace, as we talk about an attempt to reunify many of the most popular languages by focussing on the bread & butter things that every language supports.

I’m joined by Martin Johansen, who’s been working on a new tool called Progsbase. With it, he’s created a spec based on all the things programming languages can agree on, and is building a library that can cross-compile between them. Write a program in Java, and it can be automatically translated to PHP, Python and a great deal more.

But how far can he take that idea? Is there really enough unity between these languages to build something universal? How do you bridge the divide between manual memory management languages like C and garbage-collected ones like Java? And what would it actually feel like to write code this way? Let’s put Martin’s plan under the spotlight and find out…

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Martin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/martinfj

Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krisajenkins

Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/

Progsbase homepage: https://www.progsbase.com/

The Spec: https://www.progsbase.com/docs/programs/

The Progsbase library repository: https://repo.progsbase.com/

The Bug Bounty: https://www.progsbase.com/bug-bounty/

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#software #programming #podcast #programminglanguages