Present and Future of Programming Languages

Programming languages are at the core of our profession. But we don't always give them as much credence as they deserve. The strength of Ruby lies in its heritage from a number of different languages, and a look at the history leading up to Ruby might reveal what lies in store for the future. At the moment a lot of attention is spent looking at programming languages and developers are realizing that your language is an important tool. I will talk a little bit about why languages matter, why you should know several, and what the future of languages might look like.