From switchboards to binary, from binary to C, from C to Python, from Python to...

I've noticed a trend in programming. The hackers and geeks we see today aren't really all that geeky considering the guys programming in assembly language, and they aren't all that geeky compared to the people who used to manufacture and program their computers manually.

But manufacturing programming tend to get simplified, even low-level stuff. It's all going through an emergent process of easification.

It's not good to have tons of interpreters, though, since we want fast, sleek, unencumbered, simple programs. But I don't think easy programming interfaces are exclusive from efficient programming.

Just as many new games are based on game engines, such as havok, the Quake Engine, Source, and many others, it would seem the programmers are increasingly using underlying technology through modules rather than starting from scratch, at least so far as it's possible.

Which is a great idea along the lines of standardization and building a platform.

However, if things keep going this way, I can see all-purpose guified programming toolkits coming along. Think The Games Factory or Multimedia Fusion for Windows. Just click around and build a programming outline, but instead of it just being a layout, it actually does the coding for you so far as it can.

It plugs into dependencies and shows the accessible features as menu items. Such as gstreamer, play file in this size of layer in program, X Server key commands, etc. Basically an all purpose programming frontend.

This would be feasible with Linux, since it has an entirely open and pluggable collection of software to access. I'm afraid this is the future of programming GUI programs, not necessarily the real underlying code that makes it all function.

It sounds lazy and cluttered, but it may just happen. And who knows? Maybe low-level code will end up being GUIfied to some extent, even for things like kernel coding, just to help people manage all of it.

I imagine that, in about 100 years, everything will probably run on a standardized open platform, and our kids won't even understand programming languages, just classes, objects, and related jargon, and use that in a click-oriented format.

Of course, I don't mean to say I like this idea, but it just seems like the next logical step in programming tools to emerge. If executed correctly, it could open up a lot of possibilities.

Please discuss, this is kind of an open subject, my apologies for being so lengthy.

People use higher level programming languages so that they don't have to solve the same problems over and over again. Take a look at these famous essays:

http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

I loved CATB, awesome read. I hope I didn't suggest they used them for any more shallow reason than to reduce unnecessary work.