OT: Language for the ages

[Chuck Guzis]

One thing that everyone seems to assume is that in 30 years, the
general-purpose personal computer will still be around as such.

I'm not so certain of this.

For those with the current issue of EETimes, take a look at the "Teardown"
feature--it's the anatomy of the new Tiger Electronics handheld game box.
A 400 MHz ARM processor, many megabytes of flash, USB, Nvidia graphics
chip, GPS, Bluetooth and a whole bunch of other stuff all packed into a
battery-powered hand-held TOY.  

It might be that decades from now, we have purpose-built tools with
computers buried in their innards  (such as the PIC in my trackball) and
nary a general-purpose user-programmable PC anywhere.  After all, it's a
good thing from a marketing standpoint if the user of a system has to buy
the programming.  Look at the hoops you'd have to jump through to write a
new game for your Xbox...

Cheers,
Chuck