1. Given how much the "standard programming languages we use" have changed over the years, and that many of the industry standard scripting languages today were based on research languages like Self, Smalltalk, Lisp, etc., what present-day research languages and features of present-day research languages do you see inspiring the industry-standard languages of tomorrow?


2. Of the standard "functional favorites" (Haskell, SML, OCaml), which do you see used the most often for industrial CS applications? (I mean, come on, I know there is a small minority of people who do this) Which would you like to see used for industrial CS applications and why? Are some better suited and/or more widely used for web / mobile / other application domain?


3. JCreed once had a post about the things he'd learned in programming that seemed silly at first and later turned out to be of fundamental importance. The list begin with things like "commenting your code" and "strong type systems" and ended with pieces of mathematical logic I'd never heard of and didn't understand. Of the things PL people deal with that I don't yet know or understand, which do you think are the most important/fundamental/general/practical? i.e., if I had a choice, which should I learn first?

The main rule when using Java code: You cannot use most of the AWT or Swing (which is built on the AWT), because it will interfere with the graphics model. If you want to add scroll bars and buttons to your projects, you should make them using Processing code, or embed your Processing applet inside another Swing or AWT application (see below). Even if they appear to work, such sketches will usually break when you try to run on other operating systems or other versions of Java.

We currently only support Java 1.4 (and earlier) syntax. You cannot currently use 1.5 syntax in the Processing Development Environment. This means no generics, templates, enum, varargs, foreach, and the rest. If you want to use Java 1.5 (or later), take core.jar and develop your project with another Java IDE (again, see below). More about Java versions can be found on the platforms page. A couple of the syntax features in Java 1.5 are very useful (the enhanced for loop, some aspects of generics) so if you would like to use them in Processing, please give us a hand. You can start by visiting this bug which describes the obstacles to 1.5 support.