Alex Payne here archive publications events This Wednesday will mark five years of Emerging Languages , the showcase for new programming languages that I dreamed up back in 2009. As we approach half a decade and well over fifty total presentations, I’ve been reflecting on where the event has been and how the language landscape has changed since we began. Our first year, 2010 , was a big one. Several of the languages presented that year have since broken out into the mainstream, particularly Clojure , Go , and CoffeeScript . The inaugural presentation culminated in a wonderfully tense moment, one that perfectly captures the push and pull of academic and industrial forces in the world of programming languages. As Go co-creator Rob Pike wrapped up his talk and opened up the floor for Q&A, an audience member didn’t hesitate to address the elephant in the server room: “Rob,...