What arguments can be made against the idea of a single language for all programming domains?

Answer 1

You cannot. The only programming language understood natively by a machine is its own machine code. Every architecture has its own variant of machine code and for good reason. Just as the machine code for a piano player would make little or no sense to a Jacquard loom, the machine code for a mainframe would be impractical for a smart phone. Each machine has a specific purpose and therefore has its own unique set of opcodes to suit that purpose. Although some of those opcodes will be very similar and may have the same value associated with them, they won't necessarily operate in exactly the same way, so the sequence of opcodes is just as important as the opcodes themselves. Thus every machine not only has its own machine code it also has its own low-level assembly language to produce that machine code.

We could argue that we only need one high-level language, of course, but then that one language would have to be suitable for all types of programming on all types of machine. This is quite simply impossible, because some languages are better suited to certain domains than others. For instance, Java is an incredibly useful language because it is highly portable, but it is only useful for writing application software. It is of no practical use when it comes to writing operating system kernels or low-level drivers because all Java code is written against a common but ultimately non-existent virtual machine. If it were possible to write an operating system in Java, the extra level of abstraction required to convert the Java byte code to native machine code would result in far from optimal performance; never mind the fact you need to an interpreter to perform the conversion in the first place.

C++ is arguably more powerful than Java because it is general purpose and has zero overhead. Other than assembly, there is no other language capable of producing more efficient machine code than C++. However, C++ isn't a practical language for coding Artificial Intelligence systems; for that we need a language that is capable of rewriting its own source code, learning and adapting itself to new information. C++ is too low-level for that.

The mere fact we have so many high-level languages is testament to the fact we cannot have a single language across all programming domains. Languages are evolving all the time, borrowing ideas from each other. If a domain requires multiple paradigms for which no single language can accommodate, we can easily interoperate between the languages that provide the specific paradigms we need, possibly creating an entirely new language in the process. That's precisely how languages have evolved into the languages we see today.

Answer 2

fffyuf

Answer 3

None.