It's been a long time since I used templates (in C++), and I haven't looked at the public review draft of JSR 14 in any detail, but it seems like something along those lines might work.

Someone calling himself JavaBear also had some kind comments regarding this post.

Here's some snippets from one (of several) entries that I found interesting (dated "3-26-03", but there aren't any anchors in log, so you'll have to just search for it). This one happens to be mostly paraphrasing Paul Prescod.

"Paul Prescod gave the keynote [at a Python conference], and talked about what programming languages will look like in 100 years, to control flying cars and the like. He called COBOL and Java neanderthal languages that have no descendents on the evolutionary tree. How close is Language X to the evolutionary trunk? And what should we bet on? He noted that the Python community has a direct influence on the evolution of the language, and that it gets closer to the trunk at each successive iteration of Python.

[...]

"Cruft breed cruft. The more of the language you can write in itself, the better its chance for long-term survival.

[...]

"Specifications change while a program is being written. This is not only inevitable, but desireable. Some of the best programs are essays, in that the programmer didn't know what they were trying to write when they started.

[...]

"We could design a language now that could appeal to people in a hundred years, assuming unlimited resources. We could design the core language today. Optimistically there might only be a few languages in a hundred years. If the 100-year language were available today, would we want to use them? He says yes. Why not try writing this language now and see what it's like to program in?

"When driving, you don't match the hood of the car with the lines on the road, but point it at some distant landmark and correct it as you go. He says we should do the same things with a language."

There's lots of interesting stuff in there, I suspect I'll be a regular visitor.

Update [April 9, 2003]: It seems that this keynote was actually delivered by Paul Graham, and he has written it up as "The Hundred Year Language". Also see my followup post.