Occassionally there is discussion about if computer languages can be agile, and if so, which. I belong to the group of people that think that it is only people that can be agile, and it is more a feeling than a matter of practices and techniques. So, of course there are no agile languages!
But today I listened to an Agile Toolkit podcast with Dave Thomas (“PragDave”) talking about different topics with Bob Payne. When Dave pointed out that programmers really need to learn a multitude of programming languages, and gave some examples, my thoughts wandered back to my language and compiler designer days. And suddenly I realized that there actually are agile languages. All the lazy-evaluating, functional languages are agile, or at least follows one of the most important agile principles, YAGNI. They do not compute anything that is not absolutely necessary, and when necessary, only computes exactly what is needed, with precision and timely delivery.