Ask HN: Do Programming Languages Die? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do Programming Languages Die?

8 pointsamrrs12 comments

This post of 5 Programming Languages That Are Probably Doomed[1] have been doing some rounds online and a lot of people quoting this saying

Ruby, Haskell, Obj-C, R (my fav), Perl are going to be doomed.

While I still see people using PHP even COBOL for that matter. So I'd like to get a perspective of all these lang-gonna-doom thing real?

[1]https://insights.dice.com/2019/07/29/5-programming-languages-probably-doomed/

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It's too early to tell fpr sure, but we can emulate any hardware and software that we want, so I doubt anything will really completely die.

That was practically a plot point in one of my favorite books, A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge. Humanity has been travelling between the stars in slower-than-light ships for ten or twenty thousand years. A teenage prince from a medieval society with ancient legends of flying machines boards a starship and spends a few years learning math and engineering and programming. He learns to delve deep into the many layers of helpful interfaces and emulation, and even discovers that the clocks don't count from man's first moon landing, but from six months afterwards (which means that underneath it all they're running some variety or derivative of Unix). He finds bugs from practically before the dawn of time, and adds a few backdoors to the mess. A few thousand years (and a lot of coldsleep) later, he's old and broke, and joins a starship crew as Programmer Archaeologist Third Class. Other than that it's not very related to your question, but you should read it anyway.

Although some programming languages truly die - as in nobody uses them - a lot many simply lose developer 'mindshare'. Those languages are no longer the topic of online conversations (other than in niche spaces), and fewer and fewer people write tutorials or books about that language. The language is still in use, but it's time in the limelight has passed.

Note: This does not mean the language is bad or inadequate. Anyone in this profession knows that language popularity has no correlation to the quality of the language. In fact, it's a great shame so many interesting ideas from programming history are so easily forgotten (sometimes to be re-discovered again in new languages).

I don't think any of the languages you listed will truly die, but eventually their popularity and time in the limelight will also pass. I guess for some developers (perhaps many) that's equivalent to being a dead language.

1) if they cannot kill cobol, what chance does any other language have of dying. Saying that I believe cobol programing pays extremely well.

2) look at the bio of the author, do you really think they know anything about tech?

3) Can you name any programming language that was popular at one time and is actually gone? I am sure there are people still using Forth, original Basic, PL/I, and APL. Or at there very least some system has some critical piece of SW in it.

Will some of these eventually die? Sure, in time everything changes...

While I do prefer Python over R, the idea that R will just "die" simply because it isn't as popular as Python is ridiculous. There is a very large user base, good ecosystem of tools, many talented people actively developing in/for R - it's a great tool for so many purposes and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

Also, which languages have been truly popular historically and then died? Only Pascal comes to mind. (I'm sure someone can correct me on this.)

> which languages have been truly popular historically and then died?

For some value of "dead": at least PL/I and ALGOL

For some value of "truly popular" as well as "dead": Modula-2, Forth, Prolog.

I've had the impression that Haskell usage has been growing. Also, development in Ruby still seems very active.

The idea that Ruby and R will die any time soon is pretty ridiculous. Massive user base and lots of active development. Perl probably has more lines in use that a lot of languages and although there isn't much active development it will be in use for a while.

The idea Java is doomed is ridiculous at the moment. With android and enterprise software development it must have one of the biggest KLOCs out there.

Pascal may have failed but there's still a lot of Delphi code in use; Delphi is Pascal but a much better Pascal than Wirth's original language.

My job involves working on a large (> 1 million lines of Delphi) code base that is too big to convert to say C#. We've also recently taken over another project which is 1.3 millions LOC of Delphi.

Old programming languages never die, but they very rarely get used, except for very minor tweaking of decades-old programs.

Some of my own rarities: BASIC, Pascal, 8080/Z80 assembler, 8086 assembler, COBOL, Java.

It's been pretty much C only for me since the mid-90s, with a little SQL thrown in for good measure.

How can Java be a rarity if almost every Android app is written in it?

Note the "my own rarity" part. I haven't used Java since the 1990s.

Then again, not many programmers (relatively speaking) develop apps for Android. More programmers develop apps for systems other than Android.

Regardless of your personal list, Java is still one of the most popular languages today and nowhere near being "dead" in the slightest. No one's individual list of used/unused languages is relevant in this case - the question is about mass adoption and active development.

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