
Ask HN: Do Programming Languages Die? - amrrs
This post of <i></i>5 Programming Languages That Are Probably Doomed<i></i>[1] have been doing some rounds online and a lot of people quoting this saying<p>Ruby, Haskell, Obj-C, R (my fav), Perl are going to be doomed.<p>While I still see people using PHP even COBOL for that matter. So I&#x27;d like to get a perspective of all these lang-gonna-doom thing real?<p>[1]https:&#x2F;&#x2F;insights.dice.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;07&#x2F;29&#x2F;5-programming-languages-probably-doomed&#x2F;
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db48x
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.

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open-source-ux
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.

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sloaken
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...

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ps101
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.)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> 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.

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

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thorin
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.

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davidhbolton
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.

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simonblack
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.

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

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simonblack
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.

~~~
ps101
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.

