Because It's Not Fun Enough: why languages fail
This article explores why certain programming languages succeed while others fail, arguing that social and economic factors often outweigh technical merits. It categorizes languages by their longevity and emphasizes that programming is a blend of vocation, art, and professional labor.
Why it matters
Understanding the lifecycle of programming languages helps developers and businesses make better long-term decisions regarding technology stacks and career investments.
Andrew Oram wrote a two-part series for the Linux Professional Institute asking why programming languages rise and fall (parts one and two .) It says, roughly, that C, C++, and JavaScript are immortal (for now!), with Java a maybe; COBOL, FORTRAN, BASIC, and Perl lived respectable lives and got sent upstate to retire on a farm; Pascal, Objective-C, PL/I, Ada, and Tcl were false starts, with Ruby somewhere on the bubble. It's a good tour from a man who has been editing this industry's books forever, and near the end of it, Oram quotes Simon Peyton Jones, who observes that a language's adoption is "very weakly connected to its technical merits," and that the social and economic factors do the actual deciding.
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