In my reply, I defined living-ness to be a composite measure of the following qualities:
- How likely you are to get a job working in that language
- How likely is the language to be supported by the Internet community
- How likely is there prior art to work from
- How likely is there going to be innovation in the language
In his reply, Abigail-II takes the concept a little further and compares 20 languages. The numbers he comes up with track very closely to what I would consider how those 20 languages are doing, living-wise.
- Many languages, especially the ones used in business, are increasing in living-ness.
- A few languages (COBOL, Fortran, etc) are decreasing in living-ness.
- Some are staying relatively steady, especially those used primarily in academia.
Note - living-ness and useful-ness are two mostly-unrelated concepts. But, I think that it is foolish to disregard either concept in favor of the other. Many have said that LISP is the be-all-end-all of programming languages. Yet, the likelihood of gettting a job programming in LISP is ... low. As professionals, we need to take all these factors into account. Even though I consider Perl to be one of the best languages in existence, I'm still open to learning Java, Python, PHP, and even Fortran, if need be. (Need has not yet arisen, but it might!)
------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.
Then there are Damian modules.... *sigh* ... that's not about being less-lazy -- that's about being on some really good drugs -- you know, there is no spoon. - flyingmoose
I shouldn't have to say this, but any code, unless otherwise stated, is untested
|
---|
Replies are listed 'Best First'. | |
---|---|
Re: Living-ness of programming languages
by blue_cowdawg (Monsignor) on May 21, 2004 at 16:28 UTC | |
Re: Living-ness of programming languages
by jonadab (Parson) on May 22, 2004 at 02:46 UTC | |
Re: Living-ness of programming languages
by flyingmoose (Priest) on May 27, 2004 at 16:16 UTC | |
Re: Living-ness of programming languages
by Wassercrats (Initiate) on May 22, 2004 at 02:21 UTC | |
Re: Living-ness of programming languages
by dash2 (Hermit) on May 23, 2004 at 23:18 UTC |