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Ask HN: 50 year programming languages?
Lisp and COBOL have been in use and continued to be used for over half a century now. C is getting close to the 50 year mark. What other languages do you speculate will still be in widespread use when they’re 50 years old?
- ankurdhama 8y agoAny language in which there exists a big enough and useful software system. Another factor to consider: How good the tooling and libraries are for the language.
- PredictorY 8y agoThe hot item today, both popular and used on a variety of platforms, is Java. A lot can happen in 50 years, so it's conceivable to me than Java does not make it to 50, but I'm guessing that some version of the JVM does (whatever language it's ultimately programmed in).
- cimmanom 8y agoFORTRAN is also still more broadly used than you might guess. The suggestion of Java is a good one. Python and C++ are strong candidates, if for no better reason than that they're broadly used, including in enterprise, and have been for decades. PHP might be too, given how widespread its use is. Even JavaScript is coming up on 25 years now, and there's no way it's completely gone in another 25.