3 ms·

> What matters is characteristics of the runtime I'd say what matters is who is your sponsor. C/C++ had Unix/AT&T and Microsoft as sponsors. Basic and C# had

> What matters is characteristics of the runtime I'd say what matters is who is your sponsor. C/C++ had Unix/AT&T and Microsoft as sponsors. Basic and C# had Microsoft. Javascript had all browsers' makers. Java had Sun and Google. Fortran and Cobol had IBM. Python, Go and Kotlyn have Google. Objective-C had Apple. When Apple was in the ropes Objective-C wasn't popular. Then Apple got big and Objective-C got big, also. Turbo Pascal/Delphi had Borland when Borland was Borland. Now Borland is Embarcadero and the language is fading. Smalltalk, Lisp and Lua had great runtimes but never had great sponsors. Ok, there were exceptions: Perl, Ruby, DBase... but some of these are falling behind already.

mikestew 6y ago
DBase That was a different time, though, and by 1990 Ashton-Tate (makers of dBase, and soon to be bought by Borland) was pretty much done. Microsoft bought dBase-clone Fox Software in '93, which is pretty much the only thing that kept anything dBase alive until FoxPro got put out to pasture sometime around '05-'06. IOW, were it not for the sponsorship of Microsoft, dBase would have been done 30 years ago.
- tabtab 6y ago
  There were lawsuits flying left and right over the origin, which scared a lot of resources away from it. (It turned out Ashton-Tate stole it from NASA's JPL, who modified some of the keywords, but stole the concept from a defunct company and product called something like TymeShare.) I thought dBASE was a great language for small-project RAD and ad-hoc data fiddling. I could crank out smallish apps in hours.
- kazinator 6y ago
  > FoxPro got out out to pasture SET PROCEDURE TO MEADOW
kazinator 6y ago
"When Apple was in the ropes" Can you explain when you think this was?
- nzgrover 6y ago
  Probably when they were on the verge of bankruptcy in 1996/97. edit: link: https://www.news.com.au/technology/gadgets/the-forgotten-microsoft-deal-that-saved-apple-from-bankruptcy/news-story/b5bf0262c42cf0ceeef2c9438dcf1ed0 https://www.news.com.au/technology/gadgets/the-forgotten-mic...
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    That may be what they're referring to, but Apple wasn't using Objective-C at that point, NeXT was.
  - kazinator 6y ago
    In 1996/1997, the Macintosh was still, for most end-users, the only viable alternative to an IBM PC derivative, and one with market share. The old Mac OS didn't use Objective-C-based frameworks. Objective C was used on the NeXT workstations. Objective C became popular because it was part of the tech stack brought back into Apple by Jobs.
geerlingguy 6y ago
PHP had Facebook... sorta.

mikestew 6y ago

DBase That was a different time, though, and by 1990 Ashton-Tate (makers of dBase, and soon to be bought by Borland) was pretty much done. Microsoft bought dBase-clone Fox Software in '93, which is pretty much the only thing that kept anything dBase alive until FoxPro got put out to pasture sometime around '05-'06. IOW, were it not for the sponsorship of Microsoft, dBase would have been done 30 years ago.

tabtab 6y ago
There were lawsuits flying left and right over the origin, which scared a lot of resources away from it. (It turned out Ashton-Tate stole it from NASA's JPL, who modified some of the keywords, but stole the concept from a defunct company and product called something like TymeShare.) I thought dBASE was a great language for small-project RAD and ad-hoc data fiddling. I could crank out smallish apps in hours.
kazinator 6y ago
> FoxPro got out out to pasture SET PROCEDURE TO MEADOW

kazinator 6y ago

"When Apple was in the ropes" Can you explain when you think this was?

nzgrover 6y ago
Probably when they were on the verge of bankruptcy in 1996/97. edit: link: https://www.news.com.au/technology/gadgets/the-forgotten-microsoft-deal-that-saved-apple-from-bankruptcy/news-story/b5bf0262c42cf0ceeef2c9438dcf1ed0 https://www.news.com.au/technology/gadgets/the-forgotten-mic...
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  That may be what they're referring to, but Apple wasn't using Objective-C at that point, NeXT was.
- kazinator 6y ago
  In 1996/1997, the Macintosh was still, for most end-users, the only viable alternative to an IBM PC derivative, and one with market share. The old Mac OS didn't use Objective-C-based frameworks. Objective C was used on the NeXT workstations. Objective C became popular because it was part of the tech stack brought back into Apple by Jobs.

geerlingguy 6y ago

PHP had Facebook... sorta.