Open source code tends to have a long lifetime. I've contributed almost 10k hours to 100s of projects in the last 10 years, and most of them are still alive an

Open source code tends to have a long lifetime. I've contributed almost 10k hours to 100s of projects in the last 10 years, and most of them are still alive and have only grown in adoption. (Also it would suck if all that time went into the bin a few years later!) From my experience, here's a ranking of how long code lives: * Proprietary "webcrap" and plumbing logic at companies. This dies the fastest (6-24 months). * JavaScript frameworks and tools, open source. "Dies like flies" -- many of them, short intense life, then everything dies down and the buzz moves to the next swarm. * Proprietary backend code. Lives 5 years, then gets rewritten or dies a long death. * Open source code in dynamic languages. 5-10 years, then mass extinction events end some lineages, such as "The Tertiary Era" (Python), "The Discovery of the Fundamental Theorem of Write-Only Code" (Perl), and "The Birth of the Script Kiddie" (PHP). * Open-source code in static languages (Haskell, C++, C). Usually around already 10 years before I started contributing, and showing no signs of getting old.