8 ms·

Maybe Smalltalk sounds old like COBOL. It's hard to re-kindle interest in old tech in the eyes of new devs. It seems every generation of programmers want to hav

Maybe Smalltalk sounds old like COBOL. It's hard to re-kindle interest in old tech in the eyes of new devs. It seems every generation of programmers want to have their "own" tools, even if they're worse than the previous ones.

dimal 5y ago
I always had positive connotations of Smalltalk. Seemed it was talked about as if it was OOP “done right” before Java messed things up. That’s just me though.
skissane 5y ago
COBOL's big problem has always been verbosity rather than age. Fortran and Lisp are older yet both have a more positive image. Fortran and Lisp are each far more succinct languages than COBOL. (Contemporary Fortran and Lisp have evolved a lot since their initial version, but the same is true of COBOL.)
pjmlp 5y ago
You mean like C, born in 1972?
- ketralnis 5y ago
  Sure. How many new devs do you see writing C?
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    How do you think UNIX clones, GNU utilities and IoT devices are kept up to date?
  - bilbyx 5y ago
    Lots in the embedded space.
- a2800276 5y ago
  C never really fell out of favor, though. And it's also the only available choice apart from assembler in many circumstances. But trying to revive interest in Ada, D, Sather, Prolog, etc would be a lot more difficult.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    It was already out of favour in the early 80's, hence C.A.Hoare turing award speech against it in 1980, but then UNIX took over the world anyway, and the FOSS wave with GNU Manifesto helped to take it further. Apparently people don't have any issue hanging to an OS about the same age as COBOL.
    - FpUser 5y ago
      >"Apparently people don't have any issue hanging to an OS about the same age as COBOL." Why should they? It works for many cases and has mountains of apps, tooling, libraries, hardware support and whatnot. It takes decades for the new OS/ecosystem to mature.
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        Same conclusion can be applied to COBOL applications. https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/products/visual-cobol/overview https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/products/visual-cobol/overv...
        FpUser 5y ago
        Equating OS and its ecosystem to a single language is not very wise approach I think. In any ways you are obviously free to find fresh and shiny OS of your liking and use it.
        pjmlp 5y ago
        It surely is, UNIX and C are a symbiotic relationship, born out of each other, one in 1969, the other in 1972. I surely have, hence why I have gone back to Windows, where the focus is C++ and .NET, macOS where the focus is Objective-C and Swift (UNIX is there for historical reasons only), Android where the focus are Java/Kotlin and C++ (with Linux kernel being an implementation detail).

dimal 5y ago

I always had positive connotations of Smalltalk. Seemed it was talked about as if it was OOP “done right” before Java messed things up. That’s just me though.

skissane 5y ago

COBOL's big problem has always been verbosity rather than age. Fortran and Lisp are older yet both have a more positive image. Fortran and Lisp are each far more succinct languages than COBOL. (Contemporary Fortran and Lisp have evolved a lot since their initial version, but the same is true of COBOL.)

pjmlp 5y ago

You mean like C, born in 1972?

ketralnis 5y ago
Sure. How many new devs do you see writing C?
- pjmlp 5y ago
  How do you think UNIX clones, GNU utilities and IoT devices are kept up to date?
- bilbyx 5y ago
  Lots in the embedded space.
a2800276 5y ago
C never really fell out of favor, though. And it's also the only available choice apart from assembler in many circumstances. But trying to revive interest in Ada, D, Sather, Prolog, etc would be a lot more difficult.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  It was already out of favour in the early 80's, hence C.A.Hoare turing award speech against it in 1980, but then UNIX took over the world anyway, and the FOSS wave with GNU Manifesto helped to take it further. Apparently people don't have any issue hanging to an OS about the same age as COBOL.
  - FpUser 5y ago
    >"Apparently people don't have any issue hanging to an OS about the same age as COBOL." Why should they? It works for many cases and has mountains of apps, tooling, libraries, hardware support and whatnot. It takes decades for the new OS/ecosystem to mature.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Same conclusion can be applied to COBOL applications. https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/products/visual-cobol/overview https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/products/visual-cobol/overv...
      - FpUser 5y ago
        Equating OS and its ecosystem to a single language is not very wise approach I think. In any ways you are obviously free to find fresh and shiny OS of your liking and use it.
        pjmlp 5y ago
        It surely is, UNIX and C are a symbiotic relationship, born out of each other, one in 1969, the other in 1972. I surely have, hence why I have gone back to Windows, where the focus is C++ and .NET, macOS where the focus is Objective-C and Swift (UNIX is there for historical reasons only), Android where the focus are Java/Kotlin and C++ (with Linux kernel being an implementation detail).