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You’re way off the mark! 1. Might happen occasionally but rarely would anyone adopt a vanity language 2. Nope 3. Lol this is just a rehash of 1. 4. Language

You’re way off the mark! 1. Might happen occasionally but rarely would anyone adopt a vanity language 2. Nope 3. Lol this is just a rehash of 1. 4. Languages can’t be licensed, compilers can. And that’s why we often have multiple different compilers. 5. Now you’re getting close. The actual reason is: Trying to solve a different problem Believe it or not, problems can vary massively from one field of IT to another. Some require low level hardware access, some need mathematical compatibility, others might be optimised for text parsing, and sometimes you just care about developer throughput. There’s macro scripting, web development, games development, server side software, OS development, and firmware. And entire industries using their own specialist tools that most people don’t even know about unless you happen to already work in it. Some languages are designed to be bullet proof and used in aviation or other domains where failure isn’t an option, some are the electronic equivalent of duct tape designed to allow people to quickly stick operations together. Programming is such a massive industry that you need different languages for different problems.

oblio 5y ago
Ever heard of C#, J#, Typescript, Kotlin, Go?
- laumars 5y ago
  Yes and only C# was created because of NIH syndrome: C# - Created by Microsoft after Sun sued them over Java. But C# (or rather .NET) did still solve several problems with Java’s JVM (eg it’s much easier for end users to work with, it supports native widgets, first class Windows support) and personally I find C#’s syntax a little more grown up too. It’s also worth noting that C# has since evolved into its own language (rather than just being a Java knock off). J# - there isn’t any other functional language that targets .NET so there is a distinct problem J# seeks to solve. TypeScript - That language clearly aims to solve several short comings of JavaScript, such as type safety. Kotin - I don’t know much about this language personally but the Wikipedia article answers my point for me: > In July 2011, JetBrains unveiled Project Kotlin, a new language for the JVM, which had been under development for a year.[17] JetBrains lead Dmitry Jemerov said that most languages did not have the features they were looking for Go - this filled a massive hole at the time: languages that had the guarantees of a statically compiled language while being as quick to learn and develop on as a JIT compiled language and which were cross platform. I actually adopted Go in version 1.0 for a personal project specifically because it solved problems with the other mainstream languages - problems that were very relevant to the project I was creating. I’m an old fart with 30 years of software development experience across well over a dozen different languages (you could easily treble that if you want to include machine or compiler specific dialects too). The problem many have when they see the term “general purpose” is they assume it means “best suited for all purposes” but actually it just means “can solve most problems with some degree of success”. Thus there will naturally be specific domains where even the most versatile languages are superseded by another language. And that’s fine. Good programmers can adapt to using the right tools. Whereas bad programmers will reach for the same tools regardless of the problem because they’re too lazy or too ignorant to learn anything else.

oblio 5y ago

Ever heard of C#, J#, Typescript, Kotlin, Go?

laumars 5y ago
Yes and only C# was created because of NIH syndrome: C# - Created by Microsoft after Sun sued them over Java. But C# (or rather .NET) did still solve several problems with Java’s JVM (eg it’s much easier for end users to work with, it supports native widgets, first class Windows support) and personally I find C#’s syntax a little more grown up too. It’s also worth noting that C# has since evolved into its own language (rather than just being a Java knock off). J# - there isn’t any other functional language that targets .NET so there is a distinct problem J# seeks to solve. TypeScript - That language clearly aims to solve several short comings of JavaScript, such as type safety. Kotin - I don’t know much about this language personally but the Wikipedia article answers my point for me: > In July 2011, JetBrains unveiled Project Kotlin, a new language for the JVM, which had been under development for a year.[17] JetBrains lead Dmitry Jemerov said that most languages did not have the features they were looking for Go - this filled a massive hole at the time: languages that had the guarantees of a statically compiled language while being as quick to learn and develop on as a JIT compiled language and which were cross platform. I actually adopted Go in version 1.0 for a personal project specifically because it solved problems with the other mainstream languages - problems that were very relevant to the project I was creating. I’m an old fart with 30 years of software development experience across well over a dozen different languages (you could easily treble that if you want to include machine or compiler specific dialects too). The problem many have when they see the term “general purpose” is they assume it means “best suited for all purposes” but actually it just means “can solve most problems with some degree of success”. Thus there will naturally be specific domains where even the most versatile languages are superseded by another language. And that’s fine. Good programmers can adapt to using the right tools. Whereas bad programmers will reach for the same tools regardless of the problem because they’re too lazy or too ignorant to learn anything else.