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It's reassuring to see that the various groups working on Scala seem to have the same broad goal in mind. I also think it is important to not let the language o

It's reassuring to see that the various groups working on Scala seem to have the same broad goal in mind. I also think it is important to not let the language ossify due to legacy -- which is the problem that kills many languages.

Avshalom 12y ago
Outside of maybe Fortran and Cobol I can't think of anything that was A)alive enough to be killed B)killed by ossification.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  And even those have modern standards. Object Cobol anyone?
  - Avshalom 12y ago
    Honestly i 'm just guessing on Fortran and COBOL. I wasn't there when they lost prominence. I just know that no other languages actually lost significant amounts of popularity for not changing (java? Its maybe less popular but calling it dead is not even wrong).
- rch 12y ago
  > Each new release of Delphi attempts to keep as much backwards compatibility as possible to allow developers to continue to use existing code without incompatibility of interfaces or functionality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_(programming_language)
  - Avshalom 12y ago
    I'm pretty sure Delphi died from having to compete with essentially free C# and its better integration with Microsoft's ecosystem. And a little bit from the shifting of the overton window away from paying for languages. And mismanagement of Borland/Inprise. And about a dozen other factors before "lack of (breaking) change in the language".
    - Roboprog 12y ago
      It's 1996. Java runs on Linux, Delphi doesn't. Java also runs where Delphi runs. Java is free. Java 1.1 with inner classes looks much like recursive blocks in Pascal (albeit without procedural types -- function pointers to C folks). THE END. (sadly, as I really liked Borland Pascal)
- judk 12y ago
  Java isn't dead, but it suffered greatly during the hibernation years starting with the Oracle takeover.
- VLM 12y ago
  "killed" might be a bit strong, but the overall story of "stop working on perl 5 in favor of working on perl 6" contains some aspects of the concept.

Avshalom 12y ago

Outside of maybe Fortran and Cobol I can't think of anything that was A)alive enough to be killed B)killed by ossification.

pjmlp 12y ago
And even those have modern standards. Object Cobol anyone?
- Avshalom 12y ago
  Honestly i 'm just guessing on Fortran and COBOL. I wasn't there when they lost prominence. I just know that no other languages actually lost significant amounts of popularity for not changing (java? Its maybe less popular but calling it dead is not even wrong).
rch 12y ago
> Each new release of Delphi attempts to keep as much backwards compatibility as possible to allow developers to continue to use existing code without incompatibility of interfaces or functionality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_(programming_language)
- Avshalom 12y ago
  I'm pretty sure Delphi died from having to compete with essentially free C# and its better integration with Microsoft's ecosystem. And a little bit from the shifting of the overton window away from paying for languages. And mismanagement of Borland/Inprise. And about a dozen other factors before "lack of (breaking) change in the language".
  - Roboprog 12y ago
    It's 1996. Java runs on Linux, Delphi doesn't. Java also runs where Delphi runs. Java is free. Java 1.1 with inner classes looks much like recursive blocks in Pascal (albeit without procedural types -- function pointers to C folks). THE END. (sadly, as I really liked Borland Pascal)
judk 12y ago
Java isn't dead, but it suffered greatly during the hibernation years starting with the Oracle takeover.
VLM 12y ago
"killed" might be a bit strong, but the overall story of "stop working on perl 5 in favor of working on perl 6" contains some aspects of the concept.