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Discussion on: 📊 Languages' Popularity on DEV

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kaelscion profile image
kaelscion • Edited

I think that programming languages/frameworks don't follow a life cycle like other technology does. Some great languages never take off, other so-so languages refuse to die. From what I've seen this usually depends on who adopts a language and for what reason. COBOL, for instance, still runs strong because the right tech companies adopted it at the right time and are now too dependent on it to let it go 100%. If IBM never adopted it, or they move their old mainframes from it in the 70's, maybe COBOL dies soon after. Who knows?

I can say, though, that JS is huge because it's a niche language (hold your pitchforks and let me explain). Just because the niche is huge (the web's front end) doesn't make it any less so. If another language, like WebAssembly, gets the right endorsement or adoption at the right time, JS may become a marginal reference in a CS 101 book someday.

Really, we use the languages we like for as long as they prove useful to us. I remember when I found out cURL was written in Python 2.6, I thought it was pretty cool for a major tool to be so publicly written in the language I used (I know the first Google index bot was too). Now it's huge because it's so versatile and useful for data science. Ask most newcomers what Python is good for though and they will think data science is it. The landscape will look different in 5 years. The list above will have it's percentages change, and the top languages from industry lists will still probably be C, Java, JS, PHP, etc. But nobody can say that for certain. That's the fun of it I think!

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kaelscion profile image
kaelscion

On another note, I have always been frustrated as to why cURL has never been ported up to 2.7 (at the very least). It makes CentOS kinda useless for any meaningful Python development in cloud applications and/or web. I mean, Docker is my new addiction so using Alpine or IBM Clear images renders that moot, but for non-Docker folks, does anybody know the story behind porting cURL to 2.7? I figure if Dropbox can upgrade their entire infrastructure from Python 2 to Python 3, perhaps a linux package manager can go up one version within the same Python distro? Just curious.