this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
168 points (93.8% liked)

Programming

17313 readers
482 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Rules

  • Follow the programming.dev instance rules
  • Keep content related to programming in some way
  • If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities [email protected]



founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Why are there so many programming languages? And why are there still being so many made? I would think you would try to perfect what you have instead of making new ones all the time. I understand you need new languages sometimes like quantumcomputing or some newer tech like that. But for pc you would think there would be some kind of universal language. I'm learning java btw. I like programming languages. But was just wondering.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] explodified 60 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Some languages have a obligation to support older versions, provide upgrade guides. They have old baggage in the forms of old systems or processes that they can’t just abandon.

Sometimes it’s easier to just start over from a clean slate. Experimenting and seeing how it works. If it fails well you haven’t inconvenienced millions of users.

It’s all about experimenting, trying to see what works, what it’s good with and what it’s not good with. A language like Java can’t just change to experiment things. Some people are also fixed to the style and methodology that Java provides.

Aside from that, hobby languages are just hobbyist stuff.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Quite a few languages that are major players now started as hobby languages.