Will all programming languages become extinct eventually?

2 points by haphazardeous 11 years ago | 3 comments

I work in a multi-cultural office and there are many different languages spoken throughout the day. That sparked the question "why are there so many languages in the world?" Because if there had been only one then I would be able to understand everyone without hindrance..

Someone took their time and wrote this article about it, which was a short and good read. TL;DR we speak so many different languages just so we can identify what group a certain individual belongs to http://www.academia.edu/8652559/Why_are_there_so_many_different_languages_in_the_world

It did make me ponder whether the same is happening to all programming languages but the internet suggests the reason why is because they all do some things better than others. It then made me wonder whether all of the programming languages will become extinct one day and we will have one superior programming language to use throughout all software domain. From web sites to mobile apps, car ECUs to washing machine chips - any programmable electronic device basically.

Does anyone think this is possible? If so, what would the implications be?

dalke 11 years ago |

You should clarify what you mean by "extinct".

No one speaks Old English, which became Middle then modern English. But the language changed over time, so there was no one point where it went "extinct."

So, is FORTRAN 66 "extinct"? What about Python-0.9? If so, then K&R C is dying.

It is not the case that there are so many programming languages because "they all do some things better than others". The BASIC interpreter I did in BASIC was a lousy language. But it was fun to write.

Languages also exist for reasons that have little to do with quality. Javascript got its start, and oddities, because of internal political reasons at Netscape. What it does "better" is it's in web browsers, but that's a post-hoc justification, as every popular language is in use in part because people use.

It is hard to know what the future will bring. Perhaps when the Great AI awakens in 2355 there will be no computer languages as the Great AI will do all the work for us.

But until then, no, I see little likelihood of a grand unification. Excel, for example, is a very specialized programming language with its own IDE that is unlike, say, Java and Java development environments. It's so different that most people don't even recognize Excel as a programming language.

haphazardeous 11 years ago | |

I see what you mean but try looking at it from this perspective; dinosaurs are extinct but we know they lived. and how do we know it? because we found fossils. So if find fossils, does that mean dinosaurs never went extinct? Or if the birds evolved from dinosaurs is a true statement, then that should mean they never went extinct, right? What I mean by "extinct" is exactly how the dictionaries define it "no longer in existence".

Interesting thoughts though. And you are right, I never thought of Excel as a programming langue if I'm honest.

dalke 11 years ago | | |

Your point regarding species extinction is a good one. However, in languages, "extinct language" has a more specific meaning. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinct_language .

I believe that language extinction occurs when it's possible to point to the last living speaker of the language, or more generally, when there is no modern version of a language.

But you are right that the person who asked the question is more likely to think of the more transitional, biological meaning.

You may like this clip where Eddie Izzard goes to Friesland to "buy a brown cow" in Old English. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeC1yAaWG34