Programming languages for long-term projects

• http://richorama.github.io/blog/2014/12/31/languages/
  • Perl did not even get mentioned. If it did, it would probably be given the same response as PhP.
• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8818926

Discussing programming languages is always a good way to start a flame-war. And naturally, someone will say that Lisp is the best choice. Is Lisp the best language that's hardly used?

Server-side web apps can use a language that's different from the middleware or behind-the-scenes processes, such as messaging queues, data stores, etc.

Maybe Lisp is a good choice to create a Redis-like app. But is Lisp a good choice to create a wiki app?

Reddit was originally created in Lisp, and Reddit is a different take on the message board idea, so it seems that a wiki, blog, or CMS type of app could be created in Lisp. But I wonder why the Reddit crew eventually rewrote their site code in Python.

And while PhP seems to power most of the World Wide Web, at least the server-side part that interacts with users, it's supposedly the language to run away from.

Hilarious. Maybe instead of fretting over a language choice, programmers should pick one that they enjoy using, and go with it for a project, and don't worry about longevity.

If C or C++ will be around a 1000 years from now, and the scripting language interpreters are written in C/C++, then it will be possible to build the interpreters like Php, Perl, etc. to support legacy code and possibly to support the coming-around-full-circle idea of what's old is new again.

How much web development in 2014 was done in Fortran or Cobol?

In the aught years, programmers allegedly fled Perl and PhP to use Ruby and Python, or more specifically, the respective Web frameworks for those languages: Rails and Django. If Perl had a web framework in early 2000, then maybe that language would have remained popular.

Much of the early web in the 1990s was built with Perl.

Anyway, now in the mid-teens, programmers are allegedly fleeing Ruby and Python to use Node.js and Go. That probably means that in 5 to 10 years from now, programmers will be leaving Node.js and Go for languages that currently don't exist.

I can see Node.js hanging around because it's JavaScript, and at this point, nothing will replace JavaScript for client-side work in the browser, unless every site becomes a native app.

It's amazing the ecosystem that surrounds Node.JS. It's easy to find a module or a library to support just about anything, which has been a strong point for Perl's CPAN.

Programmers are still creating and updating modules for Perl, even though that's a language that nobody uses.

Thus far, my experience with Node.JS has gone well, and it has been fun to use. But I'm also relying on the Express web framework. I never used a web framework in my Perl web apps. I'll do more Node.JS programming for creating a new API that supports yet another web publishing tool. We'll see how this goes.

In 2015, I would like to learn Go. Just like my Node.JS learning, I would start by creating web server "client" code that consumes my Grebe API. Then I would create an API based upon Go.

Since I like web publishing tools, such as message boards, wikis, and blogs, then those are the types of apps I will continue to create when learning a new language because it could be a tool that I use for a project.

In terms of longevity, I believe that one of my former employers still uses an app that I created in March 1999. I created this merge-and-mail in Java in one week. Then I created a CGI web-based interface around the app in C, which took two weeks to create.

I launched the ToledoTalk.com message board in January 2003. In late 2002, I wrote the first version of TT in Perl. In 2005, I wrote a wiki/blog app in Perl that ran along side of the existing message board code. In 2007, I made this 2005 app power the main message board site, and that code still runs the site today. So this code is now 9-years-old.

PhP-based Wordpress has existed for at least a decade, and it powers a significant portion of the sites that we visit, and I don't think plans exist to rewrite the app in Go, Node.JS, or Lisp.

A lot of boutique programming and design shops exist today that focus on Wordpress development. If PhP is the most hated language, why do people build businesses that support Wordpress?

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