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Why do they keep making new languages (lemmy.stonansh.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Especially if one of them is based off the other.

Rust is based off of C/C++
Ruby is based off of Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, BASIC, Java, and Lisp

Just a couple of examples. Quite frankly, it's dependent on what system, what infrastructure .etc that'll be the call for a specific programming language. Nothing wrong with just picking one or two and sticking to them.

And I think that's what a lot of beginners in wanting to study programming languages can fall into, they want to be the jack of all trades in programming. But there's this problem of a new language coming in all of the time and it can get very wiry trying to remember them all.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

We don't/ None of them are a significant improvement on PL/1 other that having objects (which hadn't been invented.) I blogged on this recently. https://bobbrowning.wordpress.com/2023/07/02/typescript-i-quite-like-it-plus-bonus-rant-about-languages/

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (5 children)

The same reason anyone creates a new product in an existing market - they want money.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'll bite the bullet: I'm making my own scripting language for fun, as a learning experience and a tool for my own projects. If it can help others, great! But that's not my main goal.

In nearly 5 years working on it, I've made at most 400$ from donations and grants. Open source isn't a viable source of income, no matter what ; and programming language dev is even less profitable.