Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

What ? Of all the languages Java is the most likeliest to be around in 2100.

It is the lingua de franca of enterprise software development. In every sense it is the modern day Fortran/Cobol.




Cobol was the modern day Cobol in 1995, and that was just 20 years ago. 85 years is a long time.


1995? Are you sure? I started studying maths and computer science in 1993 and Cobol was ever only mentioned as a remote curiosity. I remember Pascal, Perl and C/C++ were common.


Yes but it was still dominant in terms of actual code in production. I remember working at a consulting firm then and we had a ton of work in Cobol and JCL. Banks in particular but also telecom.

Client-server 4GLs were really starting to take off -- PowerBuilder, Visual Basic -- but those got washed away with the web.




Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: