It’s a probability thing. Obviously everything old was once new. And everything dead was once old. But take any thing that exists right now and the most likely outcome is based on this rule.
If we take the C programming language, and one created last year, which one would you expect to still be used in 10 years? You can do this comparison for any two things where there is no inherent end date.
> If we take the C programming language, and one created last year, which one would you expect to still be used in 10 years?
That's a different thing altogether. Because it does not take in account market adoption. If C was a language on life-support with no major project using it, it could be as old as hell but I would not bet on it to be around and useful 10 years from now.
Also, that saying is stupid because it makes it look like you can predict the future of technologies by using a single factor, while reality a rich, multi-dimensional set of problems.
If we take the C programming language, and one created last year, which one would you expect to still be used in 10 years? You can do this comparison for any two things where there is no inherent end date.