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Comment by devmunchies | Hacker News Reader

are there any 10+ year old languages that are "advancing" as quickly as JS? Ruby? Python? C++?

Why Not?

I love where JS is heading, but perhaps its worth pointing out its a lot easier to rapidly advance a language that historically has been missing huge features.

I'd also argue none are as important as JS. People can choose to not use Ruby, Python or C++, but if you're doing web atm you're pretty much stuck with JavaScript.

You mean are there any other languages trying to quickly catch up to C++'s complexity?

All professional languages reach C++'s complexity, which probably is not as complex as PL/I or Algol 68W were for their time.

Python is my favourite example to pick up on this.

Target at beginners and deemed as simple, yet I doubt anyone is able to know Python semantics since version 1.0 and by looking at a random codebase is able to state what is the minimum Python version required to run the code without errors.

Also I very much doubt anyone knows Python's library cover to cover.

Languages get complex because real world has complex needs.

Even Go, the new poster child of simplicity, now has quite a few warts, because not everyone doing software like Google.

Fair enough, and Python is a good example, but I'm guessing Scheme and Smalltalk managed to stay relatively simple over time, although I don't know how much of that would be chalked up to lack of mainstream support.

C++11 and 17 both added a lot of big new features, and there's more planned for C++20. For the language itself, I think it's completely comparable.

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