Hacker News Reader

The phone networks and basic infrastructure for the internet in many countries wouldn’t work without Erlang. Which is functional… but maybe that doesn’t count?

View on HN

On the other hand, the banking infrastructure in many countries wouldn't work without COBOL, scientific research wouldn't work without MATLAB, and healthcare wouldn't work without MUMPS. Many languages and paradigms, good and bad, end up entrenched within an industry.

> COBOL

> MATLAB

> MUMPS

One of each uglier than the one before. But:

Is there something we can learn from these examples? Are there good reasons for these languages being adopted? And are the Racket designers with their approach of "a language to define interoperable DSLs" up to something?

I think programming languages are more like spoken languages than we give them credit for. Their design is more intentional, but the processes by which they spread, compete, and evolve is similarly difficult to pin down.

You forget FORTRAN (was very popular for scientific computing, and nearest neighbor with COBOL in S/360 environment) :)))

Reply on news.ycombinator.com