Ask HN: Are there any programming languages that are completely extinct? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are there any programming languages that are completely extinct?

3 pointskasperset14 comments

Just wondering if there any programming language that were once very popular but now dead. I do not mean less popular but not used at all. I guess once the programming language is popular enough to cross the inflection point, it will have a very slow "death" if at all. In other words, I think they will have a long tail decay but never completely gone. Any thoughts.

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It may depend on what we mean by "dead." I'm thinking hobbyists may still use just about anything just to tinker with things, but I don't think that's particularly interesting in this context. What's more interesting is whether it's still being used in a commercial context?

In a commercial context there's different stages of dying, right?

Terminally Ill - the programming language is descending down the TIOBE index and is being used for fewer and fewer new projects.

Dying - the programming language isn't being used at all for new projects but is still being used in existing deployments. Minor modifications may be made, but nothing requiring a significant effort.

Dead - the programming language isn't being used at all for new projects nor is it being used in existing deployments.

Using these terms, I don't know if there are any Dead languages, but if there were, I'd imagine it would be Basic from the 80s (Apple, Commodore, Atari) and UCSD Pascal. I'd love to know if I'm wrong or what other languages would be "Dead" in the way I've defined it.

There are numerous vintage computer enthusiasts still banging away on 8-bit BASIC and UCSD Pascal, even creating new things.

I don't doubt that, in fact I rather expect that, but I'd be surprised if they were using it in a commercial context.

As long as there are machines that can run it, it won't die most probably. Especially nowadays, people love writing retro compilers for modern systems.

However once there are no machines to run it, I think it can die out. Of course that depends on the definition of language. Have no idea if the hole-arrangement on punchcards could be considered a separate programming language (or just proto-ASM or whatever). If it's a separate language however, than it did go extinct, due to the punch cards' extinction.

> However once there are no machines to run it, I think it can die out.

But it probably won't. There are plenty of companies that run ancient hardware in simulators just so they can keep using software written for extinct machines, after all.

I know, because I maintained a couple of such programs -- which meant that they're still alive despite that the hardware required to run them technically no longer exists.

PL/360 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL360

"PL360 (or PL/360) is a system programming language designed by Niklaus Wirth and written by Wirth, Joseph W. Wells Jr., and Edwin Satterthwaite Jr. for the IBM System/360 computer at Stanford University. A description of PL360 was published in early 1968, although the implementation was probably completed before Wirth left Stanford in 1967."

UPL, the systems programming language for the Burroughs B1700/B1800 series of computers.

https://bitsavers.computerhistory.org/pdf/burroughs/SmallSys...

That's a good one. Along the same lines, SYMPL and CYBIL, the systems programming languages for the CDC Mainframe line. Lots of languages like that.

Depending on your definition of 'popular', Xerox Mesa & Cedar? Algol-68?

Of course in the 70s there were (to us today) weird and wonderful devices popping up with programming languages of their own. I used a few. Could I name theirvlanguage, no. They are probably long gone.

So gone, but not very popular!

Maybe I'm showing my ignorance, but... does anyone still use Autocode?

BLISS?

CLU?

SNOBOL?

It was harder than I expected to find examples, though.

SNOBOL apparently is still a (very, very niche) thing.

OpenVMS still exists and has been ported to x86, so I assume BLISS is still a thing.

CLU is prolly a hit.

I can't think of a single one, now that you mention it.

Even PL/I is still in use...

Maybe Simula?

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