zlacker

>>lumpa+(OP)
I don't want a community - I want a programming language. Preferably one that doesn't throw away billions of lines of existing code just because.

>>musica+ji1
There are countless dead programming languages without communities you can pick then.

>>doesnt+Ri1
Ruby and Perl are great examples of massively popular languages that withered because the language/platform outpaced the community.

If the first question you’re asking yourself looking at a code base is “what version is this/do I know this version” then that language is not facilitating you.

The successful languages are ones where “the community” prioritises backward compatibility. Java, C, Python have backward compatibility spanning decades. There’s a few discontinuities (lambdas in Java 8, Python 3, C++) but in most cases there’s a clear mapping back to the original. Python 3 is an exception to this but the migration window was something like 15 years…

Busy engineers, scientists and academics have little interest in keeping up to date with language features. A computer and a programming language are a tool for a job and the source code is just an intermediate artifact. These are your “community”, and the stakeholders in your success.

>>rusk+Tj1
Perl have almost perfect backward compatibility, but small community and bad renown are not so good.

>>melago+so1
Perl doesn't have "perfect backward compatibility" in the normal sense of the word. There is only Perl 5 which is perfectly compatible since it hasn't changed for 25+ years (which is how they achieved "compatibility" -- by not changing), and there's Perl 6 which isn't backward compatible and nobody really uses it.

>>hnfong+nu1
I know people don't like Perl, I just want to add some info here. The Perl 5 Porters have restarted adding new features at 15 years ago. It has progressed from version 5.20 to 5.42. Although the speed is slower than popular languages, they are maintaining backward compatibility while adding new features.

Perl6 had been renamed to new language, Raku.