Please ELI5, I lost track. I used to learn a bit of C and a bit of Python a few years ago but never really went deeper into programming. And now suddenly it seems that a host of new programming languages have appeared and that stuff that used to work fine in whatever old language it was in is now rewritten in a new language.

How do languages like Golang and Rust differ from older languages (these two have probably been around a while but for me they feel ‘new’)? Why are we coming up with new languages all the time? Besides those two, what other languages are there worth knowing about? Is it worth learning them? Are they going to come up with yet another one next week? (I know, many questions, an invitation to infodump I guess …)

  • draco_aeneus@mander.xyz
    10·
    4 days ago

    There have been genuine advancements in language design in the last three decades. The existing languages aren’t suddenly outdated and useless, no, but it’s just as wrong to say there is no room for growth and improvement.

    Besides, nobody is throwing away legacy code and starting over, at least when it comes to language development. The language teams are new groups working on new projects.

    We also see that the ‘legacy’ languages are taking lessons from the new ones. Java is implementing features first seen in Kotlin. C++ is getting classes inspired by Rust. The users of these existing languages are benefiting by the development efforts of these new languages, without ever having to even use them.