Remember Flash? That plugin that ran games, animations, and videos on the internet in the 2000s? Well, it officially died on December 31, 2020. Adobe made the decision, and millions of websites stopped working overnight.
This story illustrates something many people don’t realize: programming languages have life cycles. They are created, dominate the market for a while, and eventually disappear.
So what really happens when a programming language dies? Let’s explore this curious phenomenon from the tech world in this blog post.
What does it mean for a language to “die”?
First of all, we need to understand that the death of a programming language is not a single event. It’s not like someone presses a red button and everything stops working.
In fact, there are different levels of “death”:
- Commercial death happens when companies stop choosing that language for new projects. Nobody hires developers to start something from scratch with it anymore.
- Community death is when programmers “abandon ship”. Forums become empty, tutorials stop being updated, libraries receive no maintenance.
- Official death occurs when the language creators end support. No security patches, no bug fixes, nothing.
- Technical death is the final stage. The language simply no longer runs on modern operating systems, or requires so much effort to work that it becomes impractical.
Here’s an interesting fact: some languages become true technological zombies. COBOL, for example, was created in 1959 and still processes 95% of ATM transactions and 80% of in-person transactions worldwide, according to Reuters data. It’s technically dead for new projects, yet alive in important systems.
How does a language reach its end?
The life cycle of a language follows a pattern: enthusiastic birth, accelerated growth, stability, and finally, gradual decline.
Several factors can accelerate this process. The most common is the emergence of better alternatives. Python, for example, took much of the space that Perl occupied in the 90s and 2000s, offering cleaner syntax and more powerful libraries.
Technological changes also push languages toward obsolescence. When the world migrated to mobile devices, Objective-C dominated iOS for years. Then Apple launched Swift in 2014, and Objective-C began its decline.
Corporate decisions can be lethal. Adobe killed Flash through a combination of chronic security problems and the rise of HTML5. In 2010, Steve Jobs wrote a public letter explaining why Apple wouldn’t support Flash on the iPhone, citing that the technology was “the number one cause of crashes on Mac.” It was practically a death sentence.
Sometimes the problem lies in the language’s own design. Perl had a reputation for creating illegible code (developers joked that “write-only language” was its nickname). This drove away new programmers and accelerated migration to more user-friendly alternatives.
What happens to the code written in that language?
When a language dies, millions of lines of code continue to exist, running systems and processing important information.
Imagine a company that built its management system in Visual Basic 6 in the 90s. That system works, is aligned with all business rules, is integrated with everything. Rewriting from scratch can cost millions and take years. So what happens? The system keeps running, even though Visual Basic 6 was officially discontinued in 2008.
This is the legacy systems dilemma: rewrite everything from scratch or keep it running as long as possible? There’s no easy answer. Rewriting is expensive and risky (you might introduce new bugs or lose functionality). Maintaining is cheaper in the short term, but accumulates problems in the long run.
The fate of developers
When a language enters decline, developers need to adapt. The good news is that experienced programmers can learn new languages with relative ease. Fundamental concepts (loops, conditionals, data structures) are transferable.
However, there are always those who over-specialize in a single technology. When that technology dies, they face a choice: retool their skills or become rare specialists.
Curiously, specialists in dead languages can make a lot of money. There are very few COBOL programmers under 50 years old. Companies that need to maintain legacy systems pay premium salaries for these professionals. An experienced COBOL developer can earn between $70,000 and $120,000 annually in the United States, according to the Dice Tech Salary Report 2023, values above average for many modern languages.
Nostalgic communities also emerge. Forums dedicated to obsolete languages remain active, with enthusiasts exchanging knowledge and keeping projects alive out of pure passion. Yahoo Groups had active Pascal and Delphi communities until it was shut down in 2020.
Why companies should not use systems in outdated languages
While historical curiosity is fascinating, the practical reality of maintaining systems in obsolete languages can be very harmful to companies.
The security problem is the most serious. When a language no longer receives updates, discovered vulnerabilities remain uncorrected. Hackers know this and exploit old systems as easy targets. A 2023 Veracode study showed that 76% of applications contain at least one security vulnerability, and this number increases dramatically in legacy systems without active maintenance.
Maintenance costs grow exponentially over time, as developers who know obsolete languages become increasingly rare, and their services become more expensive. Additionally, integration with modern technologies becomes a technical nightmare, not to mention that hiring developers also becomes mission impossible.
Languages that come back (or almost)
Not every decline story ends in definitive death. Some languages resurrect, others profoundly influence subsequent generations.
Complete revival cases are rare, but they exist. Rust, launched in 2010, brought concepts from old academic languages like ML and Haskell, combining them in a modern and practical way. Today, it’s one of the fastest-growing languages in adoption.
Academic languages that were never commercially popular left immense legacies. Scheme influenced JavaScript. ABC inspired Python. Simula, created in 1962, established the foundations of object-oriented programming that Java and C# would use decades later.
The cultural heritage is fascinating. Brendan Eich created JavaScript in just 10 days in 1995, drawing heavily on Scheme. Guido van Rossum developed Python inspired by ABC’s clarity. Good ideas from old languages don’t die, they just transform and reappear in new forms.
This shows that nothing is completely lost in the programming world. Each language contributes something, even if it’s just serving as a lesson on what not to do.
Transformation is part of evolution
Each language that disappears frees up space for innovation. It forces developers to learn new things, pushes companies to modernize systems, and allows the industry to evolve. Here, the problem is being stuck on technologies that have already outlived their usefulness.
Good concepts always reappear in new forms. Automatic garbage collection, abstract data types, functional programming, concurrency… these ideas circulate among languages, being refined and improved with each generation.
The lesson that remains is that languages are temporary tools. Deep knowledge of programming, system architecture, and problem-solving is what endures.
If you’re developing a new system or thinking about modernizing an old one, choosing technologies with a guaranteed future makes all the difference. Want to talk with someone who understands architecture and intelligent technological choices? Contact NextAge and discover how to build systems that last.
