News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The Silent Majority: Why Visual Basic 6 Still Thrives. Parent comment

Re:The Silent Majority: Why Visual Basic 6 Still Thrives by wonderzombie on Friday June 08, 2012 @03:55PM (#4085898)
Setting aside the fact that I think entrenchment is a reasonable definition of success, I imagine most hackers don't judge a technology's success based solely on that metric.

As a dumb example, if a language fails at its stated goals, then that's not successful. Another dumb example might be a language which tries to incorporate FP patterns but implements lambda syntax or semantics quite poorly.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Silent Majority: Why Visual Basic 6 Still Thrives by evincarofautumn on Friday June 08, 2012 @05:21PM (#4086222)
That’s true. But most languages fail at their stated goals to a certain extent, usually by finding an unanticipated niche in which they thrive. What a language is good for is often something you discover, not something you design.
[ Parent | on HN ]