I keep reading about how languages are dead or failed.

My workstation at home running GnuLinux has everything I need to program in:

* CeeLanguage
* CeePlusPlus
* JavaLanguage
* PerlLanguage
* ToolCommandLanguage
* PythonLanguage
* RubyLanguage
* EcmaScript
* PhpLanguage
* CommonLisp
* SchemeLanguage (several implementations to choose from)
* PrologLanguage
* PostScript
* ObjectiveCee

... and those are just the ones I know about! Plus, it's a pretty ancient distribution. I can't imagine how much more would be available to me if I'd bother to upgrade. Even CeeSharp now.

Nothing keeps me from using any of those to write the software I need. I've written programs in most of them and used programs written in all of them.

* I can use them on my Mac, too:
** About five of those came with my Mac. I've easily installed many of the rest. I'm pretty sure I could get very nearly all of them on my Mac without spending a dime.
** My Mac also has a couple my Linux workstation lacks:
*** AppleScript
*** SqueakSmalltalk (simply because I haven't bothered to install in under Linux)
*** ... and I'm thinking about installing SelfLanguage on the Mac as well to compare/contrast with Squeak.
* I can use them at work, too:
** The servers I most depend upon at work also run GNU/Linux, so I can use those languages there. (Many of my coworkers have Linux on their workstations as well.) I can't use them in our actual products because, like any product, there are practicalities, tradeoffs, and choices that have to be made. Producing our products, however, requires a lot of code that doesn't actually run on the product itself.
* I can use them on Windows, too:
** When I have to use Windows, I install CygWin and now I've got the ability to use almost all those languages. Plus, I can install native Windows versions of many of them.

In short, it is a great time to be alive and interested in programming languages. Implementations of many languages are easy to acquire and nothing is stopping us from putting any them to work.

-- RobertFisher
----
CategoryProgrammingLanguage