Technology popularity and longevity don’t always walk hand in hand.
We often look for successors to legacy technologies, hoping that newer solutions will automatically displace those from the 1970s. Meanwhile, the C language, created by Dennis Ritchie, remains the ultimate foundational system software after more than 50 years, powering almost every server on Earth. Even a strong contender like Rust hasn’t managed to dethrone it.
Right about now, some smart-aleck will ask: “If C is so great, why don’t we use it for everything?”. Fair point, but the answer is simple-because we don’t need to. C is the lingua franca for hardware communication and is perfectly suited for managing the deepest basements of the operating system. Over the years, languages and tools were created to abstract and speed up coding for specific purposes and platforms-yet C remained the foundation they all run on.
Web backend development can be done in many technologies, and their undisputed leader is PHP. Although its funeral has been announced multiple times, it’s doing great-powering 7 out of 10 websites today, with the other three most popular being Ruby, JavaScript, and Java. Does that list sound like a rehashed menu from a decade ago? Exactly-nobody rewrites entire applications on a whim or switches technologies every few months, or even years!
Current popularity statistics are in no way proportional to the total volume of software actually running on a given technology. PHP hasn’t been the number one choice for younger developers for a while now and stands a good chance of eventually being replaced by another language-maybe JavaScript (on the backend), maybe Golang, or maybe something else entirely. Time will tell, as each alternative offers a different edge over the previous solution.
When it comes to the user interface layer, JavaScript has held the crown for years. A few frameworks currently dominate the market (React, Vue, and Angular), yet they are nowhere near the scale of their older brother, jQuery. It is estimated that jQuery still runs on 60-70% of active websites, largely driven by WordPress, which powers over 40% of the web.
As we can see once again, popularity and longevity don’t always walk hand in hand forever. This allows us to predict that more elements-differing from their predecessors in shape and functionality-will eventually join the foundations and bricks that build today’s internet. Therefore, it’s worth investing not just in currently trending technologies, but primarily in the most antifragile programming competencies that will continuously stand the test of time.
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