this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2025
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[–] Scoopta@programming.dev 108 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Assembly being obsolete has to be the funniest joke in here. It fundamentally never will be even if its use is niche

[–] el_twitto@lemmy.world 49 points 4 days ago (1 children)

...and C++ being obsolete is the second funniest.

[–] Ziglin@lemmy.world 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It is clearly surpassed by C though this chart seems to have missed that fact.

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[–] ozymandias117@lemmy.world 82 points 4 days ago (1 children)

How are you defining "Obsolete" vs "Nu"?

e.g. Brainfuck from 1993 is all the way to Nu, while D (2001) and Rust (2012) are less "Nu"?

[–] lena@gregtech.eu 37 points 4 days ago (5 children)

Also, what the hell is "nu" supposed to mean?

[–] Mika@sopuli.xyz 23 points 4 days ago
[–] subterfuge@lemmy.world 14 points 4 days ago

OP probably lived through the mid-1990s rise of “nu-metal” bands like Linkin Park

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[–] KazuchijouNo@lemy.lol 59 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

AKA: How to annoy a bunch of computer nerds very quickly....

Make one for Linux distros next!!!

[–] nialv7@lemmy.world 21 points 4 days ago (1 children)

By being wildly wrong you mean?

[–] Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 26 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You say "wildly wrong", they say "incentivizing engagement".

[–] nialv7@lemmy.world 17 points 4 days ago (2 children)
[–] Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago

Precisely. Getting people upset is the foremost technique to farm engagement on social media. Sites such as Facebook even deliberately altered their algorithms to show content that will anger readers because it works so well to keep them invested.

Engagement bait is omnipresent and really obvious once you learn to spot it - even something as innocuous as one or two "accidental" typos in a meme to get people into the comments section.

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[–] moomoomoo309@programming.dev 45 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Yeah, the axes on this are weird, why would the opposite of a systems language be a toy language? And why is Lua, a very popular and commonly used language in tons of stuff, a "toy"? And Lua is a nu Lang? It's older than Java, maybe it just feels newer because each release isn't necessarily backwards compatible?

[–] entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Also Python as a toy lang and somehow more "nu" than Java despite Java being younger?

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[–] rooroo@feddit.org 41 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

It wouldn’t be a good compass if nobody had strong issues with it:

  1. System vs Toy is not opposed to each other. Should have been system vs abstract or useful vs toy or whatever
  2. Where LISP? Best language missing makes graph bad

Edit: before people tell me there’s already ‘obsolete’ on the graph, no, there’s loads of obsolete languages that are still useful, and many more new languages that are either built for fun or not used for sad or good reasons.

Edit2: I’m also halfway sure that brainfuck is older than rust (but don’t wanna look it up). But if that’s true your axis mean several things at once anyway and you should feel bad (not really though).

[–] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 14 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I literally opened it looking for Lisp and dismissed the whole thing when I realized its not there

[–] expr@programming.dev 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Haskell's also not there. I was ready to criticize any quadrant it was put in heh. But that's probably mostly because the axes are kinda bad.

[–] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 37 points 4 days ago (2 children)

If everything written in those "obsolete" languages suddenly disappeared, the whole world would go dark.

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[–] svcg@lemmy.blahaj.zone 31 points 4 days ago (1 children)

SQL isn't a toy language, it's a domain specific language.

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[–] iAvicenna@lemmy.world 27 points 4 days ago (5 children)

How is C or assembly obsolete when they are literally everywhere is beyond me

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[–] Aquaphobi@lemmy.zip 26 points 4 days ago (4 children)

And I bet this is based in opinion and not any sort of scientific understanding because you put assembly as an obsolete language…

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[–] radish@lemmy.blahaj.zone 25 points 4 days ago (7 children)

Curious how you decided what goes where, I'd hardly consider SQL a "Toy Lang" as opposed to a "System Lang"

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[–] Eiri@lemmy.ca 22 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Did you just note Typescript, a superset of JavaScript that needs to be compiled into it, as closer to the system?

Also does it technically constitute a language? That feels like a stretch too.

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[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 20 points 4 days ago

How is cobol toy wasn't it made for military?

[–] Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org 19 points 4 days ago (1 children)

COBOL is about as far from a "toy" as I can imagine. Almost everything corpo runs on it at some level.

[–] kkj@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 4 days ago

And almost no one writes it for fun.

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 18 points 4 days ago

The only way Assembly will be obsolete is if there were no new chips processor models being created.

Every time a new architecture or a new instruction group is announced, it has to be bootstrapped into the C compiler.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 16 points 4 days ago (6 children)

Where's Latin and Summerian? 🤔

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[–] scroll_responsibly@lemmy.sdf.org 14 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 4 days ago

Outside the chart. Somewhere far above the image

[–] Awkwardparticle@programming.dev 14 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Why is it missing Haskell?

[–] goatinspace@feddit.org 10 points 4 days ago (2 children)
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[–] josefo@leminal.space 13 points 4 days ago

ngl I'm pretty mad right now

[–] lime@feddit.nu 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)

i like how you've managed to include just a single non-procedural language, and it's the most interesting one by far, and you're calling it obsolete. says a lot.

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[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 9 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I don’t get what toy lang means?

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[–] DJKJuicy@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 days ago
[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 4 days ago (5 children)

Was it a deliberate choice to leave JavaScript off entirely?

[–] alt_xa_23@lemmy.world 9 points 4 days ago (4 children)

ECMAScript is included, which is the official JavaScript standard

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[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

As a Ruby fan I’m just happy to be included for a change

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[–] VitabytesDev@feddit.nl 7 points 3 days ago (2 children)

This is a very bad chart:

  • I don't understand what Toy Lang, Nu Lang or even System Lang mean
  • How are C and Assembly obsolete?
  • How is C++ more obsolete than D or Go?
  • PHP still powers a large portion of the internet, certainly not a "Toy Lang"
  • Why is ECMAScript here and not JavaScript?

Downvoting.

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[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 3 days ago

Yes, SQL is but a toy language. It probably will never make it into production.

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