Why Older Software Technologies Often Outlast the Hype of New Trends
The Lindy Effect in Software
I explore how the Lindy effect applies to software, suggesting that technologies surviving longer are likely to remain relevant. Choosing established tools like C and SQL offers stability, a mature ecosystem, and reduced risk compared to chasing the latest trends. While innovation is vital, relying on time-tested foundations ensures robustness and predictability for critical applications.
The longer a technology has been around, the more robust it is seen as compared to more recent ones, we often talk about a technology's maturity.
- mrkeen
Terrific writing. Just terrific. Copied verbatim:
The Lindy effect in software The longer a tech has been around, the more robust it is seen as compared to more recent ones, we often talk about a technology’s maturity The C language SQL has been around for a while, https://antonz.org/fancy-ql/ JS libraries seem to come and goes
- jdw64
The Lindy effect is ultimately a kind of momentum. If that's the case, it seems like it's not the language itself, but rather the 'contracts,' 'interfaces,' and 'standards' that survive longer than the specific implementations a language provides.
Looking at the examples of Lindy that the OP mentioned, they're mostly at the infrastructure level. That's probably because many systems have been built on top of them, and the cost of replacing them is high.
On the flip side, things with weak Lindy effects are likely frontend frameworks or specific libraries. CSS methodologies are a good example of that.
In other words, the deeper something is, the harder it is to change, and as long as that deep language and its ecosystem aren't replaced, it will persist. As a counterexample, Fortran comes to mind—it's still being used today. Fortran has also evolved to exist beneath NumPy and Julia.
Ultimately, I think the core isn't the Lindy effect itself, but rather how many people you can attract commercially, and how many jobs you can create based on that.
In that sense, I think the next-generation language will succeed when it's used to build new infrastructure, and when the cost of refactoring becomes exponentially high. Right now, something that's growing similarly strong is CUDA. Personally, I'm always waiting to see what that language will be.
- simianwords
If we had followed this more seriously in the past, we would have still stuck on to writing C for enterprise applications and had way too many memory bugs. Aren’t we glad there was a demographic who said no to C and brought the revolutionary idea to use Java instead?
Couldn’t a Lindy enthusiast have gone “umm but isn’t Java too new and shouldn’t we just stick to C which is well trodden and understood??”
It’s easy to write sloganeering articles. But it doesn’t tell me anything specific.
Invoking Lindy is just bias to status quo. I prefer bias to progress but respecting chestertons fence.
- Chu4eeno
I'd say rust is the new Java, not Go.
Complete with rewriting everything in the trendy memory safe quasi-portable language that is faster than (poorly written) C in your personal microbenchmarks.
- Animats
Two words: Visual Basic.