Death of a Technology

Will a programming language or a platform die? Sure, especially when self-evolving is regarded as some sort of death.

When we were discussing EJB3 and JPA in a tech-sharing discussion, a guy got a little bit emotional when we talked about the downfall of EJB. We later found out that he had used EJB to do some projects in college. That explained a lot. It is some emotional attachment. We, as human-beings, may all has such feelings, right?

Later I read a following statement in an email: such great technology won’t die.

I think it’s simply not true. Great technology dies either, just like great man dies, too.

I had a friend who found his fist job for a telecom company, which used Cobol language. Of course he switched to Java when he switched job. I think I can say Cobol is a dieing language, if not already dead, from application developer’s prospect. And what happened to my friend? He is a shrink now, helping his patients with their mental problems. In his view, programming with any language is dead(maybe dead end, to be precisely).

It’s not important whether a technology dies or not. Just make sure you’re not the last one to know and always be able to find the exit.