Comment by diggan

I remember seeing a bunch of graphs which showed how programming languages have changed over time, and how much of the original code is still there.

It showed that some languages were basically nothing like the 1.0 versions, while others had retained most of the code written and only stuff on top.

In the end, it seems to also be reflected in the community and ecosystem. I remember Clojure being close/at the top of the list as the language hardly does breaking changes anymore, so libraries that last changed 5 years ago, still run perfectly well in the current version of the language.

I guess it helps that it's lisp-like as you can extend the core of the language without changing it upstream, which of course also comes with its own warts.

But one great change it did to me, is stop thinking that "freshness" equals "greatness". It's probably more common I use libraries today that basically stopped changed since some years ago, than I use libraries that were created in the last year. And without major issues.