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by maxxxxx 2850 days ago
Is that just a commercial for this progsbase thing? I certainly like the assertion that that code won't rot for "centuries". Maybe a fizzbuzz implementation will survive this but even there I have my doubts.
3 comments

Given that the same text is available here https://www.progsbase.com/featuredpost/software-rot-and-clas... I'd say it's pretty likely to be a commercial.
The argument was that a program written with proven, solid programming constructs, then it will last a long time. The example language is very simple: It contains things like: +, -, *, /, log, sin, cos, exp, functions, ifs and for loops. These things will not be unexecutable any time soon. These were basically in Charles Babbage's programming language for the Analytical Engine designed in the 1830s, two centuries old already.
There is already Haxe which is free and compiles to a lot of things.
As I explained in another response, progsbase is very different from Haxe. Haxe is an independent language. If you use Haxe, then you depend on the Haxe compiler. Progsbase is completely in other languages, meaning the progsbase tools are only support tools which gives you certain benefits such as being able to translate. You code remains pure Java which you develop with Java tools.
You would still need the compiler to be written in progsbase too: is it? As I am not quite sure (and you cannot gamble on it) that Java and Java tooling is still there in 100 years. Which then brings you back to Haxe ; kind of the same gamble there but that is open source which makes it longer lived generally anyway.

A language for the ages would be a Forth imho; you can write the language on the back of a beermath and it takes mere hours to implement on whatever system.

> You would still need the compiler to be written in progsbase too: is it?

Currently no, but the progsbase language is very simple and contains only well-known constructs. So creating a compiler is very simple, it would take only a few days. This is like the point you make about forth, except forth contains less well known constucts.

> open source

The progsbase specification is also open: https://docs.progsbase.com/