Picture this: you’re debugging a 40-year-old COBOL payroll system at 3 AM while questioning life choices. As your coffee goes cold, you wonder—should programming languages come with built-in expiration dates? It’s not just a philosophical shrug; it’s a tectonic plate shifting under our keyboards. Let’s dissect this silicon carcass.

The Walking Dead: Languages That Refuse to Die

Some languages haunt us like digital ghosts. Take COBOL—the undead granddaddy still processing $3 trillion daily in financial systems. Or Erlang, the telecom titan now elbowed aside by sleeker cousins like Elixir despite its legendary fault tolerance. Why do they cling?

  • Institutional inertia: Rewriting nuclear plant controls in Rust? Cue nervous laughter.
  • Specialized strengths: Fortran’s scientific number-crunching is like a vintage sports car—clunky but unmatched on specific racetracks.
  • Cost of extinction: Migrating 200M lines of banking COBOL could fund a moon colony.
IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID. ZOMBIE-PAYROLL.
PROCEDURE DIVISION.
    IF EMPLOYEE-IS-VAMPIRE 
        PERFORM DEDUCT-GARLIC-ALLOWANCE.

Not actual undead accounting (probably).

The Case for Planned Obsolescence

What if languages self-destructed after 20 years? Imagine:

  1. Security blanket : No more patching vulnerabilities in 1980s Perl scripts.
  2. Innovation acceleration : Legacy baggage wouldn’t anchor progress.
  3. Skill relevance : Developers wouldn’t need archaeology degrees.
    But here’s the paradox: enforced death might kill useful evolution. JavaScript should’ve fossilized in the 90s—yet it shape-shifted into TypeScript and Node.js. A controlled demolition could erase such Lazarus stories.

The “But What About…” Counterarguments

The Maintainability Myth

“We’ll modernize later,” says every project manager before jumping ship. Technical debt compounds like loan shark interest. IBM estimated that 75% of IT budgets feed legacy systems. Built-in obsolescence would force the issue—like scheduling your own funeral to avoid becoming a burden.

The Innovation Paradox

Obsolescence could spur creativity, but also nuke foundational tools. Would Linux exist if C had expired? Probably not. Sometimes technological senescence breeds ingenuity—like Python gluing together Fortran libraries for AI.

graph LR A[Legacy Fortran] --> B(Python Wrapper) --> C[PyTorch/TensorFlow]

The Human Cost

Forcing 10 million COBOL devs into retirement sounds efficient—until hospitals miss payroll. Transition periods would need Babylonian patience. Maybe offer obsolescence therapy?

A Modest Proposal: Expiration Dates ≠ Tombstones

Instead of killing languages, build migration paths into their DNA. Imagine:

  • Deprecation layers: Like tree rings marking old growth.
  • Auto-transpilers: Convert vintage code to modern equivalents during compilation.
  • EOL ceremonies: Official “sunset” events with migration toolkits and community support.
    Elixir did this brilliantly—running on Erlang’s BEAM VM while offering modern syntax. It’s like turning a steam engine into a hybrid rocket.

The Uncomfortable Truth

We already have de facto obsolescence—driven by hype cycles and Stack Overflow trends. The average language lifespan is under 15 years. But leaving it to market chaos creates COBOL-shaped time bombs. Built-in obsolescence isn’t about disrespecting elders—it’s about curating a living ecosystem. We archive paintings; why not code? Preserve, don’t embalm. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a COBOL bug to sacrifice to the digital abyss. What’s your take—planned death or natural selection?