Talk:Persistent programming language

The article defines its topic thus:
 * A persistent programming language is a programming language extended with constructs to handle persistent data. It distinguishes with  [sic] embedded SQL ...

Using this definition, it is not at all clear what is meant by:
 * The only commercial product that appears to do this at the moment is JADE, but it is anticipated that persistent programming languages will become more popular in the future.

Quite apart from the weasel words "it is anticipated", the fact is that there are many languages that allow data persistence using only language constructs, without using SQL. The oldest that I am aware of would be MUMPS, a language created in the 1960s and still in almost universal use in the field of medical records keeping, and also widely used in banking. In MUMPS, all global lists are automatically persisted. Other examples include Napier88, Persistent Modula-3, and several others are listed at Persistence (computer science). Few of these have achieved much commercial success, but then, neither has JADE; whereas MUMPS is very successful.

Further, there are plenty of languages which provide this feature through a library, e.g. Ruby's ActiveRecord. It could be argued whether the above definition requires the feature to be a built-in or a library; it seems to me that a library does meet the definition, but in practice, no-one is likely to care.

Finally it should be noted that there exist operating systems, such as PalmOS, Multics and IBM i5/OS that provide data persistence to all applications regardless of language. -- Securiger (talk) 02:38, 25 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Can someone please explain to me why this is not called Persistency programming languge or Persistence-capable programming langue? To me, a programming language, which is persistent, is a programming language which persists (does not go away).

-- Blondinrikard (talk) 22:51, 16 May 2017 (UTC)Blondinrikard