Re: But it should be
Except they're *not* LTS. They just hang around slightly longer than the squirrel-on-methamphetamines schedule that the devs would prefer. Until Windows 10, windows lifetimes were about a decade. As the article mentions, C++ is only updated once every 3 years. Many linux distros LTS releases go 5 years.
The problem here is a matter of attitude. The newer generation is composed of devs for whom ADHD is considered a goal to strive for. They think it's entirely reasonable to do a complete rewrite of whatever they've done, because the framework they used is now a week old and is now boring.
Meanwhile those of us who have real jobs that require us to not dick around, are getting completely crushed by the overwhelming churn because there are simply no resources available to keep up.
Applications updating frequently is one thing. They need to adapt to changing user needs, and yes, those can change wildly. But IT Infrastructure? The exact opposite. People depend on infrastructure. People's *lives* depend on infrastructure. Their *money* depends on infrastructure. Infrastructure, and by extension, things like programming languages, MUST be stable. This isn't a philosophical viewpoint. This is hard and gritty reality, which anyone who has done IT work for more than a few years will have learned.
All you need to do is look at the most long-term successful technologies and you see one very common factor: They are stable. The HTTP protocol is a perfect example. Do people honestly think the web would exist as it currently does, if people made major changes to the HTTP protocol every 6-weeks to 6 months? No, it wouldn't. And until people start remembering this lesson, we are headed into a technological dark ages where entire technology stacks will be invented, implemented, and dropped again without so much as leaving a footprint in history (except maybe as a bad idea).