Just an interesting bit of trivia, the Large Hadron Collider uses/used (don't know if it still does) CORBA in its distributed control system. (On the control system I worked on we use Sun RPC, which was fine as things go but doesn't have the language support that CORBA has. We used a separate SOAP interface to the system to allow for languages such as Python. Today I'd use gRPC, or the BEAM.)
On a more general note, I see in many critical comments here what I perceive to be a category error. Using JSON to pass data between web client and server, even in more complex web apps, is not the same thing as supporting two-way communications between autonomous software entities that are tasked to do something, perhaps something critical. There could be millions of these exchanges in some arbitrarily short time period, thus any possibility of errors is multiplied accordingly, and the effect any error could cascade if it does not fail early. I really don't believe this is a case where "worse is better." To use an analogy, yes everyday English is a versatile language that works great for most use cases; but when you really need to nail things down, with no tolerance for ambiguity, you get legalese or some other jargon. Or CORBA, or gRPC, etc.
> but when you really need to nail things down, with no tolerance for ambiguity, you get legalese
If only that were true. Litigation happens every single day over the meanings of contracts and laws that were drafted by well-trained and experienced attorneys.
The law is a much more ambitious attempt at formalization than any programming language, hence the more dramatic failures.
Comparatively, programming languages are very constrained. The environments in which they are interpreted and executed are far better understood than any human courtroom.
Your point is an interesting one but it’s painting with too broad a brush.
