> Each new release of Delphi attempts to keep as much backwards compatibility as possible to allow developers to continue to use existing code without incompatibility of interfaces or functionality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_(programming_language)

I'm pretty sure Delphi died from having to compete with essentially free C# and its better integration with Microsoft's ecosystem.

And a little bit from the shifting of the overton window away from paying for languages.

And mismanagement of Borland/Inprise.

And about a dozen other factors before "lack of (breaking) change in the language".

It's 1996. Java runs on Linux, Delphi doesn't. Java also runs where Delphi runs. Java is free. Java 1.1 with inner classes looks much like recursive blocks in Pascal (albeit without procedural types -- function pointers to C folks).

THE END.

(sadly, as I really liked Borland Pascal)

"killed" might be a bit strong, but the overall story of "stop working on perl 5 in favor of working on perl 6" contains some aspects of the concept.

And even those have modern standards.

Object Cobol anyone?

Honestly i 'm just guessing on Fortran and COBOL. I wasn't there when they lost prominence. I just know that no other languages actually lost significant amounts of popularity for not changing (java? Its maybe less popular but calling it dead is not even wrong).

Java isn't dead, but it suffered greatly during the hibernation years starting with the Oracle takeover.