COBOL has an even longer history processing business and financial data. Perhaps COBOL is the secret sauce that hedge funds use for high frequency trading?
Oh fuck off, no one has been confused/concerned about the 5 vs 6 version numbering thing for at least 10 years. 5 is production, 6 is where the crazy geniuses experiment with language features, everyone knows that they're two separate things. Since 5.10 we've had major (sub)versions of 5 every year, consistently. And the better ideas from p6 creep their way back into p5 in the way of modules or features in new versions, so it's hardly for naught. The only real mistake was calling it "6" instead of "Dr. Wall and Conway's chimera language of onion and camel goodness" or something.
That's b/c the C++ standard library (or its implementation among various compilers) was terrible 13 years ago when Qt 3 was released. Some say it still is.
Not directly answering your question, but: ZeroMQ is a network programming library that uses and encourages the use of "patterns". Take a look at the (excellent) ZeroMQ manual.