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The genealogy of computer languages
gnolam
Member #2,030
March 2002
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Just got this little link I thought I'd share: http://www.levenez.com/lang/history.html

A graphical genealogy of computer languages, from 1954 to now. Enjoy :)

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kazzmir
Member #1,786
December 2001
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There was another one of these I saw a while back but it had fancy colors. Anyone know what Im talking about?

Gideon Weems
Member #3,925
October 2003

If anything, this shows that programmers--as a whole--are about as creative as the Rebel Alliance when naming things.

A, B, C, D, E...

SonShadowCat
Member #1,548
September 2001
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I'm seeing a lot more than individual letters....

Gideon Weems
Member #3,925
October 2003

It seems I have failed... In any case, I had no idea there was a J, and a K, and an M.

Richard Phipps
Member #1,632
November 2001
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It seems that after the wild arrows of the early years, programming became more ordered, with a few languages improving every few years. Less choice than in past decades though.. ;)

Evert
Member #794
November 2000
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Some arrows terminate well before the right edge of the graph, though the languages they represent are not dead.
In a way, that Fortran still lives is a marvel... although it really is a bit of a dinosaur...

X-G
Member #856
December 2000
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Fortunately the whole programming language bit started to get organized around Fortran and later Algol... before that it was a mess. Pretty much every company would have their own programming language.

In later years more languages have been obsoleted, or de facto obsoleted; a few major, strong and fairly niched languages have taken over instead and that's good, really. No sense in having to learn twenty languages when you only need one that can do all those twenty could.

I wonder what they're doing with Haskell these days...

Quote:

Some arrows terminate well before the right edge of the graph, though the languages they represent are not dead.

Yes, such as Haskell. ;) It's very much alive these days. It was just, well... finished in 1998. They completed it. I think they're working on a Haskell II, but I'm not certain on that. Anyway, Haskell98 is the official Haskell. Compare it to C99 or something.

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Avenger
Member #4,550
April 2004

What the "f" is the sad language?;)

Peter Wang
Member #23
April 2000

"We don't know what language engineers will be coding in in the year 2100. However, we do know that it will be called FORTRAN."

Avenger
Member #4,550
April 2004

Nope, that would be the Z+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ language

Evert
Member #794
November 2000
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No, it'll be called Fortran.
You'd be surprised at the amount of old Fortran code, or even the amount of new programmes written in obsolete versions of Fortran...

Avenger
Member #4,550
April 2004

Well, I dont care about the other computer languages, I will always be coding in C:)

Evert
Member #794
November 2000
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Well, if I had been given the choice, I'd be using C too instead of Fortran for my work. Unfortunately, I'm stuck with Fortran...
Not that it's too bad if you restrict yourself to the more modern constructs and concepts, but it still lacks some of the cnvenient things that I like about C. One curiosity about Fortran code I write is that I terminate every line with a ; although Fortran doesn't need it.

Steve Terry
Member #1,989
March 2002
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Is it me or are they missing a few languages in there that I know of... like RPG/400 :P

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Avenger
Member #4,550
April 2004

WHERE ARE LUA!!:P

Corelian
Member #3,376
March 2003
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Quote:

WHERE ARE LUA!!:P

That would be "Where is Lua?". ;)

Lua is an embedded language. The chart doesn't seem to list embedded/Turing-incomplete languages, but correct me if I'm wrong.

Richard Phipps
Member #1,632
November 2001
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What was the reason for using ; as an end of line character again? Was it only to allow multiple statements on a single line?

Matt Smith
Member #783
November 2000

Quote:

Was it only to allow multiple statements on a single line?

and to allow single lines to be split.

X-G
Member #856
December 2000
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It was also originally an Algol feature, if I'm not mistaken. Which I might be.

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Evert
Member #794
November 2000
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Quote:

What was the reason for using ; as an end of line character again? Was it only to allow multiple statements on a single line?

Making it easier for the parser, I guess... you need to know where the line ends and having to put ; there doesn't look as obtrusive as, say, $, # or @ would.
Fortran doesn't use this, so each line ends where it ends. To continue a line, you have the append it with & (in Fortran 90+), or make sure all your statements start in column 7 and then place a non-numerical character in column 6 to indicate that that line is the continuation of the one above it (Fortran 77 and under).

Peter Hull
Member #1,136
March 2001

When Fortran came out, punched cards were the state of the art, i.e. one card==one line.

Pete

Peter Wang
Member #23
April 2000

Quote:

The chart doesn't seem to list embedded/Turing-incomplete languages, but correct me if I'm wrong.

More like the chart doesn't list lots of languages just so it would fit. There are at least two "embedded" languages there (JavaScript, PostScript) and some of the other ones are barely Turing-complete ;-)

Evert
Member #794
November 2000
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Quote:

When Fortran came out, punched cards were the state of the art, i.e. one card==one line.

I know, that's also why Fortran, by default, still limits you to writing all your code between columns 7 and 70 (or so), and why old-school Fortran programmers still use no comments in their code, abbrevite variables to their shortest possible form (one or two characters) and insist on using implicit typing (eg, implict real (A-H, O-Z)).
Being used to C, I just find it hideously to not be able to break a line wherever I want, or use constructs like a=b=c=1...

Johan Halmén
Member #1,550
September 2001

Where is HTML and Variables?

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Years of thorough research have revealed that what people find beautiful about the Mandelbrot set is not the set itself, but all the rest.

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