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Socoder -> On Topic -> Getting to know language history |
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| Sun, 13 Jul 2025, 00:17 | |
Pixel_Outlaw
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Getting to know our historyOne of my hobbies is programming language lineage and taxonomy. Some people seem to get stuck in a 5 to 10 year buffer around their favorite language but history offers much more to explore! One of my favorite sites gives fairly deep insight into the hundreds (thousands?) of programming languages that shape our domain. Most people here are probably familiar languages with came from Algol and Fortran influence which later begat C and the imperative block languages. If you take a look at the link above you will find arrows pointing in and out of languages which you may know. The arrows pointing in mean that language got ideas from another language and arrows pointing out mean it influenced another language. Some foundational languages stand alone, these are languages like Fortran, ALGOL, Lisp etc. Some languages are defined their own domain (Like Prolog) and make short work of niche tasks while making long work of other non niche tasks. One of my greatest disappointments is that people can become stuck in a local neighborhood and never really see how varied and wonderful the depth of languages go. Even as far back as the 70s, a COBOL programmer may never see how much a task might be better done in something else (even at the time!). Luckily, we don't have that lack of information today. One of the very worst things someone can do is try to solve the same toy problem in all languages and then make a snap judgement. It's much better to look for languages as far away from home as possible and then see what kinds of work they solve best. They then have a toolbox that can handle a wide range of problems not just assurance that they've found a golden hammer for everything. I won't claim that every language has a place - there are some that I think are truly poorly designed. I've explored several different paradigms due to sailing across the language sea. 1. Your usual Imperative languages (typical step by step instructions) 2. Functional languages (you don't typically mutate variables, recursion instead of looping, combinator heavy) 3. Logical languages (You specify relationships and facts, the language knits it all together and models the world you specify - even deduces new things) 4. Declarative (You specify what you want, not how it's done) 5. Object Oriented (Not C++/Java,C#, rather more pure systems like Smalltalk and CLOS) And I hope to explore more. Anyway, take a poke at the fancy dynamic graph and see where your favorite language came from (You can trace it back to a foundational language for fun) History goes back further than most people realize. |
| Sun, 13 Jul 2025, 05:04 | |
Jayenkai
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(Minority changed topic title, because I think a "getting to know OUR history" thread might be fun in the future... if anyone wants to start that, I'm kinda sick of talking about my 2012 shit!!) The root of all languages is binary. Ones and zeros.. offs and ons.. and as much as I understand that, it amazes me that anyone actually figured that shit out to begin with. I mean, how do you even make that leap? That's the one part of all of this that still amazes me to this day. -=-=- ''Load, Next List!'' 
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| Sun, 13 Jul 2025, 11:43 | |
spinal
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Like this  View on YouTube
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| Sun, 13 Jul 2025, 12:39 | |
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Pixel_Outlaw
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It's very simple - people got tired of entering binary (or hex) machine code to drive computers. (Check out the Kenbak - 1 or KIM-1) They gave these instructions names. Later the assembler would turn these names back into the operations. Eventually they realized that they had repeated sequences of operations and those became macro assemblers. And eventually they abstracted on those macros creating rudimentary programming languages. It's when those higher languages actually arrived things got interesting and you started getting different schools of thought. For example Lisp came The Lambda Calculus, Prolog from Classic Logic and deduction with Horn clauses, and COBOL came from trying to impose English clauses (leading to non-conposable commands). And some languages are all about implementation such as Forth giving you a stack and a dictionary of function - like "words". APL is all about array manipulations as the fundamental paradigm etc. Smalltalk makes everything an object directed by messages which themselves are objects. Even numbers are objects which receive messages. (Removing the need for loops) Many different ideas and domains. So it's not that binary inspired languages so much as just an implementation detail. |
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