Lambda the Ultimate

inactiveTopic Mother Tongues of Computer Languages
started 5/13/2003; 11:54:52 AM - last post 5/17/2003; 8:19:41 PM
Dejan Jelovic - Mother Tongues of Computer Languages  blueArrow
5/13/2003; 11:54:52 AM (reads: 2086, responses: 9)
Mother Tongues of Computer Languages

This site provides a poster that shows the evolution of the strongest branches of computer languages. Also provides a link to a more exhaustive compilation.


Posted to history by Dejan Jelovic on 5/13/03; 11:58:48 AM

Ruiner - Re: Mother Tongues of Computer Languages  blueArrow
5/13/2003; 12:57:51 PM (reads: 938, responses: 0)
I like this one better.

Patrick Logan - Re: Mother Tongues of Computer Languages  blueArrow
5/13/2003; 9:01:30 PM (reads: 882, responses: 0)
Lisp influenced Smalltalk, but there is a missing influence the other way...

Smalltalk influenced Flavors, the Lisp Machine object system, which then influenced CLOS.

Paul Snively - Re: Mother Tongues of Computer Languages  blueArrow
5/14/2003; 9:09:45 AM (reads: 757, responses: 0)
And everything else: C++, Java, pretty much all modern object systems descend from Smalltalk in one way or another.

David B. Wildgoose - Re: Mother Tongues of Computer Languages  blueArrow
5/14/2003; 11:42:56 PM (reads: 723, responses: 1)
On what possible grounds can Forth be considered dead?

For starters, every Sun machine first boots into Forth before running Solaris, and what about ColorForth?

http://www.colorforth.com/cf.html

This was designed to provide basic OS functionality as well so as to maximise how close to the "metal" you can get.

I have to question this "research"...

Ehud Lamm - Re: Mother Tongues of Computer Languages  blueArrow
5/15/2003; 12:00:07 AM (reads: 730, responses: 0)
It's been awhile since we discussed real research...

Dan Shappir - Re: Mother Tongues of Computer Languages  blueArrow
5/15/2003; 12:10:32 AM (reads: 698, responses: 0)
Ruby is a "hardware description language" ?!?

Frank Atanassow - Re: Mother Tongues of Computer Languages  blueArrow
5/15/2003; 4:44:54 AM (reads: 695, responses: 0)
Ruby is a "hardware description language" ?!?

I think there has been some confusion there. There is an experimental relational language called Ruby which is used for hardware design. However, it is certainly not descended from Python and Smalltalk.

This relational Ruby is really a very cool language. It is to relations what a functional language is to functions. I recommend FP people to check it out; it's a bit mind-expanding and unlike any other programming language I have ever seen.

Isaac Gouy - Re: Mother Tongues of Computer Languages  blueArrow
5/17/2003; 1:51:09 PM (reads: 594, responses: 0)
These are fun cartoons!

Some aspects of "Mother Tongues" are a little odd:
Active: thousands of users
Endangered: usage dropping off
These don't seem to be exclusive categories ;-) VB usage is probably dropping off, with many many users.

So we have the oddity of Smalltalk listed as Endangered, and Self listed as Active! I don't know that Self ever escaped the research lab?

Survival of the Fittest?
Fittest in a given environment - a modern Ecology of computer systems would make interesting reading. Moving on from that old idea that there was an ideal "climax" grouping of plants for each climatic zone, to the knowledge that history matters, a lot.

The historical accident of being among the first to become established in a new area matters for plants, and for computer languages. Plants engage in chemical warfare to suppress their competitors. For computer languages, FUD and training costs seem to suffice.

Isaac Gouy - Re: Mother Tongues of Computer Languages  blueArrow
5/17/2003; 8:19:41 PM (reads: 586, responses: 0)
Compilers and interpreters for typeless BCPL (that grand-daddy of C) are actually still available.