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Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

hillelwayne.com

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Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#91

Post by mlochbaum »

mlochbaum wrote: post #76
7thaccount wrote: post #62

The APL section seems a little off. I downloaded the latest Dyalog version and the RIDE IDE and it was all very simple to use. Despite having zero APL experience I wrote a pretty nifty program to simulate something in my domain in like 3 lines of code. The keyboard thing is a non-issue as the IDE let's you enter symbols and you quickly start to memorize that you can enter command-key r to enter rho and so forth. I've…

I think it's fair to say that font issues were a significant reason for its decline in the late 80s and 90s (well before good unicode support). Other major factors were spreadsheets, which did many of the things APL was best at with an intuitive graphical interface, and OOP. APL didn't have OOP, so it was for dinosaurs. Structured programming could have had the same effect—mainstream APLs picked up ifs and while loop…

The article is wrong about mixing strings and numbers though. The requirement for homogeneous data, and the use of boxes, is a feature of the SHARP APL lineage, which includes J (although these languages could allow mixed arrays if they wanted to). But the APL2 and NARS families simply allow anything as an element of an array. These are much more popular, to the point that every recent APL I'm aware of uses this style of array. Possibly a reason why J wasn't very successful; probably not a reason why APL usage disappeared.

See also https://aplwiki.com/wiki/Array_model.

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#92

Post by tyingq »

muizelaar wrote: post #86
tyingq wrote: post #44

360 Assembler and Flash/ActionScript seem like good additions to the list.

What did ActionScript influence?

Arguably HTML5 and JS to get both in a state where Flash wasn't needed. Not just for what Flash is famous for either. I used it a lot for "copy this text in a div to the clipboard" when browsers were all over the place on support for that.

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#93

Post by mattkrause »

goto11 wrote: post #52
tyingq wrote: post #25

Expecting to see Perl in an article like this in 5 to 10 years. Wasn't the first language I learned, but there's a fond place in my heart for it. At the time, it was the (only) less painful way to get at sockets, libc calls like getpwnam(), etc. I know the TIOBE index is flawed, but...ouch: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/perl/

But how how influential was it? It seems most of the unique ideas in Perl have not been adopted by other languages. But if Perl can be credited with kick starting the dynamic language boom (Python, Ruby) then it have been massively influential.

I'd also give it some credit as a cautionary tale.

A lot of subsequent languages have focused on readability, partly as a reaction to some of the....unique things came up with in Perl.

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#94

Post by marcosdumay »

onychomys wrote: post #33
pjc50 wrote: post #7

There are a few things present in COBOL that I would like to see lifted into more modern languages. One is the use of the full stop as an expression terminator, as in English, instead of the semicolon. Another is the whole "picture" mechanism for number formats. More languages should also steal Verilog's use of _ as an optional digit separator. It's just arrived in C# 7.

If we start using periods to end expressions, would we then have to use semicolons to chain things together? Or would you let the compiler know that foo.size(). was okay and that it shouldn't be waiting around for another function call there?

Hum... Prolog uses periods to end declarations, and as you expect, uses semicolons as combinators.

It reads really well, because it also uses colons as combinators, with higher precedence than the semicolon. But it does not map well into other paradigms.

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#95

Post by lioeters »

fanf2 wrote: post #28
j-pb wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self has an even bigger legacy, the JVM is basically all the technology that made Self fast ported over to Java. David Ungar pioneered not only Self and prototype based inheritance, but also generational garbage collection, and polymorphic inline caching. Before Sun cannibalised the Self team into Java, it was actually slow as a snail. Another fun fact, a reduced version of Self was used the programming language for…

Then Lars Bak (who worked on Self and HotSpot) used the techniques to make JavaScript fast with v8

This is the second time this week I've seen Lars Bak mentioned. I'm so glad to have learned about his work on virtual machines, it's a direct line through the history of programming languages, from Self, Smalltalk, Java, V8 JavaScript engine, and Dart as well.

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#96

Post by thrownaway954 »

Very surprised that ColdFusion isn't on this list. Say what you want about it, but remember this... You know how all you React, VueJS and frontend developers just LOOOOOVE components... Yeah... ColdFusion had that first in what was called "Custom Tags". Heck... It had alot of features that you find today in almost every other language, but it is dying a SLOOOOOOOOW death.

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#97

Post by pjc50 »

tyingq wrote: post #25

Expecting to see Perl in an article like this in 5 to 10 years. Wasn't the first language I learned, but there's a fond place in my heart for it. At the time, it was the (only) less painful way to get at sockets, libc calls like getpwnam(), etc. I know the TIOBE index is flawed, but...ouch: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/perl/

Perl is possibly the clearest example of the "Osborne effect": announcing Perl6 took focus off Perl5, but it took far too long to arrive. So by the time it did many of the community had drifted away and the core use cases were becoming less relevant. Python almost did this to itself with the 2to3 transition.

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#98

Post by 7thaccount »

mlochbaum wrote: post #76
7thaccount wrote: post #62

The APL section seems a little off. I downloaded the latest Dyalog version and the RIDE IDE and it was all very simple to use. Despite having zero APL experience I wrote a pretty nifty program to simulate something in my domain in like 3 lines of code. The keyboard thing is a non-issue as the IDE let's you enter symbols and you quickly start to memorize that you can enter command-key r to enter rho and so forth. I've…

I think it's fair to say that font issues were a significant reason for its decline in the late 80s and 90s (well before good unicode support). Other major factors were spreadsheets, which did many of the things APL was best at with an intuitive graphical interface, and OOP. APL didn't have OOP, so it was for dinosaurs. Structured programming could have had the same effect—mainstream APLs picked up ifs and while loop…

Thanks Marshall. I'll yield to you in anything APL as I'm a total noob.

For those that don't recognize his username, I think he works for Dyalog in APL implementation. Is that right?

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#99

Post by mlochbaum »

7thaccount wrote: post #98
mlochbaum wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fair to say that font issues were a significant reason for its decline in the late 80s and 90s (well before good unicode support). Other major factors were spreadsheets, which did many of the things APL was best at with an intuitive graphical interface, and OOP. APL didn't have OOP, so it was for dinosaurs. Structured programming could have had the same effect—mainstream APLs picked up ifs and while loop…

Thanks Marshall. I'll yield to you in anything APL as I'm a total noob. For those that don't recognize his username, I think he works for Dyalog in APL implementation. Is that right?

That's right.
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