Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages • Hacker News Board

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#191

Post by WorldMaker » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

lifthrasiir wrote: post #34

onychomys wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Juxtaposition (`foo size()`) is a serious contender I think. In fact, I consider it is one of the most undervalued syntactic choices.

In HS I built a toy language where it was `foo's size()`, if you want to play even further down the English-like rabbit hole, even trying to stick to BNF-ish CFGs. `'s` is actually a surprisingly unambiguous token in a language without a "char type" and that sticks to double quotes only for strings.

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#192

Post by mxyzpt1k » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 4:26 PM UTC

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.

Perl incorporated regular expressions into a general purpose programming language in a way that seemed fairly unique at the time. Today they seem to be everywhere, often with the help of PCRE-Perl compatible regexps.

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#193

Post by WorldMaker » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

greencore wrote: post #88

muizelaar wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did ActionScript influence?

TypeScript, I'd say.

Also TC39's efforts in all of JavaScript just about ever since. ActionScript's ES4 efforts left a lot of scars and that "lost version" of JavaScript is quite influential in the very least for how much ES2015+ avoids ES4/ActionScript ideas/problems/concerns as much as it learns from them and eventually reincorporates some of them.

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#194

Post by throwaway17_17 » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #175

I love both languages (well c99 anyways), but I feel like Pascal/C is like betamax/vhs. I think I it didn't help that free Pascal compliers were harder to come by. IIIRC

I’ve seen multiple statements from people that Pascal was a better language than C, but I absolutely love the VHS/BETA-Max analogy (it contains a lot of context which usually take a good deal longer to write out in the pascal vs c discussions). My education and experience effectively skipped Pascal, other than mentions that it existed. So, do you have any off the cuff reading or materials that demonstrate where Pascal shines? I’d be interesting to see if any of Pascal’s qualities that made it ‘better than C’ were ripe for plucking out and putting in another language.

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#195

Post by Scarbutt » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 4:29 PM UTC

pansa2 wrote: post #190

Scarbutt wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised Clojure isn't in the list either. Edit: To clarify, Clojure is mostly a dead language that didn't have any innovations by itself, but it did influenced many programmers(the creator is good at marketing). It helped push forward the FP mindset into the users of other mainstream languages(js, python, java).

Is Clojure really “mostly dead”?

It has less market share than perl or delphi (make your own judgement). It was really hyped(rightfully so, a practical lisp for production use? fun! sign me in) then declined fast.

Like most(ly dead) languages, it still has its followers, in the case of clojure, mostly a cultish group (my impression from r/clojure and other forums).

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#196

Post by kick » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

ThomasBHickey wrote: post #156

kick wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That ALGOL-68 was hated by almost everyone who like previous ALGOL versions is not to be discounted. ALGOL-68 was loved by people who would have never used ALGOL to begin with (and they didn't start doing so with ALGOL-68). It was difficult to write compilers for, slow & far too complex.

Looking back at ALGOL-68, it looks like comparatively small language compared to many of our current languages, e.g. Java, C++ and Python. I loved the definition of it, but never got to use it.

That modern languages are even worse does not make ALGOL-68 good, in my opinion. It's understandable why people would like it, though, compared to modern languages.

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#197

Post by mkchoi212 » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

"almost all of logic programming actually stems from Prolog"

Why isn't Prolog on the list then?? :O

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#198

Post by ufmace » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

davedx wrote: post #39

dleslie wrote: post #26

> The interesting question isn’t “Why did Smalltalk die”, it’s “Why did C++ survive”. I think it’s because C++ had better C interop so was easier to extend into legacy systems. Video Games. From around 1999 to recently, C++ was the language of game development. It only recently came under serious threat, from C#.

Also Visual C++ and Visual Studio. I worked on desktop software from around 2007-2010, not that long ago; all our software line was built in Visual C++ with MFC. It's hard to believe how fast things changed and desktop apps were replaced by web apps...

I worked on Windows desktop apps around the same timeframe, maybe a bit later. IMO, C#/Winforms killed C++/MFC, due to being massively simpler and more productive, without giving up much in the way of performance.

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#199

Post by detaro » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

mkchoi212 wrote: post #197

"almost all of logic programming actually stems from Prolog" Why isn't Prolog on the list then?? :O

is Prolog deader than the logic programming systems stemming from it? The field seems fairly niche overall, but from the limited insight I have Prolog seems to be still around?

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#200

Post by btilly » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

I am sad that Forth did not make the list.

It showed how to make a minimal programming language that runs in a very small amount of space with just a stack. And did a lot to popularize RPN notation.

Even if you do not write in Forth, you can still benefit from knowing the ideas. For example I could not have written my answer at https://stackoverflow.com/a/60817908/585411 if I did not know the ideas of Forth.