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An opinionated history of programming languages

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Re: An opinionated history of programming languages

#61

Post by meowface »

blandflakes wrote: post #45
listenallyall wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python is still vital and thriving but I wouldn't be surprised if its market share is declining (slowly). As you say, it's dominant for data science... but recently it and R were the only practical choices... now other languages (Julia, for example) are valid options. The development of alternative Jupyter (formerly IPython) kernels has accelerated adoption of other languages. Similarly, a few years back it seemed li…

I want this to be true, by the way. As I mention in some other comment, I think Python is rather mediocre as an actual language for building software. Its appeal cannot be denied, but a majority of my peers would really like to use a language that has its tooling shit together. Python is the only language I've had to deploy that makes me understand why anybody would want to use containers.

I love Python, and it's my first and most-used language, but I definitely agree. I want something that takes the best parts of Python, is compatible with most existing Python code, and has a much better tooling ecosystem and better options for static typing.

Spending a bit of time with Rust's tooling, static analysis, and "if it compiles it's pretty likely to work" (at least way more so than with Python) definitely emphasizes a lot of Python's flaws.

Re: An opinionated history of programming languages

#62

Post by coliveira »

notacoward wrote: post #52
ncmncm wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those other languages are interesting today only insofar as they have affected currently important languages. The exception is COBOL, which is still important in the way FORTRAN and Java are, but similarly will not affect future languages.

> only insofar as they have affected currently important languages If this is meant to be any kind of history, that would seem to be grounds for inclusion. After all, Bourne Shell gets a spot, even though it's not actually a language and hasn't influenced any other language to any significant degree (unless you consider Tcl and even that's a big stretch). It seems like many things were included merely as excuses to e…

Bourne Shell is a clear influence on Perl and PHP. And by the way, Bourne Shell was a influenced by C.

Re: An opinionated history of programming languages

#63

Post by ncmncm »

notacoward wrote: post #59
ncmncm wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bourne shell is most practicing programmers' first exposure to language features supporting safe concurrency without locks or shared storage. Those features are still finding their way into C++. And no, it is not the same concept. When was the last time you had any contact with a running Algol or Simula program? I use sh -- bash, really -- every day.

> Those features are still finding their way into C++. Not the only area in which C++ is 30 years (and counting) behind state of the art. > When was the last time The OP is supposedly about history, thus current usage is irrelevant. There's no longer a Mongol Empire either, but its existence is still historically important and only the worst kind of dilettante would try to write a history of the world without mention…

Yet, other languages are, also, only just getting similar features.

The author seems to prefer to mention languages that are still taught and used, and to neglect those that are not. It being an "opinionated" history, I can only find fault where he breaks his own rules. Maybe he should mention Korn shell, for example, which became Posix shell and bash. But only Bourne shell features affected modern languages.

Re: An opinionated history of programming languages

#65

Post by gameswithgo »

lalaithion wrote: post #25

Anyone care to explain what template void recurseFillChildren(CurTy &E) { using PackTy = std::variant ; using TyL = std::variant_alternative_t ; static_assert(std::is_same_v ); using TyR = std::variant_alternative_t ; for (i32 j = 0; j ()); if constexpr (i + 1 (E.Children.back()); } }; does, and why it can't be translated into Rust?

could a proc macro not do it?

Re: An opinionated history of programming languages

#66

Post by stephc_int13 »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #27
lalaithion wrote: post #25

Anyone care to explain what template void recurseFillChildren(CurTy &E) { using PackTy = std::variant ; using TyL = std::variant_alternative_t ; static_assert(std::is_same_v ); using TyR = std::variant_alternative_t ; for (i32 j = 0; j ()); if constexpr (i + 1 (E.Children.back()); } }; does, and why it can't be translated into Rust?

I used to know C++. But not sure what's happening here.

Templates, in my opinion, are often extremely hard to read, not unlike Perl in its time.

And I will always prefer more verbose code that I can read, understand and maintain.

Re: An opinionated history of programming languages

#67

Post by adenozine »

I see a lot of users forgetting that it's an opinionated history. The author hasn't claimed to make this exhaustive.

Further, it's a bit counterproductive to just point out f"Hey, what about {some_lang}?"

Wikipedia has a decent resource to start, if you'd care to take a journey into computation notation history :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_programming_languag...

My own nitpick, to throw in the mix: The asterisk marks languages with ~sophisticated~ compilers, and I think that Ocaml being on the chart without one is absolutely ridiculous and shameful.

But who cares. It's just some guy's opinion as a chart.

Re: An opinionated history of programming languages

#68

Post by ncmncm »

tpmx wrote: post #12
thelazydogsback wrote: post #8

Seems like some tree-roots are missing -- Algol??! PL/(I/M)? B(CPL)? Snobol? APL? Simula? Link between Smalltalk and C++?

Seems like most of the interesting history is missing, perhaps because it happened before the author was born.

The author seems to have restricted the entries to languages still taught and used, but missed COBOL and maybe C#. I can't really blame him, in either case.

Re: An opinionated history of programming languages

#69

Post by presentation »

teddyh wrote: post #13

In a recent talk, Robert Martin summarizes the history of programming languages for about 35 minutes, starting here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya1xDCCMh7g#t=2m47s

Cool video, I like his rundown of the major programming paradigms. I'd love to show this to some beginners I know - though perhaps with some light explanation of the some of the low-level jargon he uses, as the bootcamps and tutorials out there these days don't really explain things from first principles like that anymore.

Re: An opinionated history of programming languages

#70

Post by jolux »

adenozine wrote: post #67

I see a lot of users forgetting that it's an opinionated history. The author hasn't claimed to make this exhaustive. Further, it's a bit counterproductive to just point out f"Hey, what about {some_lang}?" Wikipedia has a decent resource to start, if you'd care to take a journey into computation notation history :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_programming_languag... My own nitpick, to throw in the mix: The…

And Haskell, for that matter.
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