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Where are programming languages created? A zoomable map

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Re: Where are programming languages created? A zoomable map

#21
post #18

"Microsoft Notepad." "BMP image format." Seemed like the definition of "programming language" was quite odd (given the title of the submission to HN is "Where are programming languages created?"), but then I noticed the actual title of the page is "Where does software innovation happen?" and is not restricted to programming languages.

At the same time it misses Russia's Kotlin.

While Kotlin is a Russian island the Kotlin programming language was created by JetBrains which is a Czech company founded by Russians with headquarters in Prague. You will find Kotlin on the map in the Prague circle.

Re: Where are programming languages created? A zoomable map

#22
post #18

"Microsoft Notepad." "BMP image format." Seemed like the definition of "programming language" was quite odd (given the title of the submission to HN is "Where are programming languages created?"), but then I noticed the actual title of the page is "Where does software innovation happen?" and is not restricted to programming languages.

At the same time it misses Russia's Kotlin.

[deleted]

Re: Where are programming languages created? A zoomable map

#23

It makes sense that most software innovation has so far happened in the USA, Europe and Japan, but I wonder what this map might look like by the end of the century...

> but I wonder what this map might look like by the end of the century...

Why would it suddenly change?

Re: Where are programming languages created? A zoomable map

#24
post #10

Finland is surprisingly sparse. I've always had the impression that it usually seems to be rather over-represented in other fields of computing.

Could be many reason I guess (after all, there's only 5.5 million Finns around), but the map is a bit pointless IMHO because it only counts university and research lab projects. Most recent languages I'm aware of (and which are actually useful in the real world) had been started by individuals in their spare time.

> but the map is a bit pointless IMHO because it only counts university and research lab projects

No, it doesn't. There's JetBrains, Eclipse foundation, Corel, etc.

Re: Where are programming languages created? A zoomable map

#25

It makes sense that most software innovation has so far happened in the USA, Europe and Japan, but I wonder what this map might look like by the end of the century...

I think there is likely also bias in the data (what was considered significant) and inaccuracies in locations (many things assigned to Google’s head office).

Re: Where are programming languages created? A zoomable map

#27

It makes sense that most software innovation has so far happened in the USA, Europe and Japan, but I wonder what this map might look like by the end of the century...

In the US at least, programming languages were either developed by large corporations (Sun Microsystems, Apple, Google, Bell Labs, IBM) or research institutions (MIT) or Government (Ada, COBOL).

Re: Where are programming languages created? A zoomable map

#28
post #10

Finland is surprisingly sparse. I've always had the impression that it usually seems to be rather over-represented in other fields of computing.

Could be many reason I guess (after all, there's only 5.5 million Finns around), but the map is a bit pointless IMHO because it only counts university and research lab projects. Most recent languages I'm aware of (and which are actually useful in the real world) had been started by individuals in their spare time.

Which most recent (and how recent) were started by individuals in their spare time?

Perl is one that comes to mind and it’s old.

Re: Where are programming languages created? A zoomable map

#29

It makes sense that most software innovation has so far happened in the USA, Europe and Japan, but I wonder what this map might look like by the end of the century...

> but I wonder what this map might look like by the end of the century... Why would it suddenly change?

Well for one, the world demography is deeply changing with population aging everywhere but a significant lag between countries which are already greying (Japan, Europe), countries which rely heavily on immigration to keep the median age stable (the USA) and countries which are just beginning to age but have large population (India, China, Brazil).

Re: Where are programming languages created? A zoomable map

#30
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO C# is a very good, pragmatic language. It is not unique and groundbreaking like say Lisp, but it has a very well balanced set of features which makes is both productive and maintainable. It doesn’t have the level of boilerplate which make Java tedious, but its strong static type system makes it (IMHO) more maintainable than say Python for larger projects.

I think C# is a perfectly fine language, but as you say it's not really groundbreaking or unique. It's probably not even my top-five choice for general purpose language in 2024 but it's obviously gotten (is still getting) "the job done". If we're to praise Anders Hejlsberg's work I would personally pick Typescript above C#. Just look at how influential Typescript has been for global development in the previous decade…

I disagree with C# not being groundbreaking or unique, at least to some extent. Yes, a big part of the language could be considered "vanilla object oriented", but that's not really a bad thing. These are some things that C# pioneered:

* Expression Trees and LINQ (still a pretty unique feature)

* async/await/yield syntax, adopted later by many others

* get/set property methods

* null coalescing (??) syntax

* extension methods and partial classes

Even if C# was not the originator of some of these, it definitely played a key role in popularizing them and offered a good reference syntax and semantics that others could draw inspiration from.

C# also has great synergy with the F# language which is so unique and innovative that it might seem 'alien' at times. :-) I think some of the C# features appeared in some form in F# first (citation needed :-).

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