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Lua means 'Moon' in Portuguese, as it is also their logo: https://lua.org
How Programming Languages Got Their Names
51–60 of 121 posts
Re: How Programming Languages Got Their Names
#52Haskell Curry has the honor of having two programming languages named after him: Haskell and Curry [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry_(programming_language)
[1] https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/b/brooks.htm
And while we're at it, another anecdote about naming the language [2]:
> Hudak and Wise were asked to write to Curry’s widow, Virginia Curry, to ask if she would mind our naming the language after her husband. Hudak later visited Mrs. Curry at her home and listened to stories about people who had stayed there (such as Church and Kleene). Mrs. Curry came to his talk (which was about Haskell, of course) at Penn State, and although she didn’t understand a word of what he was saying, she was very gracious. Her parting remark was “You know, Haskell actually never liked the name Haskell.”
Re: How Programming Languages Got Their Names
#53This list is disappointingly short. Here's a few more of the top of my head, feel free to expand the list! : C: a successor to B, itself derived from BCPL. C++: increments over C. D: a successor to C. LISP: LISt Processor. FORTRAN: FORmula TRANslator. ALGOL: ALGorithmic Language. Prolog: PROgrammation LOGique (logic programming in French). PHP: initially PHP/FI for "Personal Home Page Form Interpreter", later rebrand…
There is also C#, where # represents a duplication of "++", on top of each other. Technically, the # is not the sign for the musical sharp key (♯), but "C sharp" sounds better than "C hash", "C pound" or "C octothorp". :) Edit: On an unrelated note, TIL that the sign used on telephone keys is also not #, but ⌗ -- a.k.a. the "Viewdata square" [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viewdata#Keypad_symbols:_the_s...
Re: How Programming Languages Got Their Names
#54This list is disappointingly short. Here's a few more of the top of my head, feel free to expand the list! : C: a successor to B, itself derived from BCPL. C++: increments over C. D: a successor to C. LISP: LISt Processor. FORTRAN: FORmula TRANslator. ALGOL: ALGorithmic Language. Prolog: PROgrammation LOGique (logic programming in French). PHP: initially PHP/FI for "Personal Home Page Form Interpreter", later rebrand…
There is also C#, where # represents a duplication of "++", on top of each other. Technically, the # is not the sign for the musical sharp key (♯), but "C sharp" sounds better than "C hash", "C pound" or "C octothorp". :) Edit: On an unrelated note, TIL that the sign used on telephone keys is also not #, but ⌗ -- a.k.a. the "Viewdata square" [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viewdata#Keypad_symbols:_the_s...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_keypad#Layout
"The key labeled was officially named the "star" key. The key labeled # is officially called the "number sign" key, but other names such as "pound", "hash", "hex", "octothorpe", "gate", "lattice", and "square", are common, depending on national or personal preference. The Greek symbols alpha and omega had been planned originally."
Re: How Programming Languages Got Their Names
#55This list is disappointingly short. Here's a few more of the top of my head, feel free to expand the list! : C: a successor to B, itself derived from BCPL. C++: increments over C. D: a successor to C. LISP: LISt Processor. FORTRAN: FORmula TRANslator. ALGOL: ALGorithmic Language. Prolog: PROgrammation LOGique (logic programming in French). PHP: initially PHP/FI for "Personal Home Page Form Interpreter", later rebrand…
> D: a successor to C As expressed in Haskell: 'D' == succ 'C' As another example: "IBM" == map succ "HAL"
Re: How Programming Languages Got Their Names
#56Pascal: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal Oberon: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_(moon) Ada: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace Eiffel: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Eiffel Sather: named afer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sather_Tower Nim: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrod Erlang (Ericsson language): named after https://en.…
That probably wouldn't fly anymore in today's CS research.
As for Oberon, the moon may have played a role, but according to stories recently told at Niklaus Wirth's memorial service, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and the mythological character in general https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon may have had more to do with it, as Wirth was said to have some flair for the theatrical arts in his private life.
Re: How Programming Languages Got Their Names
#57Pascal: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal Oberon: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_(moon) Ada: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace Eiffel: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Eiffel Sather: named afer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sather_Tower Nim: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrod Erlang (Ericsson language): named after https://en.…
And also because it is a derivative of Eiffel — which I think had been named more after the tower than the man, with the purpose of creating an analogy from software engineering to constructional engineering.
> Erlang (Ericsson language): named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericsson
Officially it is after the Danish mathematician Agner Krarup Erlang but we all know that is not the whole story...
Other languages named after mathematicians (in addition to others already mentioned):
Euclid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid_(programming_language)
Occam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam_(programming_language)
Gödel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del_(programming_langua...
Re: How Programming Languages Got Their Names
#58SNOBOL = (from Wikipedia) "According to Dave Farber, he, Griswold and Polonsky "finally arrived at the name Symbolic EXpression Interpreter SEXI."
All went well until one day I was submitting a batch job to assemble the system and as normal on my JOB card — the first card in the deck, I, in BTL standards, punched my job and my name — SEXI Farber.
One of the Comp Center girls looked at it and said, "That's what you think" in a humorous way.
That made it clear that we needed another name!! We sat and talked and drank coffee and shot rubber bands and after much too much time someone said — most likely Ralph — "We don't have a Snowball's chance in hell of finding a name". All of us yelled at once, "WE GOT IT — SNOBOL" in the spirit of all the BOL languages. We then stretched our mind to find what it stood for.
Common backronyms of "SNOBOL" are 'String Oriented Symbolic Language' or (as a quasi-initialism) 'StriNg Oriented symBOlic Language'. "Re: How Programming Languages Got Their Names
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is also C#, where # represents a duplication of "++", on top of each other. Technically, the # is not the sign for the musical sharp key (♯), but "C sharp" sounds better than "C hash", "C pound" or "C octothorp". :) Edit: On an unrelated note, TIL that the sign used on telephone keys is also not #, but ⌗ -- a.k.a. the "Viewdata square" [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viewdata#Keypad_symbols:_the_s...
> Edit: On an unrelated note, TIL that the sign used on telephone keys is also not #, but ⌗ -- a.k.a. the "Viewdata square" [0]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_keypad#Layout "The key labeled was officially named the "star" key. The key labeled # is officially called the "number sign" key, but other names such as "pound", "hash", "hex", "octothorpe", "gate", "lattice", and "square", are common, depending on n…
Re: How Programming Languages Got Their Names
#60This list is disappointingly short. Here's a few more of the top of my head, feel free to expand the list! : C: a successor to B, itself derived from BCPL. C++: increments over C. D: a successor to C. LISP: LISt Processor. FORTRAN: FORmula TRANslator. ALGOL: ALGorithmic Language. Prolog: PROgrammation LOGique (logic programming in French). PHP: initially PHP/FI for "Personal Home Page Form Interpreter", later rebrand…