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How Programming Languages Got Their Names

kylehigginson.medium.com

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Re: How Programming Languages Got Their Names

#61

Post by nyssos »

treyd wrote: post #60
p4bl0 wrote: post #9

This 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…

I thought that name for Caml was a backronym. I thought it was for "Cambridge ML".

That would be odd, given that it was developed in France.

Re: How Programming Languages Got Their Names

#63

Post by BanazirGalbasi »

p4bl0 wrote: post #9

This 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…

Lua: Portuguese for "moon", it was developed in Brazil as a successor to SOL (Simple Object Language) which also means "sun" in Portuguese.

Re: How Programming Languages Got Their Names

#64

Post by treyd »

nyssos wrote: post #61
treyd wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that name for Caml was a backronym. I thought it was for "Cambridge ML".

That would be odd, given that it was developed in France.

Yeah that would be pretty odd, I suppose I was mistaken then.

Re: How Programming Languages Got Their Names

#65

Post by [deleted] »

p4bl0 wrote: post #9

This 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…

[deleted]

Re: How Programming Languages Got Their Names

#66

Post by mysterydip »

BanazirGalbasi wrote: post #63
p4bl0 wrote: post #9

This 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…

Lua: Portuguese for "moon", it was developed in Brazil as a successor to SOL (Simple Object Language) which also means "sun" in Portuguese.

Didn't know that, thanks! Makes me like it more, for some reason.

Re: How Programming Languages Got Their Names

#67

Post by tetha »

p4bl0 wrote: post #9

This 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 also is C--. C-- is a reduced kind of C to make implementation of compilers and interpreters for it easier. It is overall meant as a simple generation target for compilers.

Re: How Programming Languages Got Their Names

#68

Post by gmiller123456 »

p4bl0 wrote: post #9

This 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…

The Programming Language With No Pronouncable Acronym. Abreviated as INTERCAL, for obvious reasons.

Re: How Programming Languages Got Their Names

#70

Post by Rochus »

microtherion wrote: post #56
eterps wrote: post #25

Pascal: 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.…

Linda has a particularly unsavory origin story (hint: It has a connection to Ada): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_(coordination_language) 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…

> "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and the mythological character ... may have had more to do with it"

Which contradicts with what he wrote in his "Project Oberon" book: "Although the search for an appropriate name for a project is usually a minor problem and often left to chance and whim of the designers, this may be the place to recount how Oberon entered the picture in our case. It happened that around the time of the beginning of our effort, the space probe Voyager made headlines with a series of spectacular pictures taken of the planet Uranus and of its moons, the largest of which is named Oberon. Since its launch I had considered the Voyager project as a singularly well-planned and successful endeavor, and as a small tribute to it I picked the name of its latest object of investigation." Also the books "Programming in Oberon" (where Wirth was co-author) and "The Oberon System" say the same. If he really did have "some flair" for the arts (besides "the art of simplicity"), he hid it very well.

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