Talk:Timeline of programming languages
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Copied from Programming language/Timeline which is now redirected. -- Buz Cory.
Changed language links to be uniformly "X programming language" which is supposed the standard name for a programming language page. See disambiguating
Some links now need fixing. For instance, the page C language needs renaming to C programming language.
Fix the destinations, not the pointers to them. -- Buz Cory
Some things are here that don't belong here. Notably Compilers (MicroSoft C), GUIs (Microsoft Windows) and OSen (CP/M, Linux).
Where a particular compiler extends the language (Such as the Borland Pascal compilers did), it should be here. Where it is a pretty standard implementation, it does not.
I will be removing things that seem inappropriate. -- Buz Cory
Am making a second section for items where the date is unknown or questionable. -- Buz Cory
I see you moved the legend back to the bottom of the page, and that's fine, but I think the link back to the programming language page should have been kept. --loh
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- As a matter of fact, I was forced to reformat some (select/paste from NS6 to my editor lost the leading spaces) and so put a new legend at the top. You're right about the programming language link, it is now at the top. I only left the old legend at the bottom because I thought someone might want to make something of it. --Buz Cory
I agree that there is far too many versions of the same things. If we are going to include all languages on this time line it will be unusable. Really it should just show the major movements in the programming world.
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- Actually, if only languages are mentioned, there are several hundred, probably (including all variations). Not an unworkable number. There is a separate hardware timeline page, and separate timelines for OSen, and another for Commercial End User Apps might be a good idea.
- Just don't mix them all on one page! --Buz Cory
I think you are out by an order of magnitude for the number of languages. Now I don't dispute each of these languages deserve a page on the wikipedia, but by having a time line consisting of x000 languages is not really going to convery much useful info.
What I may get around to is for the Lisp family, just show LISP, Common-Lisp, and Scheme in the main time-line but ALSO have a LISP-time-line. Other candidates would be FORTRAN-like, C-like, dBase-like, Pascal-like languages etc.
Any views on this approach?
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- If you are right on numbers, your approach is probably better. For the moment, I think this page, as it is, is probably best. If/when it gets too big, we can always split it. --Buz Cory
I noticed that some entries here are at variance with the corresponding ones at History of computing. I have no way of deciding these, but I think they should be mentioned and eventually, we should try to resolve these. --AxelBoldt
Language Programming Timeline Computing History ============================================================= FORTRAN 59 54-57 LISP 59 58-60 Algol 58 60 APL 62 61 COBOL 60 59-61 Turbo Pascal 83 84 Ada 83 79
Lisp: as explained in LISP_programming_language, McCarthy claims to have invented it in 1958, he makes this claim in his 1960 paper. It is doubtful that any implementation actually existed at the time (but that is true of many languages). --drj
What date do we use in the Programming language timeline: the date of first implementation or of first description? --AxelBoldt
Well, I would say first implementation or first description. There are plenty of languages in which the implementation came first (perl, python, C) and plenty of languages in which the description came first (Lisp, Algol?, CPL, intercal). Reading the papers that the creators of these languages wrote one gets the impression that if the implementation came first then that was when the language was created and if the description came first then that was when the language was created. Which all seems pretty sensible to me.
Languages that evolve from others, for example B to NB to C, are more problematic because there was probably a continuous series of compilers that grew away from language and towards another. Even once the bootstrapping stage is reached.
Intercal is an interesting case as well because the language existed for 8 years before anyone wrote an implementation of it. Similarly it is not clear to me whether CPL ever had an implementation. In what sense are these computer programming languages? The facts seem to indicate that computer programming languages are more uses than the mere programming of computers, they can be used to express ideas between programmers or mathematicians for example (indeed, programs are speech!), so it isn't even necessary to have an implementation to be called a computer programming language. That was a bit more than I intended to say really. --drj
- Even when a language hasn't been implemented it may still be very influential. CPL led to BCPL which led to B which led to C which led to C++, therefore CPL is well worth recording. CPL may well have been implemented in the early 1970s as a student project but it doesn't really matter. The ISWIM language has never been implemented as far as I know, yet the modern functional languages such as ML, Haskell, Miranda, etc. owe a lot to it, so again it is well worth describing. -- Derek Ross
RPG is missing in the timeline! PHP ?
C++ and C with Classes were in "unknown or questionable dates" but need not to since Stroustrup describes the years pretty accurately on his home pages. So I moved them to the normal timeline.
Hard to believe that 1975 Altair has had Steve Allen as a co-author since the first iteration of this article. (BASIC would make a boring talk-show) Dmsar 21:31 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Java definitely has predecessors. Its line of descent is Algol > BCPL > C > C++ You only need to look at its syntax to see that. Why remove C++ ? -- Derek Ross 17:33, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The year headings ("pre 1950s", "1950s", "1960s",...) shouldn't have colspan="3" when there are now 4 columns. For forward compatibiliy, make it colspan="0", ie span all columns. (It's in the W3C standard: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/tables.html#adef-colspan )
FORTRAN IV is listed as originating both in 1962 and 1966. I wasn't around back then so can not claim to be an expert, but all my information suggests 1962. Perhaps the entry in 1966 was meant to be FORTRAN 66? Am new at wikipedia and will attempt to update it if I don't hear back.
Here's a reference which supports my claim re changing it to say FORTRAN 66 instead of FORTRAN IV in 1966: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/languages/fortran/ch1-1.html JMCorey 22:59, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)