
Ask HN: What are some good resources on the history of programming languages? - groth
I liked Erik Levenez&#x27;s giant poster: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.levenez.com&#x2F;lang&#x2F;<p>I am looking for anything of that sort -- books, posters, newspaper articles, well-written blog posts.<p>Thanks!
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tikhonj
If you really want to get into the details about a specific language, anything
from the three "History of Programming Languages"[1] (HOPL) conferences is
great. These conferences, convened every ~15 years, have talks by the creators
of various seminal programming languages recounting their histories.

You can probably find most of the HOPL papers online as well as recordings of
talks from the later conferences. There's a lot of material! Personally, I
really liked "A History of Haskell: Being Lazy with Class"[2][3], partly
because I like Haskell and partly because Simon Peyton Jones is such an
engaging speaker.

[1]:
[http://research.ihost.com/hopl/HOPL.html](http://research.ihost.com/hopl/HOPL.html)

[2]: paper: [http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2011/02/histor...](http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2011/02/history.pdf)

[3]: recorded talk:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bjXGrycMhQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bjXGrycMhQ)

~~~
johansch
The book with papers from the second conference (in the 90s) is quite good:

[http://www.amazon.com/History-Programming-Languages-
Thomas-B...](http://www.amazon.com/History-Programming-Languages-Thomas-
Bergin/dp/0201895021)

------
EdwardCoffin
In 2001 MIT had the Dynamic Languages Wizards Series [1], which consisted of
three panels of luminaries in the field (videos and participants names on the
linked page). A lot of history was discussed in their 5+ hours.

They are also on YouTube:

Panel on Runtime: Richard Kelsey, David Moon, Tucker Withington, Kim Barrett,
Scott McKay [2]

Panel on Compilation: David Detlefs, Will Clinger, Martin Rinard, and Mat
Hostetter [3]

Panel on Language Design: Paul Graham, John Maeda, Jonathan Rees, Guy Steele
[4]

\---

[1] [http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/dynlangs/wizards-
panels.html](http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/dynlangs/wizards-panels.html)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LG-
RtcSYUQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LG-RtcSYUQ)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at7viw2KXak](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at7viw2KXak)

[4] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agw-
wlHGi0E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agw-wlHGi0E)

------
EdwardCoffin
There's _The Evolution of Lisp_ [1], which talks about the entwined
relationship of many of the different dialects of lisp.

 _A History of Haskell_ [2]

 _The Early History of Smalltalk_ [3]

[1]
[http://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/HOPL2-Uncut.pdf](http://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/HOPL2-Uncut.pdf)

[2] [http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/simonpj/papers...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/simonpj/papers/history-of-haskell/)

[3]
[http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html](http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html)

~~~
jsnell
Everything from HOPL II is great. I don't know whether all of it ever got
published online, but the book version is totally worth it.

~~~
jcurbo
It looks like you have to be an ACM member to access these, but all the papers
are online for HOPL II:
[http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=234286](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=234286)

HOPL III is here:
[http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1238844&coll=DL&dl=GUIDE&C...](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1238844&coll=DL&dl=GUIDE&CFID=530866641&CFTOKEN=40970330)

HOPL I is here:
[http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=800025&coll=DL&dl=GUIDE&CF...](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=800025&coll=DL&dl=GUIDE&CFID=530866641&CFTOKEN=40970330)

I have the hardcopy versions of I and II that I bought used from Amazon and
they're great.

------
keithflower
History of Lisp, by J McCarthy:

[http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/lisp/lisp.html](http://www-
formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/lisp/lisp.html)

The Evolution of Lisp (Steele and Gabriel):

[http://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/HOPL2-Uncut.pdf](http://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/HOPL2-Uncut.pdf)

The Original 'Lambda Papers' by Guy Steele and Gerald Sussman

[http://library.readscheme.org/page1.html](http://library.readscheme.org/page1.html)

Many papers on the evolution, design, and implementation of Scheme:

[http://library.readscheme.org/page8.html](http://library.readscheme.org/page8.html)

------
lulzury
Here's a nice timeline style review of the history of programming languages
that uses videos:
[http://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.h...](http://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=1KcZdsCI3G832QTfx3kCn8zcxi8jH2qFWttB-
xuPjYTM&font=Default&lang=en&height=650)

------
sapek
The Design and Evolution of C++ [1]

[1] [http://www.stroustrup.com/dne.html](http://www.stroustrup.com/dne.html)

------
justin_
You've probably already seen this, but the Wikipedia article on the subject
isn't a bad introduction:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_programming_languag...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_programming_languages)

It gives a great overview of the different generations of programming and the
significant languages in each.

------
jcr
These might be obvious already (and hence redundant), but many computer
history museums have sections covering software and programming language
history.

[http://www.computerhistory.org/](http://www.computerhistory.org/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_History_Museum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_History_Museum)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing)

Also try the Internet Archive (archive.org). It has a lot of "Programming
History" stuff, but finding it can be painful:

[https://archive.org/details/Kfest2011-PeterNeubaueLogoHistor...](https://archive.org/details/Kfest2011-PeterNeubaueLogoHistoryAndProgramming)

------
adwn
Not (entirely) serious: _A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of
Programming Languages_ by James Iry

[http://james-iry.blogspot.de/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-
mo...](http://james-iry.blogspot.de/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-
wrong.html)

------
LukeShu
There's DMR's article on early C development[0], and the accompanying backups
of C compilers from that era[1].

[0]: [https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html](https://www.bell-
labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html) [1]: [https://www.bell-
labs.com/usr/dmr/www/primevalC.html](https://www.bell-
labs.com/usr/dmr/www/primevalC.html)

There are several old primary resources on C's predecessor, B [2]. Structured
programming was newish, so it's fun to read these descriptions of newfangled
"while" loops.

[2]: [https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/bintro.html](https://www.bell-
labs.com/usr/dmr/www/bintro.html)

------
mindcrime
The book _The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering_ might be
useful to you.

[http://www.amazon.com/Technical-Social-History-Software-
Engi...](http://www.amazon.com/Technical-Social-History-Software-
Engineering/dp/0321903420)

------
ExpiredLink
Peter Grogono: "The Evolution of Programming Languages"

[http://users.encs.concordia.ca/~grogono/CourseNotes/epl.pdf](http://users.encs.concordia.ca/~grogono/CourseNotes/epl.pdf)

------
DeBraid
Bret Victor "The Future of Programming" is wonderful:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pTEmbeENF4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pTEmbeENF4)

------
humbledrone
While not a history book, per se, "Masterminds of Programming: Conversations
with the Creators of Major Programming Languages" [1] is a pretty great read.
You can get a ton of historical context from reading what the language
designers were thinking when they created their languages.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Masterminds-Programming-
Conversations-...](http://www.amazon.com/Masterminds-Programming-
Conversations-Creators-Languages/dp/0596515170)

------
mirithekiwi
Andreas Stefik gave a talk titled The Programming Wars[1] at my school -- I
thought it was a fascinating overview and the video is available at the link.
If you already are pretty familiar with the history of programming languages
(I'm not), it might be less interesting for you.

[1]:
[http://www.cs.washington.edu/events/colloquia/search/details...](http://www.cs.washington.edu/events/colloquia/search/details?id=2594)

------
omnibrain
Masterminds of Programming is a good read. It contains of interviews with lots
of creators of programming languages. The interviews cover a broad range from
history to design to philosophy.

------
informatimago
A big graph of the genealogy of programming languages:
[http://www.levenez.com/lang/](http://www.levenez.com/lang/)

------
rumcajz
It you go beyong ~1955 the documents get pretty scarce. Still it's a
fascintating topic to research.

------
JustSomeNobody
Search through comp.compiler archives.

~~~
mindcrime
Or the mailing list archives for the many OSS languages. The gcc archives are
probably chock full of fascinating stuff. Unfortunately this would only take a
researcher back to the 90's or _maybe_ somewhere in the 80's.

------
innguest
This resource isn't given out enough. It is a true gem.

I owe 90% of every programming thought that entered my mind to the people that
contributed to this:

[http://c2.com/cgi/wiki](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki)

You're welcome.

