

A brief, incomplete and mostly wrong history of programming languages - toddc
http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html

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tumult
_Lambdas are relegated to relative obscurity until Java makes them popular by
not having them._

Alright, this was surprisingly amusing. Thanks.

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jfarmer
My favorite: 1972 - Dennis Ritchie invents a powerful gun that shoots both
forward and backward simultaneously. Not satisfied with the number of deaths
and permanent maimings from that invention he invents C and Unix.

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visitor4rmindia
Oh my God! That was the best belly laugh I've had in a long time. Very fun
read.

> _1995 - Brendan Eich reads up on every mistake ever made in designing a
> programming language, invents a few more, and creates LiveScript. Later, in
> an effort to cash in on the popularity of Java the language is renamed
> JavaScript. Later stil, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of skin
> diseases the language is renamed ECMAScript._

~~~
akkartik
The footnote's better!

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chops
Each one of those was quite amusing.

 _1958 - John McCarthy and Paul Graham invent LISP._

 _1983 - Bjarne Stroustrup bolts everything he's ever heard of onto C to
create C++. The resulting language is so complex that programs must be sent to
the future to be compiled by the Skynet artificial intelligence._

I genuinely laughed out loud at this article.

~~~
gurraman
As did I. I laughed out loud at most all of them.

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edu
"""Alan Kay creates Smalltalk and invents the term "object oriented." When
asked what that means he replies, "Smalltalk programs are just objects." When
asked what objects are made of he replies, "objects." When asked again he says
"look, it's all objects all the way down. Until you reach _turtles_ """

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blogimus
Hmm, no mention of Erlang. I'll add one.

1986 - Inspired by Prolog, Joe Armstrong designs a massively scalable
messaging system that allows computers to SMS each other and has the attention
span of a teenager. He calls it Erlang.

~~~
access_denied
BTW, "lang" == german for "long"

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martythemaniak
I like [1] the subtle touch of adding Graham-essay type footnotes to the
section featuring Graham and arc.

[1] I suspect a large part of this like is due to the old trick of throwing in
a reference only a subgroup of the readership will appreciate, thus forming a
special bond with the author.

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tlrobinson
_2003 - A drunken Martin Odersky sees a Reece's Peanut Butter Cup ad featuring
somebody's peanutbutter getting on somebody else's chocolate and has an idea.
He creates Scala, a language that unifies constructs from both object oriented
and functional languages. This pisses off both groups and each promptly
declares jihad. Odersky goes into hiding. His whereabouts remain a highly
guarded secret although there is some speculation that he is locked in a Swiss
vault._

This sounds vaguely familiar.

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jeroen
Not as accurate or complete as <http://www.levenez.com/lang/lang.pdf> , but a
nice read.

And if anyone is wondering (as I was) how many programming languages there
are, <http://people.ku.edu/~nkinners/LangList/Extras/langlist.htm> has
information on about 2500 languages.

~~~
zandorg
I looked for 'E' both for the Amiga language, and Mark Miller's language.

Neither was there! Bizarre...

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mronge
I love the one on Obj-C

"1986 - Brad Cox and Tom Love create Objective-C, announcing "this language
has all the memory safety of C combined with all the blazing speed of
Smalltalk." Modern historians suspect the two were dyslexic."

