> Hi - This isn't about J, but ... APL gets 5 mentions in the extensive replies, and J gets one. Several people were clearly struck by the missed opportunity.
Ian On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 4:51 AM, Stefan Scott Alexander <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi - This isn't about J, but I thought some people here might enjoy some > laughs. > > *A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages* > > http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html > > 1842 - Ada Lovelace writes the first program. She is hampered in her efforts > by the minor inconvenience that she doesn't have any actual computers to run > her code. Enterprise architects will later relearn her techniques in order > to program in UML. > ... > 1958 - John McCarthy and Paul Graham invent LISP. Due to high costs caused > by a post-war depletion of the strategic parentheses reserve LISP never > becomes popular[1]. In spite of its lack of popularity, LISP (now "Lisp" or > sometimes "Arc") remains an influential language in "key algorithmic > techniques such as recursion and condescension"[2]. > ... > 1964 - John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz create BASIC, an unstructured > programming language for non-computer scientists. > ... > 1973 - Robin Milner creates ML, a language based on the M&M type theory. ML > begets SML which has a formally specified semantics. When asked for a formal > semantics of the formal semantics Milner's head explodes. Other well known > languages in the ML family include OCaml, F#, and Visual Basic. > ... > 1980 - 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." > ... > 1990 - A committee formed by Simon Peyton-Jones, Paul Hudak, Philip Wadler, > Ashton Kutcher, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals creates > Haskell, a pure, non-strict, functional language. Haskell gets some > resistance due to the complexity of using monads to control side effects. > Wadler tries to appease critics by explaining that "a monad is a monoid in > the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?" > ... > 1996 - James Gosling invents Java. Java is a relatively verbose, garbage > collected, class based, statically typed, single dispatch, object oriented > language with single implementation inheritance and multiple interface > inheritance. Sun loudly heralds Java's novelty. > ... > 2001 - Anders Hejlsberg invents C#. C# is a relatively verbose, garbage > collected, class based, statically typed, single dispatch, object oriented > language with single implementation inheritance and multiple interface > inheritance. Microsoft loudly heralds C#'s novelty. > > *More here:* > http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
