[HN Gopher] Five Little Languages and How They Grew: Talk at HOP...
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       Five Little Languages and How They Grew: Talk at HOPL (1993)
        
       Author : fanf2
       Score  : 56 points
       Date   : 2024-07-22 08:42 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.bell-labs.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.bell-labs.com)
        
       | omoikane wrote:
       | The original title was                  The Development of the C
       | Language        or,        Five Little Languages and How They
       | Grew
        
       | samatman wrote:
       | Not to be confused (as I did initially) with _Programming Pearls:
       | Little Languages_ , by John Bentley. Which is about little
       | languages _per se_ , as this is not how the languages in
       | Ritchie's talk are generally described. In fact, the very first
       | sentence describes Pascal as a "big language".
       | 
       | It's also worth a read:
       | https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/6424.315691
        
         | chrisfinazzo wrote:
         | Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnCgoEyz31M
        
         | wduquette wrote:
         | The name's a presumably ironical spin on the title of an old
         | kid's book, "Five Little Peppers and How They Grew", by
         | Margaret Sidney
        
       | daghamm wrote:
       | Interesting that other than C only pascal has survived (kind of).
       | 
       | I have fond memories of Pascal, but when I think about it is
       | actually Turbo Pascal I have great memories of and not so much
       | the language itself.
       | 
       | Turbo C/C++ was surprisingly a worse environment for me despite
       | being much more fluent in C, which shows the important of a
       | responsive IDE.
        
       | AnimalMuppet wrote:
       | > Computer languages exist to perform useful things that affect
       | the world in some way, not just to express algorithms, and so
       | their success depends in part on their utility.
       | 
       | Their _all-in_ utility. That is, their utility after taking into
       | account usability, but also availability, availability and
       | robustness of libraries, perhaps portability, and I 'm sure there
       | are more variables that affect net utility.
        
         | foresto wrote:
         | This was recently brought into sharp focus while learning a
         | new-to-me C descendant. After working with it for a couple
         | months, I've found a lot to like in the language itself, but
         | the many paper cuts and bad ergonomics of its standard library
         | have considerably drained my enthusiasm for continuing to use
         | it. What a pity.
        
       | hecanjog wrote:
       | > C's own descendants, by which I mainly mean C++, may very well
       | be even livelier in the next few years. Aside from languages that
       | are directly descended from C, (particularly C++ but also some
       | others) [...]
       | 
       | Does anyone know what the other languages descended from C they
       | might have been referring to circa 1993?
        
         | mepian wrote:
         | Objective-C?
        
         | jll29 wrote:
         | Earlier than or in 1993:
         | 
         | - C++: 1979-
         | 
         | - Objective C: 1984
         | 
         | - Split-C: 1993
         | 
         | Later than 1993:
         | 
         | - C--: 1997
         | 
         | - C#: 2000
         | 
         | - D: 2001
         | 
         | See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_C-
         | family_programming_l... (but this list goes a bit too far IMHO)
        
           | trealira wrote:
           | There was also this extension of C called Concurrent C, which
           | has its own book called _The Concurrent C Programming
           | Language_ , originally published in 1989. I don't see it on
           | the Wikipedia page, which is why I'm saying it here.
        
           | bonzini wrote:
           | I would consider Rust to be informed enough by C, that it can
           | be considered a descendent--as much as D, and more so than C#
           | (which is more of a Java-descendent; and while Java's syntax
           | is based on C, that's where it ends).
        
             | geoelectric wrote:
             | C# was also at least somewhat informed by Delphi, the
             | Object Pascal variant the same architect created just prior
             | to MS luring him away from Borland.
        
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