Thursday, October 28, 2010

From the Archives: A Synopsis of Programming Languages

A departure from the usual data mining and predictive analytics posts...

I was looking at old articles I clipped from the 80s, and came across my favorite programming article from the days I used to program a lot (mostly C, some FORTRAN, sh, csh, tcsh). This one from the C Advisor by Ken Arnold I found funny then, and still do now. I don't know where these are archived, so I'll just quote an excerpt here:

C advisor article by Ken Arnold from years and years ago quoting Richard Curtis

• FORTRAN was like the fifties: It's rigid and procedural, and doesn't even distinguish between cases. It's motto is "Do my thing".
• C is a real sixties language, because it just doesn't care. It doesn't type check, and it lets you get into as much trouble as you can--you own your own life. C's motto: "Do your own thing".
• Pascal is the seventies. It tries to seize control of the wild and woolly sixties, without getting too restrictive. It thus ends up pleasing no one. It's full of self-justification and self-importance--going from C to Pascal is like going from Janis Joplin to Donna Summer. It is smooth and flashy and useless for major work--truly the John Travolta of programming languages. The Pascal motto is: "Do your thing my way".
• ADA is the eighties. There is no overarching philosophy; everything is possible, but there is no ethical compass to tell you what ought to be done. (Actually, I know of two things you can't do in ADA, but I'm not telling for fear they'll be added.) It reflects the eighties notion of freedom, which is that you are free to do anything, as long as you do it the way the government wants you to--that is, in ADA. It's credo: "Do anything anyway you want".

2 comments:

augmentedfourth said...

Another good humorous look at programming languages:
A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages

Also, How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot in Any Programming Language. (I particularly like the Perl one there, as I use that language quite often.)

Dean Abbott said...

Brad--so much fun to have you comment. I like the links you included.

With the "shoot" link, the only thing I would add is with Fortran--you need to know up-front how many toes you plan to shoot before you get start.

With APL, I'd say
YSYIF<-#