Some links now need fixing. For instance, the page C language needs renaming to C programming language.
Fix the destinations, not the pointers to them. -- Buz Cory
Where a particular compiler extends the language (Such as the Borland Pascal compilers did), it should be here. Where it is a pretty standard implementation, it does not.
I will be removing things that seem inappropriate. -- Buz Cory
What I may get around to is for the Lisp family, just show LISP, Common-Lisp, and Scheme in the main time-line but ALSO have a LISP-time-line. Other candidates would be FORTRAN-like, C-like, dBase-like, Pascal-like languages etc.
Any views on this approach?
Language Programming Timeline Computing History ============================================================= FORTRAN 59 54-57 LISP 59 58-60 Algol 58 60 APL 62 61 COBOL 60 59-61 Turbo Pascal 83 84 Ada 83 79
Lisp: as explained in LISP programming language, McCarthy? claims to have invented it in 1958, he makes this claim in his 1960 paper. It is doubtful that any implementation actually existed at the time (but that is true of many languages). --drj
What date do we use in the Programming language timeline: the date of first implementation or of first description? --AxelBoldt
Well, I would say first implementation or first description. There are plenty of languages in which the implementation came first (perl, python, C) and plenty of languages in which the description came first (Lisp, Algol?, CPL, intercal). Reading the papers that the creators of these languages wrote one gets the impression that if the implementation came first then that was when the language was created and if the description came first then that was when the language was created. Which all seems pretty sensible to me.
Languages that evolve from others, for example B to NB to C, are more problematic because there was probably a continuous series of compilers that grew away from language and towards another. Even once the bootstrapping stage is reached.
Intercal? is an interesting case as well because the language existed for 8 years before anyone wrote an implementation of it. Similarly it is not clear to me whether CPL ever had an implementation. In what sense are these computer programming languages? The facts seem to indicate that computer programming languages are more uses than the mere programming of computers, they can be used to express ideas between programmers or mathematicians for example (indeed, [programs are speech]?!), so it isn't even necessary to have an implementation to be called a computer programming language. That was a bit more than I intended to say really. --drj