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A visual timeline of programming languages

66 points| bontoJR | 10 years ago |cdn.knightlab.com | reply

36 comments

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[+] logfromblammo|10 years ago|reply
A timeline just isn't going to capture this.

Look at Garofalo's Genealogy of Pop/Rock poster or Gomley's History of Film poster for examples of timelines that more accurately reflect family influences.

If you establish domains like education, medical, military, business, engineering, gaming, hobbyists, etc., you could show more information on a vertical axis, such as MUMPS being almost exclusively used by hospital systems, or Lua being born from C and finding a niche in game scripting.

And by the end, I had a creepy, squicky feeling. It just felt like a rip of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_programming_langua.... Check the "RecurVoice" thing at the end. It looks like wiki-advertising.

[+] vtlynch|10 years ago|reply
Yup, I also noticed the "RecurVoice" ad at the end.
[+] thomasfoster96|10 years ago|reply
Someone's been playing with Wikidata/Wikipedia!

As others have noted, this is a little incomplete (no Lisp) and seems to have some odd entries - the last item seems to be a voice-controlled business software package, not a language.

[+] IvarTJ|10 years ago|reply
In this timeline, Common Lisp first appears when it was standardized. It should probably also mention its predecessor MACLISP.
[+] kylepdavis|10 years ago|reply
Thanks. Gives a nice overview of when things came about.

A few more that you might consider: CoffeeScript, TypeScript, BrightScript, Nim, Vala, XSL, awk, sed

Also, there is a nice list on Wikipedia for more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages_...

[+] kwhitefoot|10 years ago|reply
Not really. It has Scheme before Common Lisp which is fine but where is McCarthy's Lisp which was an ancestor of both of them? And Algol is not one language but several: Algol-60, Algol-68, Algol-W, ... And where is Turbo Pascal? There is so much mainstream stuff missing that it's hard to see any point in it; except perhaps an exercise in interactive grapics in which case the content is a kind of lorem ipsum.
[+] nunull|10 years ago|reply
I really like this! But I expected to see some code samples or something next to each description because of the title.
[+] maze-le|10 years ago|reply
I especially like the image for Forth... Although a few code-samples would have ben nice here and there.
[+] panglott|10 years ago|reply
Scheme is the first Lisp?
[+] joesmo|10 years ago|reply
They definitely missed Lisp.
[+] liviu-|10 years ago|reply
Really neat.

My nitpick is that I wish the timeline data was a bit more granular — too many languages are put at the same mark due to being released in the same year. This is not a big problem when you go through the timeline sequentially as they still show up chronologically (I presume), but visually, it's less informative at a glance.

[+] hybridtupel|10 years ago|reply
Interestingly if you search for a term the information view is changed but not the time bar. Then if you click on another language it will show the wrong one. It seems that the view just jumps relative to the last selected mark on the bar.
[+] rbanffy|10 years ago|reply
It would be cool if the images reflected somehow the language as it was created. The Smalltalk showing a Windows XP window and BASIC without line numbers seem wrong.
[+] rocgf|10 years ago|reply
Is it just me, or is Java not on the list?
[+] qzcx|10 years ago|reply
Its there. 1995
[+] caddala|10 years ago|reply
Didnt find Java in there. Big miss.
[+] shampine|10 years ago|reply
It's there, 1995.
[+] ramgorur|10 years ago|reply
Is beanshell actually a language ?
[+] daveloyall|10 years ago|reply
Uh, that's a timeline.

How could the author use the words 'visual history' in the title without at all attempting to display the lineage of languages?

I expected a picture of a tree, or web--not a line.

[+] theophrastus|10 years ago|reply
I just wanted some sense of the continuing extent of each language indicated, (that is, the labels should have variable widths). Admittedly it's difficult, and controversial, to conclude "when Pascal ceased to be important" but I'd still find it informative, even if only subjective.
[+] mathattack|10 years ago|reply
I was expecting a history of visual programming languages - which would be much smaller. :-)
[+] dang|10 years ago|reply
Ok, we s/history/timeline/'d the title.