6 ms·

One-letter programming languages

51 points by phantom_oracle 10y ago

humanrebar 10y ago
It's odd that F# is covered, but not C#, Objective-C, or especially C++. It was especially odd to read the description of D without C++ being named. The inclusion of RAII in D is a dead giveaway of its inspiration.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- muricula 10y ago
  The article mentioned C++ and Objective-C under the C language, and C# under F#. They may have done well to mention C++ and maybe Java's influence on D. They completely neglected E too.
- tux 10y ago
  C# = 2 (letter + symbol), Objective-C = 11 (10 letters + 1 symbol), C++ = 3 (1 letter + 2 symbols) so its not odd :-)
  - 50CNT 10y ago
    It does say 1 letter languages not 1 character languages. But then if they were included, there'd be a comment on how C# is two letters, a discussion whether # should be counted as a letter or not, which really is one of these "look, we're arguing axioms now" discussions.
  - zodiac 10y ago
    Then why was F# included?
    - tux 10y ago
      I think they wanted to post "F" but posted "F#" :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F_(programming_language) Not to be confused with F Sharp (programming language). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F_Sharp_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F_Sharp_(programming_language)
- aap_ 10y ago
  The author also didn't get the history of C right. 1. it wasn't Dennis and Brian who wrote UNIX but Ken and Dennis. 2. B wasn't an internal language of AT&T but a language designed by Ken. 3. 16-bit words weren't immense at the time...yes, the PDP-11 had addressable bytes (unlike any other PDP) but I don't understand what this had to do with 16-bit words being "immense". 4. It was only Dennis not Dennis and Brian who developed B into C.
- ben-schaaf 10y ago
  To add to that point. The following quote is from an old version of dlang.org[1] > Can the power and capability of C++ be extracted, redesigned, and recast into a language that is simple, orthogonal, and practical? Can it all be put into a package that is easy for compiler writers to correctly implement, and which enables compilers to efficiently generate aggressively optimized code? Although this has slightly differed now, one of D's core objectives was to make a better C++ from the ground up. [1]: http://web.archive.org/web/20120111102019/http://dlang.org/overview.html http://web.archive.org/web/20120111102019/http://dlang.org/o...
88e282102ae2e5b 10y ago
I really wish modern language creators would take googleability into account when naming their languages. Even with rust, I occasionally have to use "rustlang" to avoid result pages with mostly plumbing sites, I imagine the situation is far worse for D, F and M.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  Use "D language" and it googles no problem.
  - ludamad 10y ago
    Google does good here, but I have to feel like there's a certain threshold of popularity for every name to be effectively googleable. Obscure names can get top google results easily.
- Razengan 10y ago
  Does anyone remember what that was like when the .NET framework first came out? It's literally just a TLD..
  - giancarlostoro 10y ago
    To this day I wonder why they chose .NET I can only think of Passport.NET which is likely pointless by now.
    - josteink 10y ago
      It was all about showing how network enabled and service oriented your were. Back in those days people were still pushing XML web services, SOAP and UDDI like it was the goodest thing possible. .NET was about showing how everything .net was all those things, kinda. Basically marketing meets tech hype 101.
  - richev 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure that at that time Google removed "#" characters from search queries, so a search for "C#" was just as fruitless...
riffraff 10y ago
first thing I noticed: missing E! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(programming_language)
- sndean 10y ago
  Looks like [1] the only letters not yet taken are: H, I, N, O, U, V, W, Y, and Z? Changes depending on whether you're allowing characters. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages
  - wrp 10y ago
    Somebody once had a hobby project of a stack-based language called V. Can't find it now. I don't think anybody could use Z, since the Z formal notation is too well known.
  - Zardoz84 10y ago
    Zork games not use a virtual machine called Z ?
  - qznc 10y ago
    H http://dcoj.wmh3.com/cscos/h/ http://dcoj.wmh3.com/cscos/h/ U https://github.com/upcrob/u-programming-language https://github.com/upcrob/u-programming-language W https://www.vttoth.com/CMS/projects/49-w-a-simple-programming-language https://www.vttoth.com/CMS/projects/49-w-a-simple-programmin... Y https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=954278 https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=954278 and https://esolangs.org/wiki/Y_(programming_language) https://esolangs.org/wiki/Y_(programming_language) Z notation and also Z++ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%2B%2B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%2B%2B
  - taylorfausak 10y ago
    A tiny language called Z: http://chrisdone.com/z/ http://chrisdone.com/z/
pvitz 10y ago
Btw. does anybody know what happened to kOS or z? I can't find anything on kparc.com anymore.
- justincormack 10y ago
  I think they regretted saying anything about kOS early on, I think it won't be mentioned until release.
- wrp 10y ago
  KxCon2016 is coming up May 19-22. Arthur Whitney is scheduled to give a presentation on K6. You might try asking on the Kdb+ Personal Developers Google group afterwards.
  - pvitz 10y ago
    Thanks!
k__ 10y ago
"a manager counted the lines of software coming out of the cubicle farm and determined that programmers wrote N lines of code a day. It didn't make a difference what language was used -- the company would get only N lines out of them. The manager promptly embraced APL, the tersest, most powerful language around" They can only do N lines, so the natural decision was to use terser languages, I love it. I mean, yes there are reasons to use a special language for a problem (for example Elixir instead of Ruby, for distributed systems). Also sometimes some problems get solved more elegant in newer languages (Rust instead of C++ for system programming). But if the only metric is lines of code, every language solves this with enough abstraction layers...
- eru 10y ago
  Just the opposite. If you figure out the number of lines of code is constant, like the alleged manager, you can start taking it as a constraint and optimizing for other things.
alva 10y ago
Missed out q! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(programming_language_from_Kx_Systems) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(programming_language_from_K...
fxn 10y ago
I am sorry, those are programming languages whose name has one letter. For a true one-letter programming language please check SuperPython http://search.cpan.org/~mjd/SuperPython-0.91/SuperPython.pm http://search.cpan.org/~mjd/SuperPython-0.91/SuperPython.pm.
mseepgood 10y ago
"Long ago, when Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, aka K&R, set out to write Unix". Unix was created by Ken Thompson and Dennis Richie.
stepvhen 10y ago
A little unfair that they write the K program out when finding primes smaller than a number is a J primitive.

It's odd that F# is covered, but not C#, Objective-C, or especially C++. It was especially odd to read the description of D without C++ being named. The inclusion of RAII in D is a dead giveaway of its inspiration.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
muricula 10y ago
The article mentioned C++ and Objective-C under the C language, and C# under F#. They may have done well to mention C++ and maybe Java's influence on D. They completely neglected E too.
tux 10y ago
C# = 2 (letter + symbol), Objective-C = 11 (10 letters + 1 symbol), C++ = 3 (1 letter + 2 symbols) so its not odd :-)
- 50CNT 10y ago
  It does say 1 letter languages not 1 character languages. But then if they were included, there'd be a comment on how C# is two letters, a discussion whether # should be counted as a letter or not, which really is one of these "look, we're arguing axioms now" discussions.
- zodiac 10y ago
  Then why was F# included?
  - tux 10y ago
    I think they wanted to post "F" but posted "F#" :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F_(programming_language) Not to be confused with F Sharp (programming language). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F_Sharp_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F_Sharp_(programming_language)
aap_ 10y ago
The author also didn't get the history of C right. 1. it wasn't Dennis and Brian who wrote UNIX but Ken and Dennis. 2. B wasn't an internal language of AT&T but a language designed by Ken. 3. 16-bit words weren't immense at the time...yes, the PDP-11 had addressable bytes (unlike any other PDP) but I don't understand what this had to do with 16-bit words being "immense". 4. It was only Dennis not Dennis and Brian who developed B into C.
ben-schaaf 10y ago
To add to that point. The following quote is from an old version of dlang.org[1] > Can the power and capability of C++ be extracted, redesigned, and recast into a language that is simple, orthogonal, and practical? Can it all be put into a package that is easy for compiler writers to correctly implement, and which enables compilers to efficiently generate aggressively optimized code? Although this has slightly differed now, one of D's core objectives was to make a better C++ from the ground up. [1]: http://web.archive.org/web/20120111102019/http://dlang.org/overview.html http://web.archive.org/web/20120111102019/http://dlang.org/o...

88e282102ae2e5b 10y ago

I really wish modern language creators would take googleability into account when naming their languages. Even with rust, I occasionally have to use "rustlang" to avoid result pages with mostly plumbing sites, I imagine the situation is far worse for D, F and M.

WalterBright 10y ago
Use "D language" and it googles no problem.
- ludamad 10y ago
  Google does good here, but I have to feel like there's a certain threshold of popularity for every name to be effectively googleable. Obscure names can get top google results easily.
Razengan 10y ago
Does anyone remember what that was like when the .NET framework first came out? It's literally just a TLD..
- giancarlostoro 10y ago
  To this day I wonder why they chose .NET I can only think of Passport.NET which is likely pointless by now.
  - josteink 10y ago
    It was all about showing how network enabled and service oriented your were. Back in those days people were still pushing XML web services, SOAP and UDDI like it was the goodest thing possible. .NET was about showing how everything .net was all those things, kinda. Basically marketing meets tech hype 101.
- richev 10y ago
  I'm pretty sure that at that time Google removed "#" characters from search queries, so a search for "C#" was just as fruitless...

riffraff 10y ago

first thing I noticed: missing E! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(programming_language)

sndean 10y ago
Looks like [1] the only letters not yet taken are: H, I, N, O, U, V, W, Y, and Z? Changes depending on whether you're allowing characters. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages
- wrp 10y ago
  Somebody once had a hobby project of a stack-based language called V. Can't find it now. I don't think anybody could use Z, since the Z formal notation is too well known.
- Zardoz84 10y ago
  Zork games not use a virtual machine called Z ?
- qznc 10y ago
  H http://dcoj.wmh3.com/cscos/h/ http://dcoj.wmh3.com/cscos/h/ U https://github.com/upcrob/u-programming-language https://github.com/upcrob/u-programming-language W https://www.vttoth.com/CMS/projects/49-w-a-simple-programming-language https://www.vttoth.com/CMS/projects/49-w-a-simple-programmin... Y https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=954278 https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=954278 and https://esolangs.org/wiki/Y_(programming_language) https://esolangs.org/wiki/Y_(programming_language) Z notation and also Z++ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%2B%2B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%2B%2B
- taylorfausak 10y ago
  A tiny language called Z: http://chrisdone.com/z/ http://chrisdone.com/z/

pvitz 10y ago

Btw. does anybody know what happened to kOS or z? I can't find anything on kparc.com anymore.

justincormack 10y ago
I think they regretted saying anything about kOS early on, I think it won't be mentioned until release.
wrp 10y ago
KxCon2016 is coming up May 19-22. Arthur Whitney is scheduled to give a presentation on K6. You might try asking on the Kdb+ Personal Developers Google group afterwards.
- pvitz 10y ago
  Thanks!

k__ 10y ago

"a manager counted the lines of software coming out of the cubicle farm and determined that programmers wrote N lines of code a day. It didn't make a difference what language was used -- the company would get only N lines out of them. The manager promptly embraced APL, the tersest, most powerful language around" They can only do N lines, so the natural decision was to use terser languages, I love it. I mean, yes there are reasons to use a special language for a problem (for example Elixir instead of Ruby, for distributed systems). Also sometimes some problems get solved more elegant in newer languages (Rust instead of C++ for system programming). But if the only metric is lines of code, every language solves this with enough abstraction layers...

eru 10y ago
Just the opposite. If you figure out the number of lines of code is constant, like the alleged manager, you can start taking it as a constraint and optimizing for other things.

alva 10y ago

Missed out q! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(programming_language_from_Kx_Systems) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(programming_language_from_K...

fxn 10y ago

I am sorry, those are programming languages whose name has one letter. For a true one-letter programming language please check SuperPython http://search.cpan.org/~mjd/SuperPython-0.91/SuperPython.pm http://search.cpan.org/~mjd/SuperPython-0.91/SuperPython.pm.

mseepgood 10y ago

"Long ago, when Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, aka K&R, set out to write Unix". Unix was created by Ken Thompson and Dennis Richie.

stepvhen 10y ago

A little unfair that they write the K program out when finding primes smaller than a number is a J primitive.