5 ms·

Visualization: The evolution of Python

54 points by kapilkaisare 16y ago

barnaby 16y ago
There was a huge chart of the history of programming languages at my university. It showed which ones influenced others, and I'd look at it often. Oddly enough I didn't pay much attention to Python at the time focusing on all the lines coming into and out of Java. I've since discovered Python and really wish I could see that chart again. While this is very different it gave me a piece of that magic again. Thank you for posting this. :-)
- mahmud 16y ago
  Python is fairly conservative; as far as languages go, probably not the most interesting, which is exactly its charm. I would group Python with Pike and Icon, as 2-week programming languages. It takes about 2-weeks of practice to start writing useful, sophisticated programs in them. Icon is the more interesting one of the three, it's a modern SNOBOL dialect with generators.
- senki 16y ago
  I found two similar posters, maybe you'll find interesting: http://www.digibarn.com/collections/posters/tongues/ComputerLanguagesChart.png http://www.digibarn.com/collections/posters/tongues/Computer... http://log-rotation.jp/pyblosxom/images/unix/programming_language_diagram.png http://log-rotation.jp/pyblosxom/images/unix/programming_lan...
  - gtani 16y ago
    http://www.levenez.com/lang/ http://www.levenez.com/lang/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages_by_category http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages_b... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_paradigm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_paradigm http://erlangish.blogspot.com/2007/05/shape-of-your-mind.html http://erlangish.blogspot.com/2007/05/shape-of-your-mind.htm... http://www.sigplan.org/pl-workshop/contributions/7.pdf http://www.sigplan.org/pl-workshop/contributions/7.pdf http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3465 http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3465 http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/people/PVR/paradigmsDIAGRAMeng101.pdf http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/people/PVR/paradigmsDIAGRAMeng101....
nessence 16y ago
The chart excellent for visualizing one's contributions against and general activity. Would it be possible to generate a similar graph for other mainstream languages, gcc, and linux? Wonder if the post-2005 spike would be similar for all interpreted languages, or just python.
uuilly 16y ago
This seems to capture volume and frequency of change but not necessarily magnitude of change.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- Someone 16y ago
  I do not think magnitude of change can be readily computed. It certainly is not measured in characters, bytes, or lines. For example, one checkin might toggle a #define that controls thousands of lines, another might just reorganize the order of declarations in a file.
obeattie 16y ago
Not really too helpful that it only goes to 2006. It would be interesting to see how this looks with PEP 3003 in place (the moratorium on syntax changes) — maybe not much different, but maybe a lot different…
KevBurnsJr 16y ago
What visualization program was used to generate this graph?
raphar 16y ago
Here's the link to the project page. http://vis.cs.ucdavis.edu/~ogawa/research/storylines/ http://vis.cs.ucdavis.edu/~ogawa/research/storylines/ It says there that this visualization is based on a XKCD comic (about lord of the rings). The guy is the same that the code_swarm visualization: http://vis.cs.ucdavis.edu/~ogawa/codeswarm/ http://vis.cs.ucdavis.edu/~ogawa/codeswarm/ If you didnt see it before, go there and watch the impressive videos about eclipse, apache, python and postgres. The guy is using processing.

54 points by kapilkaisare 16y ago

There was a huge chart of the history of programming languages at my university. It showed which ones influenced others, and I'd look at it often. Oddly enough I didn't pay much attention to Python at the time focusing on all the lines coming into and out of Java. I've since discovered Python and really wish I could see that chart again. While this is very different it gave me a piece of that magic again. Thank you for posting this. :-)

mahmud 16y ago
Python is fairly conservative; as far as languages go, probably not the most interesting, which is exactly its charm. I would group Python with Pike and Icon, as 2-week programming languages. It takes about 2-weeks of practice to start writing useful, sophisticated programs in them. Icon is the more interesting one of the three, it's a modern SNOBOL dialect with generators.
senki 16y ago
I found two similar posters, maybe you'll find interesting: http://www.digibarn.com/collections/posters/tongues/ComputerLanguagesChart.png http://www.digibarn.com/collections/posters/tongues/Computer... http://log-rotation.jp/pyblosxom/images/unix/programming_language_diagram.png http://log-rotation.jp/pyblosxom/images/unix/programming_lan...
- gtani 16y ago
  http://www.levenez.com/lang/ http://www.levenez.com/lang/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages_by_category http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages_b... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_paradigm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_paradigm http://erlangish.blogspot.com/2007/05/shape-of-your-mind.html http://erlangish.blogspot.com/2007/05/shape-of-your-mind.htm... http://www.sigplan.org/pl-workshop/contributions/7.pdf http://www.sigplan.org/pl-workshop/contributions/7.pdf http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3465 http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3465 http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/people/PVR/paradigmsDIAGRAMeng101.pdf http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/people/PVR/paradigmsDIAGRAMeng101....

nessence 16y ago

The chart excellent for visualizing one's contributions against and general activity. Would it be possible to generate a similar graph for other mainstream languages, gcc, and linux? Wonder if the post-2005 spike would be similar for all interpreted languages, or just python.

uuilly 16y ago

This seems to capture volume and frequency of change but not necessarily magnitude of change.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
Someone 16y ago
I do not think magnitude of change can be readily computed. It certainly is not measured in characters, bytes, or lines. For example, one checkin might toggle a #define that controls thousands of lines, another might just reorganize the order of declarations in a file.

obeattie 16y ago

Not really too helpful that it only goes to 2006. It would be interesting to see how this looks with PEP 3003 in place (the moratorium on syntax changes) — maybe not much different, but maybe a lot different…

KevBurnsJr 16y ago

What visualization program was used to generate this graph?

raphar 16y ago

Here's the link to the project page. http://vis.cs.ucdavis.edu/~ogawa/research/storylines/ http://vis.cs.ucdavis.edu/~ogawa/research/storylines/ It says there that this visualization is based on a XKCD comic (about lord of the rings). The guy is the same that the code_swarm visualization: http://vis.cs.ucdavis.edu/~ogawa/codeswarm/ http://vis.cs.ucdavis.edu/~ogawa/codeswarm/ If you didnt see it before, go there and watch the impressive videos about eclipse, apache, python and postgres. The guy is using processing.