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For over a decade, every August, Byte magazine published columns covering one programming language. Here’s a list of years and languages covered: 8/77 - APL 8

For over a decade, every August, Byte magazine published columns covering one programming language. Here’s a list of years and languages covered: 8/77 - APL 8/78 - Pascal 8/79 - LISP 8/80 - Forth 8/81 - Smalltalk 8/82 - Logo 8/83 - C 8/84 - Modula 2 8/85 - Declarative programming 8/86 - Object Oriented programming 9/87 - Misc programming

musicale 4y ago
Nice list. Too bad they didn't keep going. And too bad they covered Modula-2 rather than the Oberon system which was (and is?) quite amazing and compact. I wonder what they would have covered if they'd continued? Maybe.... C++. Objective-C. Ada. Apple languages: HyperCard/HyperTalk, Dylan, NewtonScript... Object Pascal (later Delphi.) Oberon. Scheme. Tcl. Perl. Python. HTML. JavaScript. Ruby. ... The recently-featured-in-HN BYTE Lisp issue actually included an 8-bit Lisp implementation for the 6800 (though you had to order the full listing separately.) Or you could write your own based on the article.
- Jtsummers 4y ago
  It wasn't an either/or with Modula-2 and Oberon, Oberon itself didn't exist until three years later. But yeah, would've been cool to see that continue.
  - musicale 4y ago
    Precisely - the timing of Modula-2 was unfortunate given the awesomeness of the Oberon system which succeeded it. But Wirth's systems are terrific in general and highly educational. For example, I like Wirth's TRM/RISC5 (not to be confused with RISC-V from Berkeley et al.) processor designs[1] and the Lola hardware description language. So maybe a followup on Oberon/(Wirth)RISC/Lola/etc. would have been justified. [1] https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/Lola/index.html https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/Lola/index.html Having a system which is compact enough to understand from the gate level to the application level is remarkable. (I'm also a fan of nand2tetris, etc..) Sad that BYTE shut down for good in 2013.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Modula-2 was already a great language, and it didn't grew that big on PC because Turbo Pascal around 5.0 time frame is basically Modula-2 with case insensitive syntax, and after being merged with Apple's Object Pascal design, grew from there.

musicale 4y ago

Nice list. Too bad they didn't keep going. And too bad they covered Modula-2 rather than the Oberon system which was (and is?) quite amazing and compact. I wonder what they would have covered if they'd continued? Maybe.... C++. Objective-C. Ada. Apple languages: HyperCard/HyperTalk, Dylan, NewtonScript... Object Pascal (later Delphi.) Oberon. Scheme. Tcl. Perl. Python. HTML. JavaScript. Ruby. ... The recently-featured-in-HN BYTE Lisp issue actually included an 8-bit Lisp implementation for the 6800 (though you had to order the full listing separately.) Or you could write your own based on the article.

Jtsummers 4y ago
It wasn't an either/or with Modula-2 and Oberon, Oberon itself didn't exist until three years later. But yeah, would've been cool to see that continue.
- musicale 4y ago
  Precisely - the timing of Modula-2 was unfortunate given the awesomeness of the Oberon system which succeeded it. But Wirth's systems are terrific in general and highly educational. For example, I like Wirth's TRM/RISC5 (not to be confused with RISC-V from Berkeley et al.) processor designs[1] and the Lola hardware description language. So maybe a followup on Oberon/(Wirth)RISC/Lola/etc. would have been justified. [1] https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/Lola/index.html https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/Lola/index.html Having a system which is compact enough to understand from the gate level to the application level is remarkable. (I'm also a fan of nand2tetris, etc..) Sad that BYTE shut down for good in 2013.
pjmlp 4y ago
Modula-2 was already a great language, and it didn't grew that big on PC because Turbo Pascal around 5.0 time frame is basically Modula-2 with case insensitive syntax, and after being merged with Apple's Object Pascal design, grew from there.