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Pretty excellent summary, this is roughly the taxonomy I have in my head. I would maybe add SQL as an ur-language as well. It's not quite general purpose like

by OskarS 3y ago

Pretty excellent summary, this is roughly the taxonomy I have in my head. I would maybe add SQL as an ur-language as well. It's not quite general purpose like most of these, but it should have a place in this list, I think. It has some kinship with Prolog and the declarative style, but it's really it's own thing. You could also maybe argue for something like LabView. Many programmers look down on purely graphical programming languages, but with Houdini, Unreal's Blueprints and the various node-based shader/material systems in gamedev, I think it probably deserves it's own little branch of this family tree.

0x445442 3y ago
I think you’re first instinct is correct given libraries like Linq and GQL in Groovy. The relational algebra is decidedly different versus say map, filter and reduce.
camtarn 3y ago
Not to mention the various graphical programming languages used in industrial control - ladder logic, continuous function chart, and sequential function chart. Ladder in particular is incredibly widespread, as it was a direct descendant of the diagrams used to document and debug relay logic, and was adopted in some of the first PLCs (programmable logic controllers) in the late 60s/early 70s. Programming PLCs sometimes feels like going to, say, Australia or New Zealand, and being immersed in an environment which went down a different evolutionary tree very on in its development.
marcosdumay 3y ago
SQL is on the same group as Prolog. In fact, it is a simpler and purer implementation of a constraint-solving language, so it is probably a better option for learning the group than Prolog. For the signal transformation ones, there are also the hardware definition languages on the same category as LabView and animation languages.
- ucarion 3y ago
  To your point, Berkeley's intro-level CS class, CS61A, used to use teach Prolog as an example of logic programming. They use SQL now instead. I can't really attest to whether that's a better choice for learning logic programming, though. It's easier to "run programs" in Prolog. SQL wants to be a cog in a machine where Prolog is more freestanding.
  - tonyarkles 3y ago
    I definitely did a bunch of Prolog in my CMPT216 class back in undergrad and I hadn't really thought of SQL as an alternative until today. I agree with you it's easier to "run programs" in Prolog, and a lot of the concepts from the class would have been more difficult to map to SQL than Prolog (e.g. writing a Sudoku solver in Prolog was mind-melting in a good way, writing a Sudoku solver in SQL would probably be mind-melting in a bad way). The one thing that SQL does have going for it though is that there's a ton of tooling for getting practical real-world data into it. I would absolutely love to take a set of logic/set-oriented problems and solve them both in Prolog and SQL, just to see which ones are ergonomic in each language. Maybe this summer at the cabin...
    - ucarion 3y ago
      The tooling thing goes both ways. I remember classmates struggling with homework because they were trying to use a different flavor of SQL than the SQLite we ran for class. This stuff is obvious to engineers, but very confusing to someone whose first hello-world was 8 weeks ago.
- ngruhn 3y ago
  SQL has no recursion. I would argue that's a pretty fundamental aspect of Prolog, so I don't think SQL is a representative replacement.
  - curiousllama 3y ago
    Yes it does. It’s a fun problem to make a sudoku solver https://technology.amis.nl/it/solving-a-sudoku-with-one-sql-statement/ https://technology.amis.nl/it/solving-a-sudoku-with-one-sql-...
    - ngruhn 3y ago
      Ok fair enough. I suspect that's a pretty non-standard/rarely-used feature though. If you learn SQL you likely won't encounter this and I still contest the idea that SQL is a good entry into the logic paradigm. SQL and Prolog are both relational. That's very unique to both. But SQL is all about querying databases. Prolog can also be used and understood as a database querying language but it's also very strong for - parsers - interpreters - expert systems - solving combinatorial problems If you really want to you can probably use SQL for that too. Or any language for that matter. But going out and learning SQL won't naturally expose you to these applications and how well the logic paradigm lends itself to them.
      - castorp 3y ago
        > I suspect that's a pretty non-standard/rarely-used feature though. If you learn SQL you likely won't encounter this Recursive common table expressions are part of the SQL standard (since 1999) and are quite frequently used to traverse hierarchical data (aka "adjacency list"). It is part of basically all (good) SQL tutorials - at least in the "advanced" part.
        blowski 3y ago
        I don't remember using recursion in a real project, but I built a HN clone on top of Postgres, with the following query: WITH RECURSIVE thread(id, parent_id, user_id, post_id, timestamp, text, depth) AS ( SELECT id, parent_id, user_id, post_id, timestamp, text, 0 FROM comments WHERE user_id = 1 AND parent_id IS NULL UNION ALL SELECT c.id, c.parent_id, c.user_id, c.post_id, c.timestamp, c.text, t.depth + 1 FROM comments c JOIN thread t ON c.parent_id = t.id WHERE c.user_id != t.user_id ) SELECT * FROM thread ORDER BY timestamp ASC;
Will_Parker 3y ago
> SQL And, not to put too fine a point on it, being extremely proficient will give you a massive competitive edge in the industry.
davidw 3y ago
SQL might be in its own category or not, but it shares a trait that languages in other categories ended up with: "I know, we'll make it kind of like writing English so that people who aren't experts can program!". This is one of those things that seems to keep coming back - recently in the Ruby world with Cucumber.
- blowski 3y ago
  Articulating your specification in precise language is the hard part. Learning syntax is easy.
  - davidw 3y ago
    I always like to think of Captain Kirk speaking SQL to the computer in Star Trek: COMPUTER, SELECT COURSE WHERE MINIMAL PROBABILITY OF KLINGON ENCOUNTER
- Animats 3y ago
  I suspect that idea is now dead. Anything new that accepts something that looks like natural language now needs to be at least as smart as ChatGPT. Stuff that sort of looks like a natural language but is really a formal language now comes across badly. There have been very few non-English programming languages. There was a French version of COBOL once. I'm surprised that something hasn't come out of China. There's a Chinese dialect of Python. Does anyone use that?
  - davidw 3y ago
    Interesting point about AI... that really could be a game changer, although to me it doesn't feel like it's as precise as we often ask code to be. Yet.
- nborwankar 3y ago
  SQL is based on Relational Algebra a mathematical foundation for modeling, factoring and joining data. In this it’s probably unique. Other languages may be based on other mathematical models such as pure functional languages being based on lambda calculus etc.
NoToP 3y ago
Sql is accidentally general purpose. Recursive queries, a feature present in all implementations since the 90s, put it just over the line of turing completeness.

by OskarS 3y ago

0x445442 3y ago

I think you’re first instinct is correct given libraries like Linq and GQL in Groovy. The relational algebra is decidedly different versus say map, filter and reduce.

camtarn 3y ago

Not to mention the various graphical programming languages used in industrial control - ladder logic, continuous function chart, and sequential function chart. Ladder in particular is incredibly widespread, as it was a direct descendant of the diagrams used to document and debug relay logic, and was adopted in some of the first PLCs (programmable logic controllers) in the late 60s/early 70s. Programming PLCs sometimes feels like going to, say, Australia or New Zealand, and being immersed in an environment which went down a different evolutionary tree very on in its development.

marcosdumay 3y ago

SQL is on the same group as Prolog. In fact, it is a simpler and purer implementation of a constraint-solving language, so it is probably a better option for learning the group than Prolog. For the signal transformation ones, there are also the hardware definition languages on the same category as LabView and animation languages.

ucarion 3y ago
To your point, Berkeley's intro-level CS class, CS61A, used to use teach Prolog as an example of logic programming. They use SQL now instead. I can't really attest to whether that's a better choice for learning logic programming, though. It's easier to "run programs" in Prolog. SQL wants to be a cog in a machine where Prolog is more freestanding.
- tonyarkles 3y ago
  I definitely did a bunch of Prolog in my CMPT216 class back in undergrad and I hadn't really thought of SQL as an alternative until today. I agree with you it's easier to "run programs" in Prolog, and a lot of the concepts from the class would have been more difficult to map to SQL than Prolog (e.g. writing a Sudoku solver in Prolog was mind-melting in a good way, writing a Sudoku solver in SQL would probably be mind-melting in a bad way). The one thing that SQL does have going for it though is that there's a ton of tooling for getting practical real-world data into it. I would absolutely love to take a set of logic/set-oriented problems and solve them both in Prolog and SQL, just to see which ones are ergonomic in each language. Maybe this summer at the cabin...
  - ucarion 3y ago
    The tooling thing goes both ways. I remember classmates struggling with homework because they were trying to use a different flavor of SQL than the SQLite we ran for class. This stuff is obvious to engineers, but very confusing to someone whose first hello-world was 8 weeks ago.
ngruhn 3y ago
SQL has no recursion. I would argue that's a pretty fundamental aspect of Prolog, so I don't think SQL is a representative replacement.
- curiousllama 3y ago
  Yes it does. It’s a fun problem to make a sudoku solver https://technology.amis.nl/it/solving-a-sudoku-with-one-sql-statement/ https://technology.amis.nl/it/solving-a-sudoku-with-one-sql-...
  - ngruhn 3y ago
    Ok fair enough. I suspect that's a pretty non-standard/rarely-used feature though. If you learn SQL you likely won't encounter this and I still contest the idea that SQL is a good entry into the logic paradigm. SQL and Prolog are both relational. That's very unique to both. But SQL is all about querying databases. Prolog can also be used and understood as a database querying language but it's also very strong for - parsers - interpreters - expert systems - solving combinatorial problems If you really want to you can probably use SQL for that too. Or any language for that matter. But going out and learning SQL won't naturally expose you to these applications and how well the logic paradigm lends itself to them.
    - castorp 3y ago
      > I suspect that's a pretty non-standard/rarely-used feature though. If you learn SQL you likely won't encounter this Recursive common table expressions are part of the SQL standard (since 1999) and are quite frequently used to traverse hierarchical data (aka "adjacency list"). It is part of basically all (good) SQL tutorials - at least in the "advanced" part.
      - blowski 3y ago
        I don't remember using recursion in a real project, but I built a HN clone on top of Postgres, with the following query: WITH RECURSIVE thread(id, parent_id, user_id, post_id, timestamp, text, depth) AS ( SELECT id, parent_id, user_id, post_id, timestamp, text, 0 FROM comments WHERE user_id = 1 AND parent_id IS NULL UNION ALL SELECT c.id, c.parent_id, c.user_id, c.post_id, c.timestamp, c.text, t.depth + 1 FROM comments c JOIN thread t ON c.parent_id = t.id WHERE c.user_id != t.user_id ) SELECT * FROM thread ORDER BY timestamp ASC;

Will_Parker 3y ago

> SQL And, not to put too fine a point on it, being extremely proficient will give you a massive competitive edge in the industry.

davidw 3y ago

SQL might be in its own category or not, but it shares a trait that languages in other categories ended up with: "I know, we'll make it kind of like writing English so that people who aren't experts can program!". This is one of those things that seems to keep coming back - recently in the Ruby world with Cucumber.

blowski 3y ago
Articulating your specification in precise language is the hard part. Learning syntax is easy.
- davidw 3y ago
  I always like to think of Captain Kirk speaking SQL to the computer in Star Trek: COMPUTER, SELECT COURSE WHERE MINIMAL PROBABILITY OF KLINGON ENCOUNTER
Animats 3y ago
I suspect that idea is now dead. Anything new that accepts something that looks like natural language now needs to be at least as smart as ChatGPT. Stuff that sort of looks like a natural language but is really a formal language now comes across badly. There have been very few non-English programming languages. There was a French version of COBOL once. I'm surprised that something hasn't come out of China. There's a Chinese dialect of Python. Does anyone use that?
- davidw 3y ago
  Interesting point about AI... that really could be a game changer, although to me it doesn't feel like it's as precise as we often ask code to be. Yet.
nborwankar 3y ago
SQL is based on Relational Algebra a mathematical foundation for modeling, factoring and joining data. In this it’s probably unique. Other languages may be based on other mathematical models such as pure functional languages being based on lambda calculus etc.

NoToP 3y ago

Sql is accidentally general purpose. Recursive queries, a feature present in all implementations since the 90s, put it just over the line of turing completeness.