5 ms·

A bit of a tangent, but it's interesting how many languages come from Nordic countries: - Simula - Norway - C++ - Stroustrup is Danish - TypeScript / C# - Hj

by chubot 3y ago

A bit of a tangent, but it's interesting how many languages come from Nordic countries: - Simula - Norway - C++ - Stroustrup is Danish - TypeScript / C# - Hjelsberg is Danish - PHP - Lerdorf is Danish - the v8 team including Lars Bak is Danish, and has developed several languages - Erlang - from Ericsson in Sweden, though Joe Armstrong was British Well now that I write it out, it seems like it's even more Danes than Nordic countries! (Someone wrote pretty much the same comment here in 2016 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10833073 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10833073) Hm also from the same thread, L, M, and P from the LAMP stack all originated in Scandinavia! Didn't realize that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10835311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10835311

mnky9800n 3y ago
Maybe spending long time in the dark every winter is good for thinking about programming languages.
- fuzztester 3y ago
  IIRC, Linus may have said that somewhere about Linux.
- jjgreen 3y ago
  That and it being too expensive to go out and get drunk ...
zelphirkalt 3y ago
If we go by nationalities and this list, then that is 3 misses and maybe 1 hit in terms of language design for the Danish. Maybe I should check the creators of the next language I learn and avoid langs created by Danish?
gratunk 3y ago
COMAL, a then mildly popular alternative to Basic, is/was from denmark, too.
- frou_dh 3y ago
  That was the first programming language I ever used (taught in school in Scotland). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COMAL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COMAL As a bonus, it's an anagram of OCaml.
fuzztester 3y ago
Broadening the scope a bit beyond just languages and their creation alone, we can add: Linux - Linus Ruby on Rails - DHH Turbo and Borland Pascal, and Delphi - Hjelsberg again
NoboruWataya 3y ago
> Hm also from the same thread, L, M, and P from the LAMP stack all originated in Scandinavia! Didn't realize that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10835311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10835311 Was going to mention that the Netherlands is not in Scandinavia until I remembered that the P is not Python :P It is interesting that so much foundational tech comes from Europe when I think there is a common perception of that generation of tech as being largely driven by the US (MIT, Bell, etc).
- gratunk 3y ago
  Also: ssh, mysql, qt. A bit more niche: varnish, opera webbrowser...
  - gostsamo 3y ago
    curl
  - anon2362 3y ago
    In that case it could be worth mentioning CSS, by the Norwegian Håkon Wium Lie. I often feel like the beginning of the 90s was a missed opportunity by Scandinavian companies. There were many great companies and individuals that were innovative, but could not compete due to the lack of VCs from Silicon Valley and a smaller domestic market
    - laxd 3y ago
      Norsk Data was one of the big guys producing minicomputers in the 70s and 80s. Apparently they held on to minicomputers for too long and quickly lost business to Sun and workstation manufacturers in the early 90s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norsk_Data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norsk_Data There's a cool documentary as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CswjD3plsF8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CswjD3plsF8
- chriswarbo 3y ago
  > It is interesting that so much foundational tech comes from Europe when I think there is a common perception of that generation of tech as being largely driven by the US (MIT, Bell, etc). The UK chronically undervalues its computing sector. Lots of the pioneering hardware/fundamentals work was done at Bletchley Park in the 1940s, but was destroyed or remained classified for decades. We had a disproportionately large slice of the software industry in the 80s, but that seemed to be dismissed as just gaming; and of course games themselves aren't taken as seriously as e.g. cinema, despite being a much larger market.
pelasaco 3y ago
the most influential web framework, rails, came as well from Denmark or at least the author, David Heinemeier.
Tommstein 3y ago
> - PHP - Lerdorf is Danish Not just your "standard" Dane, but born in Greenland. The only such person I can name.
SiempreViernes 3y ago
'Many' is a word that gains its meaning in comparison to some (implied) quantity, and I'm not sure what you are comparing to: you list 5 programming languages but looking at Wikipedia's list of programming languages* five is clearly not very many at all. Maybe you mean something like "as a share of top 10 most used languages" or "per capita"? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages
- coldtea 3y ago
  They meant "many important and/or well known" - some things go without saying. They didn't meant to include INTERCAL or BRAINFUCK or OZ.
zerr 3y ago
Could be a cultural NIH syndrome. :)
js8 3y ago
Prolog and ML (and also GHC) come from Scotland, while not Nordic, it's close.
- patrec 3y ago
  Prolog stands for "programmation en logique", and as might be guessed from that comes from France (Alain Colmerauer in Marseille, to be precise). Now Kowalski, who also was an important pioneer in logic programming who collaborated with Colmerauer did work in Edinburgh, but from the horse's mouth: I have tried to document as best I could our various contributions to that idea in an article published in CACM, 1988, and more recently in a History of Logic Programming, published in 2014. In summary, however, it is probably fair to say that my own contributions were mainly philosophical and Alain’s were more practical. In particular, Alain’s work led in the same summer of 1972 to the design and implementation of the logic programming language Prolog. https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~rak/history.pdf https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~rak/history.pdf
mads 3y ago
Denmark had the mosts c64 groups in the world (the reason for this, I don't know) compared to population size. Most of the people involved with these demo/cracking groups in the 80ies were most likely in their teens. Once the 90ies arrived with the internet, I think it was obvious to most of them what they wanted to do with their life. Sweden, Norway and Finland came in 2nd, 3rd and 4th. I think US was at place 20.
unwind 3y ago
The AVR microcontroller architecture, perhaps most widely known from Arduinos, is from Norway [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_microcontrollers#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_microcontrollers#History
igleria 3y ago
My theory is the long winter months make people try nerdy things. like new programming languages.
FrankyHollywood 3y ago
Stroustrup once told about how he needed the best of both C and Simula, which resulted in creating C++. Full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO0PXYMVGSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO0PXYMVGSU

by chubot 3y ago

mnky9800n 3y ago

Maybe spending long time in the dark every winter is good for thinking about programming languages.

fuzztester 3y ago
IIRC, Linus may have said that somewhere about Linux.
jjgreen 3y ago
That and it being too expensive to go out and get drunk ...

zelphirkalt 3y ago

If we go by nationalities and this list, then that is 3 misses and maybe 1 hit in terms of language design for the Danish. Maybe I should check the creators of the next language I learn and avoid langs created by Danish?

gratunk 3y ago

COMAL, a then mildly popular alternative to Basic, is/was from denmark, too.

frou_dh 3y ago
That was the first programming language I ever used (taught in school in Scotland). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COMAL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COMAL As a bonus, it's an anagram of OCaml.

fuzztester 3y ago

Broadening the scope a bit beyond just languages and their creation alone, we can add: Linux - Linus Ruby on Rails - DHH Turbo and Borland Pascal, and Delphi - Hjelsberg again

NoboruWataya 3y ago

> Hm also from the same thread, L, M, and P from the LAMP stack all originated in Scandinavia! Didn't realize that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10835311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10835311 Was going to mention that the Netherlands is not in Scandinavia until I remembered that the P is not Python :P It is interesting that so much foundational tech comes from Europe when I think there is a common perception of that generation of tech as being largely driven by the US (MIT, Bell, etc).

gratunk 3y ago
Also: ssh, mysql, qt. A bit more niche: varnish, opera webbrowser...
- gostsamo 3y ago
  curl
- anon2362 3y ago
  In that case it could be worth mentioning CSS, by the Norwegian Håkon Wium Lie. I often feel like the beginning of the 90s was a missed opportunity by Scandinavian companies. There were many great companies and individuals that were innovative, but could not compete due to the lack of VCs from Silicon Valley and a smaller domestic market
  - laxd 3y ago
    Norsk Data was one of the big guys producing minicomputers in the 70s and 80s. Apparently they held on to minicomputers for too long and quickly lost business to Sun and workstation manufacturers in the early 90s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norsk_Data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norsk_Data There's a cool documentary as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CswjD3plsF8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CswjD3plsF8
chriswarbo 3y ago
> It is interesting that so much foundational tech comes from Europe when I think there is a common perception of that generation of tech as being largely driven by the US (MIT, Bell, etc). The UK chronically undervalues its computing sector. Lots of the pioneering hardware/fundamentals work was done at Bletchley Park in the 1940s, but was destroyed or remained classified for decades. We had a disproportionately large slice of the software industry in the 80s, but that seemed to be dismissed as just gaming; and of course games themselves aren't taken as seriously as e.g. cinema, despite being a much larger market.

pelasaco 3y ago

the most influential web framework, rails, came as well from Denmark or at least the author, David Heinemeier.

Tommstein 3y ago

> - PHP - Lerdorf is Danish Not just your "standard" Dane, but born in Greenland. The only such person I can name.

SiempreViernes 3y ago

'Many' is a word that gains its meaning in comparison to some (implied) quantity, and I'm not sure what you are comparing to: you list 5 programming languages but looking at Wikipedia's list of programming languages* five is clearly not very many at all. Maybe you mean something like "as a share of top 10 most used languages" or "per capita"? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages

coldtea 3y ago
They meant "many important and/or well known" - some things go without saying. They didn't meant to include INTERCAL or BRAINFUCK or OZ.

zerr 3y ago

Could be a cultural NIH syndrome. :)

js8 3y ago

Prolog and ML (and also GHC) come from Scotland, while not Nordic, it's close.

patrec 3y ago
Prolog stands for "programmation en logique", and as might be guessed from that comes from France (Alain Colmerauer in Marseille, to be precise). Now Kowalski, who also was an important pioneer in logic programming who collaborated with Colmerauer did work in Edinburgh, but from the horse's mouth: I have tried to document as best I could our various contributions to that idea in an article published in CACM, 1988, and more recently in a History of Logic Programming, published in 2014. In summary, however, it is probably fair to say that my own contributions were mainly philosophical and Alain’s were more practical. In particular, Alain’s work led in the same summer of 1972 to the design and implementation of the logic programming language Prolog. https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~rak/history.pdf https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~rak/history.pdf

mads 3y ago

Denmark had the mosts c64 groups in the world (the reason for this, I don't know) compared to population size. Most of the people involved with these demo/cracking groups in the 80ies were most likely in their teens. Once the 90ies arrived with the internet, I think it was obvious to most of them what they wanted to do with their life. Sweden, Norway and Finland came in 2nd, 3rd and 4th. I think US was at place 20.

unwind 3y ago

The AVR microcontroller architecture, perhaps most widely known from Arduinos, is from Norway [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_microcontrollers#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_microcontrollers#History

igleria 3y ago

My theory is the long winter months make people try nerdy things. like new programming languages.

FrankyHollywood 3y ago

Stroustrup once told about how he needed the best of both C and Simula, which resulted in creating C++. Full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO0PXYMVGSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO0PXYMVGSU