3 ms·

Heh, I notice that many languages/features are described using the word "modern". I'm not entirely sure what the intended meaning is, but it seems to mean "some

Heh, I notice that many languages/features are described using the word "modern". I'm not entirely sure what the intended meaning is, but it seems to mean "something that's been well understood since the 1970s, but isn't done by C, Java or Python". Indeed, it's crazy that Scheme, C, ML, Prolog, Smalltalk, etc. were all developed around the same time; yet C is apparently the one we went with... It now appears like many programming languages (Java, Dart, Swift, etc.) are gradually evolving into ML, e.g. introducing "modern features" like sum types, ADTs, pattern-matching, module systems, etc. (I'm less familiar with C#, but it seems like that's being dragged into the "modern" era by F#)

spott 3y ago
I mean, from the perspective of the time, was anything other than C really an option? It was a time when computers were outrageously compute and memory limited, and it was the only language that didn’t have huge (at the time) compute and/or memory costs associated with using it. We weren’t ready for higher level languages at the time.
- wrs 3y ago
  People developing languages have the same computers as everybody else. It’s only a slight oversimplification to say that C won because Unix won. There were plenty of usable high-level languages, not to mention plenty of low-level languages besides C.
- wbl 3y ago
  Look up when common lisp was invented. Pascal was also widely used including on classic Apple machines, and the Alto implemented smalltalk. What lead to C dominating was the spread of Unix driven by Bell's legal constraints and then the BSD sockets implementation.
- peterfirefly 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_(programming_language) There were several similar languages that could have filled the same ecological niche. C was widely available and de facto standardized (with an existing body of code as a forcing function + the existence of pcc). The others were not.

spott 3y ago

I mean, from the perspective of the time, was anything other than C really an option? It was a time when computers were outrageously compute and memory limited, and it was the only language that didn’t have huge (at the time) compute and/or memory costs associated with using it. We weren’t ready for higher level languages at the time.

wrs 3y ago
People developing languages have the same computers as everybody else. It’s only a slight oversimplification to say that C won because Unix won. There were plenty of usable high-level languages, not to mention plenty of low-level languages besides C.
wbl 3y ago
Look up when common lisp was invented. Pascal was also widely used including on classic Apple machines, and the Alto implemented smalltalk. What lead to C dominating was the spread of Unix driven by Bell's legal constraints and then the BSD sockets implementation.
peterfirefly 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_(programming_language) There were several similar languages that could have filled the same ecological niche. C was widely available and de facto standardized (with an existing body of code as a forcing function + the existence of pcc). The others were not.