4 ms·

Pascal: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal Oberon: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O

• microtherion 3y ago
  Linda has a particularly unsavory origin story (hint: It has a connection to Ada): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_(coordination_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_(coordination_language) That probably wouldn't fly anymore in today's CS research. As for Oberon, the moon may have played a role, but according to stories recently told at Niklaus Wirth's memorial service, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and the mythological character in general https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon may have had more to do with it, as Wirth was said to have some flair for the theatrical arts in his private life.
  • Rochus 3y ago
    > "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and the mythological character ... may have had more to do with it" Which contradicts with what he wrote in his "Project Oberon" book: "Although the search for an appropriate name for a project is usually a minor problem and often left to chance and whim of the designers, this may be the place to recount how Oberon entered the picture in our case. It happened that around the time of the beginning of our effort, the space probe Voyager made headlines with a series of spectacular pictures taken of the planet Uranus and of its moons, the largest of which is named Oberon. Since its launch I had considered the Voyager project as a singularly well-planned and successful endeavor, and as a small tribute to it I picked the name of its latest object of investigation." Also the books "Programming in Oberon" (where Wirth was co-author) and "The Oberon System" say the same. If he really did have "some flair" for the arts (besides "the art of simplicity"), he hid it very well.
    • microtherion 3y ago
      OK, that would be a pretty conclusive evidence that the moon was the primary consideration. However, it's entirely possible that the name, when it was in the news, caught his attention because of the mythological background. Cf "Lilith", the first workstation he built. "Ceres" again both has astronomical and mythological connotations — I'm not sure whether Voyager encountered Ceres, though. Wirth's love of the theater (and costume parties) was attested to by his family at the memorial service. It was not something that his students knew about him (maybe grad students did).
  • IncreasePosts 3y ago
    It wouldn't fly, but I bet people would just obscure their true intent with a plausible story - "I wanted to make a language more beautiful than Ada, so I called it 'Linda', which means beautiful in Spanish"
    • zilti 3y ago
      Your made-up story even wouldn't fly either nowadays.
    • pimlottc 3y ago
      I would imagine something like this happened for Linda itself, since I assume the author didn’t namedrop a porn actress in their PhD dissertation.
• Findecanor 3y ago
  > Sather: named afer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sather_Tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sather_Tower And also because it is a derivative of Eiffel — which I think had been named more after the tower than the man, with the purpose of creating an analogy from software engineering to constructional engineering. > Erlang (Ericsson language): named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericsson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericsson Officially it is after the Danish mathematician Agner Krarup Erlang but we all know that is not the whole story... Other languages named after mathematicians (in addition to others already mentioned): Euclid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid_(programming_language) Occam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam_(programming_language) Gödel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del_(programming_langua...
• zilti 3y ago
  To my knowledge, Oberon was named after Oberon, the king of elfs.
  • eterps 3y ago
    The information provided in the literature on Oberon contradicts this claim. Furthermore, the moon is depicted on the covers of some books about it.
    • madcaptenor 3y ago
      Worth mentioning here that some moons of Uranus are named after Shakespeare characters - the moon is named after Shakespeare's depiction of Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
• eterps 3y ago
  Erlang, also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agner_Krarup_Erlang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agner_Krarup_Erlang