4 ms·

Five Little Languages and How They Grew: Talk at HOPL (1993)

98 points by fanf2 2y ago

omoikane 2y ago
The original title was The Development of the C Language or, Five Little Languages and How They Grew
samatman 2y ago
Not to be confused (as I did initially) with Programming Pearls: Little Languages, by John Bentley. Which is about little languages per se, as this is not how the languages in Ritchie's talk are generally described. In fact, the very first sentence describes Pascal as a "big language". It's also worth a read: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/6424.315691 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/6424.315691
- chrisfinazzo 2y ago
  Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnCgoEyz31M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnCgoEyz31M
- wduquette 2y ago
  The name's a presumably ironical spin on the title of an old kid's book, "Five Little Peppers and How They Grew", by Margaret Sidney
- kragen 2y ago
  i second that recommendation, and i had the same confusion. algol-68 was even considered an especially large language
  - jhbadger 2y ago
    As in the mention in the article that the Algol-68 compiler for early Unix only supported a subset of the language!
daghamm 2y ago
Interesting that other than C only pascal has survived (kind of). I have fond memories of Pascal, but when I think about it is actually Turbo Pascal I have great memories of and not so much the language itself. Turbo C/C++ was surprisingly a worse environment for me despite being much more fluent in C, which shows the important of a responsive IDE.
AnimalMuppet 2y ago
> Computer languages exist to perform useful things that affect the world in some way, not just to express algorithms, and so their success depends in part on their utility. Their all-in utility. That is, their utility after taking into account usability, but also availability, availability and robustness of libraries, perhaps portability, and I'm sure there are more variables that affect net utility.
- foresto 2y ago
  This was recently brought into sharp focus while learning a new-to-me C descendant. After working with it for a couple months, I've found a lot to like in the language itself, but the many paper cuts and bad ergonomics of its standard library have considerably drained my enthusiasm for continuing to use it. What a pity.
hecanjog 2y ago
> C's own descendants, by which I mainly mean C++, may very well be even livelier in the next few years. Aside from languages that are directly descended from C, (particularly C++ but also some others) [...] Does anyone know what the other languages descended from C they might have been referring to circa 1993?
- mepian 2y ago
  Objective-C?
- jll29 2y ago
  Earlier than or in 1993: - C++: 1979- - Objective C: 1984 - Split-C: 1993 Later than 1993: - C--: 1997 - C#: 2000 - D: 2001 See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_C-family_programming_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_C-family_programming_l... (but this list goes a bit too far IMHO)
  - trealira 2y ago
    There was also this extension of C called Concurrent C, which has its own book called The Concurrent C Programming Language, originally published in 1989. I don't see it on the Wikipedia page, which is why I'm saying it here.
  - bonzini 2y ago
    I would consider Rust to be informed enough by C, that it can be considered a descendent—as much as D, and more so than C# (which is more of a Java-descendent; and while Java's syntax is based on C, that's where it ends).
    - geoelectric 2y ago
      C# was also at least somewhat informed by Delphi, the Object Pascal variant the same architect created just prior to MS luring him away from Borland.
  - fanf2 2y ago
Joker_vD 2y ago
Believe it or not, but BCPL is still somewhat alive, and has implementations on modern platforms, done by its original creator Martin Richards, no less: [0]. [0] https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mr10/BCPL.html https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mr10/BCPL.html
- mepian 2y ago
  There is also a modern implementation of BLISS: https://gitlab.com/JonathanBelanger/bliss https://gitlab.com/JonathanBelanger/bliss
- jfk13 2y ago
  Wow, that brings back memories! I still have a copy of BCPL: the language and its compiler on my shelf, though I admit I haven't looked at it in years. But spent¹ many happy hours with BCPL back in the early 80s. (It was that, Fortran, or Pascal; we didn't have a C compiler on the University system. Oh, there was also Algol68C, but I never really got into that.) ¹Perhaps my tutor would've said "wasted", as it had nothing to do with my courses. But I learned a lot, anyhow.

98 points by fanf2 2y ago

The original title was The Development of the C Language or, Five Little Languages and How They Grew

Not to be confused (as I did initially) with Programming Pearls: Little Languages, by John Bentley. Which is about little languages per se, as this is not how the languages in Ritchie's talk are generally described. In fact, the very first sentence describes Pascal as a "big language". It's also worth a read: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/6424.315691 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/6424.315691

chrisfinazzo 2y ago
Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnCgoEyz31M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnCgoEyz31M
wduquette 2y ago
The name's a presumably ironical spin on the title of an old kid's book, "Five Little Peppers and How They Grew", by Margaret Sidney
kragen 2y ago
i second that recommendation, and i had the same confusion. algol-68 was even considered an especially large language
- jhbadger 2y ago
  As in the mention in the article that the Algol-68 compiler for early Unix only supported a subset of the language!

daghamm 2y ago

Interesting that other than C only pascal has survived (kind of). I have fond memories of Pascal, but when I think about it is actually Turbo Pascal I have great memories of and not so much the language itself. Turbo C/C++ was surprisingly a worse environment for me despite being much more fluent in C, which shows the important of a responsive IDE.

AnimalMuppet 2y ago

> Computer languages exist to perform useful things that affect the world in some way, not just to express algorithms, and so their success depends in part on their utility. Their all-in utility. That is, their utility after taking into account usability, but also availability, availability and robustness of libraries, perhaps portability, and I'm sure there are more variables that affect net utility.

foresto 2y ago
This was recently brought into sharp focus while learning a new-to-me C descendant. After working with it for a couple months, I've found a lot to like in the language itself, but the many paper cuts and bad ergonomics of its standard library have considerably drained my enthusiasm for continuing to use it. What a pity.

hecanjog 2y ago

> C's own descendants, by which I mainly mean C++, may very well be even livelier in the next few years. Aside from languages that are directly descended from C, (particularly C++ but also some others) [...] Does anyone know what the other languages descended from C they might have been referring to circa 1993?

mepian 2y ago
Objective-C?
jll29 2y ago
Earlier than or in 1993: - C++: 1979- - Objective C: 1984 - Split-C: 1993 Later than 1993: - C--: 1997 - C#: 2000 - D: 2001 See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_C-family_programming_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_C-family_programming_l... (but this list goes a bit too far IMHO)
- trealira 2y ago
  There was also this extension of C called Concurrent C, which has its own book called The Concurrent C Programming Language, originally published in 1989. I don't see it on the Wikipedia page, which is why I'm saying it here.
- bonzini 2y ago
  I would consider Rust to be informed enough by C, that it can be considered a descendent—as much as D, and more so than C# (which is more of a Java-descendent; and while Java's syntax is based on C, that's where it ends).
  - geoelectric 2y ago
    C# was also at least somewhat informed by Delphi, the Object Pascal variant the same architect created just prior to MS luring him away from Borland.
- fanf2 2y ago

Joker_vD 2y ago

Believe it or not, but BCPL is still somewhat alive, and has implementations on modern platforms, done by its original creator Martin Richards, no less: [0]. [0] https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mr10/BCPL.html https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mr10/BCPL.html

mepian 2y ago
There is also a modern implementation of BLISS: https://gitlab.com/JonathanBelanger/bliss https://gitlab.com/JonathanBelanger/bliss
jfk13 2y ago
Wow, that brings back memories! I still have a copy of BCPL: the language and its compiler on my shelf, though I admit I haven't looked at it in years. But spent¹ many happy hours with BCPL back in the early 80s. (It was that, Fortran, or Pascal; we didn't have a C compiler on the University system. Oh, there was also Algol68C, but I never really got into that.) ¹Perhaps my tutor would've said "wasted", as it had nothing to do with my courses. But I learned a lot, anyhow.