9 ms·

Where are programming languages created? A zoomable map

joshdavham 2y ago
It makes sense that most software innovation has so far happened in the USA, Europe and Japan, but I wonder what this map might look like by the end of the century...
- wiseowise 2y ago
  > but I wonder what this map might look like by the end of the century... Why would it suddenly change?
  - RandomThoughts3 2y ago
    Well for one, the world demography is deeply changing with population aging everywhere but a significant lag between countries which are already greying (Japan, Europe), countries which rely heavily on immigration to keep the median age stable (the USA) and countries which are just beginning to age but have large population (India, China, Brazil).
    - mseepgood 2y ago
      Old people don't innovate? Sounds like an ageist stereotype.
      - FredPret 2y ago
        Questions about whole population groups like these are best understood not through stereotypes or anti-stereotypes but through statistics. I found this study [0] that examines the relationship between age and things like winning the Nobel prize or coming up with a "great invention". Looks like there's a peak in the late 30s and that peak is slowly creeping up as the population ages. But it might also be that you need a population of 20-year-olds to actually adopt the new inventions. [0] https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/jones-ben/htm/ageandgreatinvention.pdf https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/jones-ben/htm/a...
      - j_maffe 2y ago
        Retired people don't innovate, simply because they don't work.
      - RandomThoughts3 2y ago
        Most old people don’t work and a significant portion of them can’t. If you really think an aging population doesn’t have an impact on a country overall output, I have a bridge to sell you.
- aardvark179 2y ago
  I think there is likely also bias in the data (what was considered significant) and inaccuracies in locations (many things assigned to Google’s head office).
- firesteelrain 2y ago
  In the US at least, programming languages were either developed by large corporations (Sun Microsystems, Apple, Google, Bell Labs, IBM) or research institutions (MIT) or Government (Ada, COBOL).
  - fanf2 2y ago
    Ada was designed at Honeywell-Bull in France.
    - firesteelrain 2y ago
      “Ada was originally designed by a team led by French computer scientist Jean Ichbiah of Honeywell under contract to the United States Department of Defense (DoD) from 1977 to 1983.” This thread was about individuals making languages on their own and my point in this thread is most popular programming languages didn’t gain ground or mature until paid for and sponsored by an org or company. DoD paid for it and can take credit for developing it.
t-3 2y ago
Finland is surprisingly sparse. I've always had the impression that it usually seems to be rather over-represented in other fields of computing.
- flohofwoe 2y ago
  Could be many reason I guess (after all, there's only 5.5 million Finns around), but the map is a bit pointless IMHO because it only counts university and research lab projects. Most recent languages I'm aware of (and which are actually useful in the real world) had been started by individuals in their spare time.
  - phire 2y ago
    It lists languages designed by commercial companies too. The main reason it avoids showing languages created by individuals is that it can be hard to narrow down their location. Also, it would count as doxing.
  - wiseowise 2y ago
    > but the map is a bit pointless IMHO because it only counts university and research lab projects No, it doesn't. There's JetBrains, Eclipse foundation, Corel, etc.
  - firesteelrain 2y ago
    Which most recent (and how recent) were started by individuals in their spare time? Perl is one that comes to mind and it’s old.
    - flohofwoe 2y ago
      Rust, Zig, Odin, Nim are probably the most popular. It's also not surprising IMHO, most software is created to scratch a particular itch of an individual. Also specifically for programming languages, LLVM made it possible for individuals to build their own pet language with relatively little effort but still get competitive performance and target platform coverage.
racingmars 2y ago
"Microsoft Notepad." "BMP image format." Seemed like the definition of "programming language" was quite odd (given the title of the submission to HN is "Where are programming languages created?"), but then I noticed the actual title of the page is "Where does software innovation happen?" and is not restricted to programming languages.
- varjag 2y ago
  At the same time it misses Russia's Kotlin.
  - mseepgood 2y ago
    While Kotlin is a Russian island the Kotlin programming language was created by JetBrains which is a Czech company founded by Russians with headquarters in Prague. You will find Kotlin on the map in the Prague circle.
    - varjag 2y ago
      The Czech office is a flag of convenience. Until the full-scale invasion all development of this Russian named product founded by Russians was happening in Russian Federation. But formally you have a point.
    - wruza 2y ago
      And Yandex is a Netherlands company, right. Russians have a reasonable tradition to register things outside of “their” country.
      - throwaway9524 2y ago
        As far as companies with a Russian origin go JetBrains and Yandex are at complete odds with each other. JetBrains condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and suspended sales and R&D there shortly after the war broke out then left the country entirely as soon as they relocated the employees. Whereas Yandex stayed and as a result their home page today is chock-full of Russian propaganda. JetBrains may have originated in Russia but they have nothing to do with that country anymore so counting them in with Yandex is wrong.
pentacent_hq 2y ago
Elixir is probably the most prominent language that originated in Brazil (at Plataformatec in São Paulo) but the data CSV lists an address in Texas.
- breck 2y ago
  Thanks! Updated: https://github.com/breck7/pldb/commit/75bfe910f8b3723389964b3d91f559628841f7f4 https://github.com/breck7/pldb/commit/75bfe910f8b3723389964b...
- orhmeh09 2y ago
  Ah, let's not forget Lua =)
- ClawsOnPaws 2y ago
  I would have thought that would be Lua, not Elixir?
shooshx 2y ago
"A not very zoomable map"
laurentlb 2y ago
In the CSV file, I see that the Google software is attributed to Mountain View, even when the actual teams were not in Mountain View. (I found the visualization hard to use, at least on mobile, so I used the CSV file)
FredPret 2y ago
As with so many things, this is basically a map of GDP / area. In this case there's another layer on top of that where # of programming languages scales faster after a certain wealth threshold. For instance, the city of Toronto has a GDP equivalent to a couple of specific countries (and larger than most countries), but created more programming languages than the equivalent countries.
lokimedes 2y ago
It may be a bit shallow, but as a Dane, I take some pride in the number of languages created by my countrymen, considering our modest population. *Many have migrated to the US on their way, but still…
- kamikazeturtles 2y ago
  Many Danes migrated to the UK a thousand years ago and now their descendants, who migrated to the US 200 hundred years ago, are also making great contributions in programming language theory. Lots to be proud of
- dunham 2y ago
  I'm working on a toy language (in the US), and I'm 1/8th Danish.
  - lokimedes 2y ago
    You're in good company: Bjarne Stroustrup, Rasmus Lerdorf, Anders Hejlsberg, Peter Naur, Dunham...
vitus 2y ago
Seems weird to attribute Haskell to Microsoft. Simon Peyton Jones joined MSR Cambridge in '98 (about a decade after the name "Haskell" was chosen), Erik Meijer joined Microsoft in 2000, and nobody else linked from the Wikipedia page for Haskell has obvious affiliations with Microsoft. As far as I can tell, Haskell was an academic collaboration mostly between Jones (UCL briefly, mostly University of Glasgow), Wadler (University of Edinburgh), and Hudak (Yale).
- breck 2y ago
  Pull requests to update this welcome: https://github.com/breck7/pldb/blob/main/concepts/haskell.scroll https://github.com/breck7/pldb/blob/main/concepts/haskell.sc...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
sebnun 2y ago
Genexus is placed on Argentina, but the company is from Uruguay.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
Everyone knows the best pl are created in Denmark.
- bazoom42 2y ago
  The languages created in Denmark does not seem particulary notable?
  - flohofwoe 2y ago
    Anders Hjelsberg and Bjarne Stroustrup are both Danish, who together account for what feels like 90% of all popular programming languages ;)
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- Quothling 2y ago
  As a Dane I'm curious which ones you're thinking of. The ones which are typically associated with Denmark are C++ and PHP and neither were developed in Denmark and I think it would be fair to call PHP more Canadian than Danish. Ruby on Rails is another but Ruby was developed by Matz. I'm not sure BETA or FCL are really in the "Best" category. :p
  - bazoom42 2y ago
    C# was developed by a Dane, but it wasn’t developed in Denmark. The creator of PHP was born in Greenland, but again the language was developed elsewhere.
    - Quothling 2y ago
      C# wasn't created by just Anders Hejlsberg. There wouldn't be a C# without Scott Wiltamuth or a Peter Golde (and a lot others). Though I guess you could argue that there wouldn't be a "modern" C# without Mads Torgersen who is also Danish. That being said. "GP" jokingly said languages which were considered "best". I'm not sure what C# is supposed to be "best" at? It's not Java and it's certainly not LISP.

It makes sense that most software innovation has so far happened in the USA, Europe and Japan, but I wonder what this map might look like by the end of the century...

wiseowise 2y ago
> but I wonder what this map might look like by the end of the century... Why would it suddenly change?
- RandomThoughts3 2y ago
  Well for one, the world demography is deeply changing with population aging everywhere but a significant lag between countries which are already greying (Japan, Europe), countries which rely heavily on immigration to keep the median age stable (the USA) and countries which are just beginning to age but have large population (India, China, Brazil).
  - mseepgood 2y ago
    Old people don't innovate? Sounds like an ageist stereotype.
    - FredPret 2y ago
      Questions about whole population groups like these are best understood not through stereotypes or anti-stereotypes but through statistics. I found this study [0] that examines the relationship between age and things like winning the Nobel prize or coming up with a "great invention". Looks like there's a peak in the late 30s and that peak is slowly creeping up as the population ages. But it might also be that you need a population of 20-year-olds to actually adopt the new inventions. [0] https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/jones-ben/htm/ageandgreatinvention.pdf https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/jones-ben/htm/a...
    - j_maffe 2y ago
      Retired people don't innovate, simply because they don't work.
    - RandomThoughts3 2y ago
      Most old people don’t work and a significant portion of them can’t. If you really think an aging population doesn’t have an impact on a country overall output, I have a bridge to sell you.
aardvark179 2y ago
I think there is likely also bias in the data (what was considered significant) and inaccuracies in locations (many things assigned to Google’s head office).
firesteelrain 2y ago
In the US at least, programming languages were either developed by large corporations (Sun Microsystems, Apple, Google, Bell Labs, IBM) or research institutions (MIT) or Government (Ada, COBOL).
- fanf2 2y ago
  Ada was designed at Honeywell-Bull in France.
  - firesteelrain 2y ago
    “Ada was originally designed by a team led by French computer scientist Jean Ichbiah of Honeywell under contract to the United States Department of Defense (DoD) from 1977 to 1983.” This thread was about individuals making languages on their own and my point in this thread is most popular programming languages didn’t gain ground or mature until paid for and sponsored by an org or company. DoD paid for it and can take credit for developing it.

t-3 2y ago

Finland is surprisingly sparse. I've always had the impression that it usually seems to be rather over-represented in other fields of computing.

flohofwoe 2y ago
Could be many reason I guess (after all, there's only 5.5 million Finns around), but the map is a bit pointless IMHO because it only counts university and research lab projects. Most recent languages I'm aware of (and which are actually useful in the real world) had been started by individuals in their spare time.
- phire 2y ago
  It lists languages designed by commercial companies too. The main reason it avoids showing languages created by individuals is that it can be hard to narrow down their location. Also, it would count as doxing.
- wiseowise 2y ago
  > but the map is a bit pointless IMHO because it only counts university and research lab projects No, it doesn't. There's JetBrains, Eclipse foundation, Corel, etc.
- firesteelrain 2y ago
  Which most recent (and how recent) were started by individuals in their spare time? Perl is one that comes to mind and it’s old.
  - flohofwoe 2y ago
    Rust, Zig, Odin, Nim are probably the most popular. It's also not surprising IMHO, most software is created to scratch a particular itch of an individual. Also specifically for programming languages, LLVM made it possible for individuals to build their own pet language with relatively little effort but still get competitive performance and target platform coverage.

racingmars 2y ago

"Microsoft Notepad." "BMP image format." Seemed like the definition of "programming language" was quite odd (given the title of the submission to HN is "Where are programming languages created?"), but then I noticed the actual title of the page is "Where does software innovation happen?" and is not restricted to programming languages.

varjag 2y ago
At the same time it misses Russia's Kotlin.
- mseepgood 2y ago
  While Kotlin is a Russian island the Kotlin programming language was created by JetBrains which is a Czech company founded by Russians with headquarters in Prague. You will find Kotlin on the map in the Prague circle.
  - varjag 2y ago
    The Czech office is a flag of convenience. Until the full-scale invasion all development of this Russian named product founded by Russians was happening in Russian Federation. But formally you have a point.
  - wruza 2y ago
    And Yandex is a Netherlands company, right. Russians have a reasonable tradition to register things outside of “their” country.
    - throwaway9524 2y ago
      As far as companies with a Russian origin go JetBrains and Yandex are at complete odds with each other. JetBrains condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and suspended sales and R&D there shortly after the war broke out then left the country entirely as soon as they relocated the employees. Whereas Yandex stayed and as a result their home page today is chock-full of Russian propaganda. JetBrains may have originated in Russia but they have nothing to do with that country anymore so counting them in with Yandex is wrong.

pentacent_hq 2y ago

Elixir is probably the most prominent language that originated in Brazil (at Plataformatec in São Paulo) but the data CSV lists an address in Texas.

breck 2y ago
Thanks! Updated: https://github.com/breck7/pldb/commit/75bfe910f8b3723389964b3d91f559628841f7f4 https://github.com/breck7/pldb/commit/75bfe910f8b3723389964b...
orhmeh09 2y ago
Ah, let's not forget Lua =)
ClawsOnPaws 2y ago
I would have thought that would be Lua, not Elixir?

shooshx 2y ago

"A not very zoomable map"

laurentlb 2y ago

In the CSV file, I see that the Google software is attributed to Mountain View, even when the actual teams were not in Mountain View. (I found the visualization hard to use, at least on mobile, so I used the CSV file)

FredPret 2y ago

As with so many things, this is basically a map of GDP / area. In this case there's another layer on top of that where # of programming languages scales faster after a certain wealth threshold. For instance, the city of Toronto has a GDP equivalent to a couple of specific countries (and larger than most countries), but created more programming languages than the equivalent countries.

lokimedes 2y ago

It may be a bit shallow, but as a Dane, I take some pride in the number of languages created by my countrymen, considering our modest population. *Many have migrated to the US on their way, but still…

kamikazeturtles 2y ago
Many Danes migrated to the UK a thousand years ago and now their descendants, who migrated to the US 200 hundred years ago, are also making great contributions in programming language theory. Lots to be proud of
dunham 2y ago
I'm working on a toy language (in the US), and I'm 1/8th Danish.
- lokimedes 2y ago
  You're in good company: Bjarne Stroustrup, Rasmus Lerdorf, Anders Hejlsberg, Peter Naur, Dunham...

vitus 2y ago

Seems weird to attribute Haskell to Microsoft. Simon Peyton Jones joined MSR Cambridge in '98 (about a decade after the name "Haskell" was chosen), Erik Meijer joined Microsoft in 2000, and nobody else linked from the Wikipedia page for Haskell has obvious affiliations with Microsoft. As far as I can tell, Haskell was an academic collaboration mostly between Jones (UCL briefly, mostly University of Glasgow), Wadler (University of Edinburgh), and Hudak (Yale).

breck 2y ago
Pull requests to update this welcome: https://github.com/breck7/pldb/blob/main/concepts/haskell.scroll https://github.com/breck7/pldb/blob/main/concepts/haskell.sc...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

sebnun 2y ago

Genexus is placed on Argentina, but the company is from Uruguay.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago

Everyone knows the best pl are created in Denmark.

bazoom42 2y ago
The languages created in Denmark does not seem particulary notable?
- flohofwoe 2y ago
  Anders Hjelsberg and Bjarne Stroustrup are both Danish, who together account for what feels like 90% of all popular programming languages ;)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
Quothling 2y ago
As a Dane I'm curious which ones you're thinking of. The ones which are typically associated with Denmark are C++ and PHP and neither were developed in Denmark and I think it would be fair to call PHP more Canadian than Danish. Ruby on Rails is another but Ruby was developed by Matz. I'm not sure BETA or FCL are really in the "Best" category. :p
- bazoom42 2y ago
  C# was developed by a Dane, but it wasn’t developed in Denmark. The creator of PHP was born in Greenland, but again the language was developed elsewhere.
  - Quothling 2y ago
    C# wasn't created by just Anders Hejlsberg. There wouldn't be a C# without Scott Wiltamuth or a Peter Golde (and a lot others). Though I guess you could argue that there wouldn't be a "modern" C# without Mads Torgersen who is also Danish. That being said. "GP" jokingly said languages which were considered "best". I'm not sure what C# is supposed to be "best" at? It's not Java and it's certainly not LISP.