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Programming Language Network: A Graph of Programming Languages

67 points by SworDsy 12y ago

aurora72 12y ago
The names inside the nodes are not readable. They don't display name when clicked or hover the cursor over them. So I closed the page after 5 or 10 seconds.
finin 12y ago
There are many nodes and edges missing. It would be great if the underlying graph was on a wiki. Maybe this content could be added to Wikidata (http://www.wikidata.org/ http://www.wikidata.org/).
- chrisseaton 12y ago
  Good idea, but everyone would just claim that their favourite language was inspired by Haskell and the data would become meaningless.
- CompleteSkeptic 12y ago
  You may be interested in DBpedia, which gets its data from wikipedia but presents it in a structured format (for example, the page for Clojure: http://dbpedia.org/describe/?url=http://dbpedia.org/resource/Clojure&sid=17176 http://dbpedia.org/describe/?url=http://dbpedia.org/resource...), though for this case, it seems the data is already on wikipedia.
  - sparkie 12y ago
    The problem with Wikipedia as the data source is that there's some goof who goes around deleting articles on programming languages which aren't prolific enough (e.g. Kernel by John Shutt). Some pages don't exist to begin with (or can't exist, because the only source of information is on the language author's own page, and doesn't meet the criteria needed to be listed). Shame, because some of the languages not listed tend to be the most interesting ones.
phaedryx 12y ago
My favorite computer scientist is "et al." https://www.dropbox.com/s/4f4s6au5dcshef8/Screenshot%202014-11-01%2019.42.14.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/4f4s6au5dcshef8/Screenshot%202014-...
- mahmud 12y ago
  Ah, Dr. &rest, prolific!
AbraKdabra 12y ago
A search function would be killer.
- kriro 12y ago
  My thoughts exactly. Center the term if found and highlight it would do the trick already. There also needs to be better filtering of the raw data ("many others" near Python is kind of a head scratcher for example). Filters for "just languages" or language + path length of X etc. might be cool as well. A simple NON_AUTHORS = ["others", "et al."] etc. and using that in normalize_data would be a good start imo. Edit: Plankalkül also has encoding issues :)
WoodenChair 12y ago
This sort of visualization while really really cool (and kudos to the developers) is also really hard to navigate. I can't easily find any of the languages I'm looking for without a lot of visual scanning and zooming in-and-out.
- klibertp 12y ago
  You can center the view on any language by adding "#language:<lang name>" to the URL. For example: https://fatiherikli.github.io/programming-language-network/#language:Racket https://fatiherikli.github.io/programming-language-network/#...
  - seivadmas 12y ago
    Or just <ctrl>-f Languagename.
    - klibertp 12y ago
      Yes, but then good luck with finding C, J, K, B or similar :) BTW, I'm not sure, but I think all the single letter language names are taken already?
      - runarb 12y ago
        Still some single letter programming language name left according to this blog post: http://iron9light.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/single-letter-programming-langage-a-z/ http://iron9light.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/single-letter-pro... . However the post is a little old, so it may have changed.
tantalor 12y ago
Would be nice to have the reverse edges, * Influenced * Designed * Developed * Dialect of * Implementation of * Implements
vixen99 12y ago
Sorry to say it but what a mess.
sbensu 12y ago
A filter for those who are only interested in one aspect of the graph (i.e. language influence) would be very nice. With the current balancing, Haskell is closer to Java than to ML.
kyberias 12y ago
This doesn't look too nice graphically. Influenced by -lines are grey on grey which is almost invisible. Also, it doesn't make much sense either. C# is placed close to Smalltalk, far away from C and C++, not to mention Java.
nilsjuenemann 12y ago
This is a more useful visualisation of programming languages: http://exploringdata.github.io/vis/programming-languages-influence-network/ http://exploringdata.github.io/vis/programming-languages-inf...
amelius 12y ago
It's interesting that the distinction between functional languages and imperative languages is not at all clear in the graph. This could be caused by the fact that the visualization technique used is not capable of showing this, or that there are simply too many types of edges (or because each type of edge is getting the same "importance" in the graph drawing algorithm).
dorfsmay 12y ago
Looking at the source, it looks as though each node is in a fixed position on the graph. Wouldn't it be easier to use something like graphviz where you just declare the nodes and connections, and it (graphviz) takes care of drawing it properly?

67 points by SworDsy 12y ago

The names inside the nodes are not readable. They don't display name when clicked or hover the cursor over them. So I closed the page after 5 or 10 seconds.

finin 12y ago

There are many nodes and edges missing. It would be great if the underlying graph was on a wiki. Maybe this content could be added to Wikidata (http://www.wikidata.org/ http://www.wikidata.org/).

chrisseaton 12y ago
Good idea, but everyone would just claim that their favourite language was inspired by Haskell and the data would become meaningless.
CompleteSkeptic 12y ago
You may be interested in DBpedia, which gets its data from wikipedia but presents it in a structured format (for example, the page for Clojure: http://dbpedia.org/describe/?url=http://dbpedia.org/resource/Clojure&sid=17176 http://dbpedia.org/describe/?url=http://dbpedia.org/resource...), though for this case, it seems the data is already on wikipedia.
- sparkie 12y ago
  The problem with Wikipedia as the data source is that there's some goof who goes around deleting articles on programming languages which aren't prolific enough (e.g. Kernel by John Shutt). Some pages don't exist to begin with (or can't exist, because the only source of information is on the language author's own page, and doesn't meet the criteria needed to be listed). Shame, because some of the languages not listed tend to be the most interesting ones.

phaedryx 12y ago

My favorite computer scientist is "et al." https://www.dropbox.com/s/4f4s6au5dcshef8/Screenshot%202014-11-01%2019.42.14.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/4f4s6au5dcshef8/Screenshot%202014-...

mahmud 12y ago
Ah, Dr. &rest, prolific!

AbraKdabra 12y ago

A search function would be killer.

kriro 12y ago
My thoughts exactly. Center the term if found and highlight it would do the trick already. There also needs to be better filtering of the raw data ("many others" near Python is kind of a head scratcher for example). Filters for "just languages" or language + path length of X etc. might be cool as well. A simple NON_AUTHORS = ["others", "et al."] etc. and using that in normalize_data would be a good start imo. Edit: Plankalkül also has encoding issues :)

WoodenChair 12y ago

This sort of visualization while really really cool (and kudos to the developers) is also really hard to navigate. I can't easily find any of the languages I'm looking for without a lot of visual scanning and zooming in-and-out.

klibertp 12y ago
You can center the view on any language by adding "#language:<lang name>" to the URL. For example: https://fatiherikli.github.io/programming-language-network/#language:Racket https://fatiherikli.github.io/programming-language-network/#...
- seivadmas 12y ago
  Or just <ctrl>-f Languagename.
  - klibertp 12y ago
    Yes, but then good luck with finding C, J, K, B or similar :) BTW, I'm not sure, but I think all the single letter language names are taken already?
    - runarb 12y ago
      Still some single letter programming language name left according to this blog post: http://iron9light.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/single-letter-programming-langage-a-z/ http://iron9light.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/single-letter-pro... . However the post is a little old, so it may have changed.

tantalor 12y ago

Would be nice to have the reverse edges, * Influenced * Designed * Developed * Dialect of * Implementation of * Implements

vixen99 12y ago

Sorry to say it but what a mess.

sbensu 12y ago

A filter for those who are only interested in one aspect of the graph (i.e. language influence) would be very nice. With the current balancing, Haskell is closer to Java than to ML.

kyberias 12y ago

This doesn't look too nice graphically. Influenced by -lines are grey on grey which is almost invisible. Also, it doesn't make much sense either. C# is placed close to Smalltalk, far away from C and C++, not to mention Java.

nilsjuenemann 12y ago

This is a more useful visualisation of programming languages: http://exploringdata.github.io/vis/programming-languages-influence-network/ http://exploringdata.github.io/vis/programming-languages-inf...

amelius 12y ago

It's interesting that the distinction between functional languages and imperative languages is not at all clear in the graph. This could be caused by the fact that the visualization technique used is not capable of showing this, or that there are simply too many types of edges (or because each type of edge is getting the same "importance" in the graph drawing algorithm).

dorfsmay 12y ago

Looking at the source, it looks as though each node is in a fixed position on the graph. Wouldn't it be easier to use something like graphviz where you just declare the nodes and connections, and it (graphviz) takes care of drawing it properly?