what languages are fading ? what languages remain ?

[Prelude]

>Well, no one codes in BASIC anymore
Can you prove it?

>I remember reading something about a two languages before C called, A and B.
I wouldn't be surprised if there is an A language, but it has nothing to do with C. C is a more powerful derivative of B, which was a simpler derivative of BCPL, which was based on CPL.

>from my opinion, sooner or later C gonna be fading.
This is not likely. Do you have any idea how much C code is floating around the world? To kill C we would have to rewrite all of it in another language. Since that isn't going to happen anytime soon, C will be around for some time.

>The 'C' language was named after the second letter (as the second language).
That's an iffy statement since most everyone knows that it could be named using the second letter of BCPL or the next letter in the latin alphabet. Dennis Ritchie never fessed up about that.

[major_small]

Originally posted by Prelude
That's an iffy statement since most everyone knows that it could be named using the second letter of BCPL or the next letter in the latin alphabet. Dennis Ritchie never fessed up about that.

yeah, because we all know how innovative programmers are when naming languages... C++?

[Salem]

It is reasonably well unknown that Dennis Ritchie had a homework assignment to create a programming language. It originally had no name, but when the assignment was returned, he found he had gotten a grade 'C' for his work. So being the pragmatic minimalist, that was good enough to be the name of the new language.

Many years later, Bjarne Stroustrup had a similar homework question. Although he had copied a large part of someone elses homework, there were many useful additions to it, and it got a grade of 'C++'.

[major_small]

oh i see... so two of the most powerful and widely used programming languages were homework assignments that didn't get higher than a B-?

lemme guess... somebody had a homework assignment to create an assessment test and got an A+ on it... then they went ahead and made it a standard certification?

[Prelude]

>so two of the most powerful and widely used programming languages were homework assignments that didn't get higher than a B-?
C and C++ are both greatly flawed, but 95% of the PC market proves that flaws and popularity don't always go hand in hand.

[SirCrono6]

> I remember reading something about a two languages before C, called A and B.

A (if it is short for anything ) could be Alambik. I recently found out about Alambik. So if it stands for anything (and it exists ) I think it's Alambik.

>From my opinion, sooner or later C is going to be fading.

>From my opinion, C is FAR from fading.

I think it is far from fading, those who think C will not fade could be wrong. Now, I don't think it will a lot, but theres a chance. Plus there is still C++, which I'm sure will not fade...

[Waldo2k2]

>>which I'm sure will not fade...

I'm sure they thought the same of other languages, all languages go through cycles of popularity, some don't regain strength, some do. It's the same with everything (for instance, clothing fashion).

[FillYourBrain]

according to this:

http://www.levenez.com/lang/history.html#05

C came from B which came from BCPL

It's a very cool chart by the way.

edit: oh and "A" is along a different lineage

[Waldo2k2]

I wonder if that chart's correct...it all came from fortran? didn't see that coming.

[FillYourBrain]

there are roots that start later. Not all stemming from fortran. But it does seem to give credit to fortran that they were first.

[Waldo2k2]

I was referring to the big long string that C came out of, it can be traced all the way back to fortran. I didn't realize how old Fortran was...I didn't look to see where Cobol and a few others were on there.

[major_small]

wow... that really is a neat chart... I can't verify if it's right or not though...

>>I think it is far from fading, those who think C will not fade could be wrong. Now, I don't think it will a lot, but theres a chance. Plus there is still C++, which I'm sure will not fade...

have what about c-sytle strings... I think that as long as there will be C++, there will be C. even though you may not realize it, alot of what you write in C++ comes from C...

[jim mcnamara]

I'm older'n dirt and have seen and been paid to code in lots
of languages. COBOL will probably never go away. It IS used
for new development, there are four COBOL coders in my
division, doing both maintenance and new development.

Languages that you think are really off to the side of
mainstream, like maybe ADA or Pascal, are still in use. The DIANA
object in Oracle (the actual query execution engine) is written in
ADA, for example.

What usually happens is that folks go off in a new language
direction, mostly because they are academic types with
ideas. Then a new language comes up. For reasons more of
history and pure chance than anything else, a dialect of the
new idea will spawn off and become a defacto standard.
Forth is the basis for PostScript - PS is a PDL, (page
description language) and is essentially non-procedural. No
one develops anything much in Forth, but PS is extremely
active because of Adobe Systems and PS printers. And Forth
was based on Pistol, the grandfather of stack oriented
langauges which is now defunct.

The rate at which new languages appear and become important
has not slowed down. PHP is about 8 years old, java as well.
Both are extremely important. Jython is Python with java classes enabled - a superset of Python. It's new and in extensive use.

[caroundw5h]

Originally posted by Prelude
>so two of the most powerful and widely used programming languages were homework assignments that didn't get higher than a B-?
C and C++ are both greatly flawed, but 95% of the PC market proves that flaws and popularity don't always go hand in hand.

Funny you should say that

[khpuce]

Though academic institutions do tend to teach the newest languages and discard the old ones, it does not mean those are fading away. One of my friends is working with a company designing a very complicated image recognision system and for some reason (which I can't even imagine), they are using Pascal