🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3561@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU> lloyd@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU (lloyd allison) writes:
>re the variety of languages.
>
>I have been attempting to compile an A-Z (not a census)
>of programming languages for some time.

I, too, have started a list of languages!  (Now we can have our own
flame wars like those regarding the various "jargon" files  :-)  )

Many of the most obscure ones I got from the 1969 edtion of Sammet's
"Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals" which includes a
list in the back of c. 130, with many more mentioned in bibliographical
references.

My personal rules are:  1. The language must have been "published"
(but not neccesarily implemented)  2. I personally _do_ include all
variants, such as ALGOL-58, ALGOL-60, etc, but _not_ brand names 
such as "Watcom C," "Microsoft C," etc.  3.  For now, I am not
including assemblers since almost every CPU has an assembler(s)
and that would tend to bloat the list with colorless names.
Note also that coming up with some sort of precise total is
_not_ a goal, since that will only lead to endless "What is
a programming language?" debates.

Eventually, I would like to create an alphabetical list with
a explanation of the name, a one or two sentence description
(including specific creators, if applicable), the year it first
appeared, and some sort of official reference book or article
on the language.  (I am aware that some of these items are
subject to [lengthy] debate....)

I will add some more new ones to the list and post it as a
single "paragraph" of language names seperated by commas to
this group sometime next week.  I am guessing there will be about
300.

As someone e-mailed me, an article in CACM in 1966 (Vol 9, #3)
suggested that back _then_ 700 languages had already been
created!  To paraphrase Ray Bradbury (?), "The Nine Billion
Names for Languages" might apply to this project!  :-)


Tom Rombouts  Torrance 'Tater  tomr@ashtate.A-T.com  V:(213)538-7108