Some programming languages that honestly shouldn't exist anymore

[jacobpratt909]

Ironic

And what are they developing in Zurich?

Where did you think Gnome came from?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_of_Z%C3%BCrich

[Sasha_Aderolop]

There was a time when everyone seemingly programmed in Perl. But for those of us who used the language regularly, there was something about it that didn’t seem right.
Indeed, even its creators seemed to (implicitly) acknowledge that something was wrong, kicking off work on Perl6, currently under development as a complete revamp of the language. Work on Perl6 started in… the year 2000. Where is it? Who cares? Perl is dead. Don’t bother learning it.

[Matthew_Harrop]

There was a time when everyone seemingly programmed in Perl. But for those of us who used the language regularly, there was something about it that didn’t seem right.
Indeed, even its creators seemed to (implicitly) acknowledge that something was wrong, kicking off work on Perl6, currently under development as a complete revamp of the language. Work on Perl6 started in… the year 2000. Where is it? Who cares? Perl is dead. Don’t bother learning it.

But what was the problem?

[robsoles]

we cannot do without Oberon. Itz the best. Modula-2 and Pascal are runners up. Sooner or later C will be abandoned in favour of a Wirth'ian language designed at ETHZ in Zurich.

Hmmm...

...

And what are they developing in Zurich?

+1!!!

Where did you think Gnome came from?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_of_Z%C3%BCrich

-(SEVERAL_THOUSAND) There is this thing about threads with more than 1 reply; you should read more than 1 reply before answering what you think is a random question, I eventually learned to bother so you could too



But seriously; what is this super ""Wirth'ian"" language they are developing (WHO_CARES_WHERE) ?

[JKyleOKC]

Technically there are languages that are dead. Think of the original languages that were written (FLOW-MATIC for example) nobody (or very few people) write in them these days.

Perhaps ALGOL and PL/I could be added to such a list; I've not seen much mention of them in the past 15 years or so. Both were quite significant milestones in language development; ALGOL-60 (created in 1960 by a huge committee) was possibly the very first "block structured" language and was the first one I encountered that had the concept of "strings" (back in 1966, not one of the software gurus at General Electric could tell me what that word meant, when I was trying to learn ALGOL, although it was one of three languages supported on their pioneering time-share system -- the other two were Basic and yfortran). And PL/I was IBM's one-size-fits-all descendant of it, becoming the primary language for MIT's Project MAC and because of that, the intellectual ancestor of C itself.

The first language with which I did any system programming, TRAC (Text Reckoning And Compiling), seems to actually be extinct, although a clone known as SAM76 for use in personal computers was around for a little while in the early 1980s.

For that matter, the original Dartmouth Basic with its 15, count 'em, 15 keywords is long gone. Its only error message was "What?" and it dealt only in floating-point numbers, no integers or text. But it gave way to many descendants of the same or similar name, resulting in the Basic we know today, so it's a bit of a stretch to call it dead!

[Matthew_Harrop]

But it gave way to many descendants of the same or similar name, resulting in the Basic we know today, so it's a bit of a stretch to call it dead!

Should we then redefine what a dead language is perhaps? What criteria should it have to fulfill to be classified as dead?

I'll suggest some to get the ball rolling:
1. It must no longer be actively used - Actively is defined as any new code/programs written in the last 20 years
2. Its descendants must not carry any major part of the language but can include design or implementation lessons - Major as defined a syntax structure, keywords ect.
3. The 'Off The Shelf' compiler must be sufficiently hard to get - Requires a contact who has it stuffed in the back of a box and it takes more that 6 weeks to get to work/requires a major rewrite.
4. The last learning text book must have been written for it over 20 years ago.

[Gustaf_Alhll]

Why should a programming language be removed? I'm sure there's always someone using that programming language, that applies to all programming languages.

You can't really say that something (Or someone, that also applies) should disappear. Since everyone has different oppinions about everything, you cannot just pull the string and say that something should be done. For example, you can't say that we should get rid of Brainfudge because it's a "strange" programming language since there will always be someone that thinks the opposite. A thing might be strange to someone, someone else might think it's completely natural.
That applies to programming in general. There are people that thinks programming, no matter what language, is strange. I assume none of us here thinks that, but I know a friend to me that has that oppinion.

That's a big issue with our society. If we don't like something, we want to get rid of it. We do never think from perspectives other than our own.

[Matthew_Harrop]

I'm not sure that is the argument at all. What I understood it as was that there are certain languages that no longer exist because they are not actively written in, not that they should be 'removed'

[Gustaf_Alhll]

I'm not sure that is the argument at all. What I understood it as was that there are certain languages that no longer exist because they are not actively written in, not that they should be 'removed'

I was referring to the first/earlier posts:

Post what languages you think shouldn't exist in a reply

I guess I should've quoted it first.

[mbott]

MOBOL. Ran on the MDS Series 21 that I worked with back in the mid-80s.

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/mohawk/mds21/

--
Mike