Path: csiph.com!newsfeed.hal-mli.net!feeder3.hal-mli.net!newsfeed.hal-mli.net!feeder1.hal-mli.net!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border4.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!news.iecc.com!nerds-end From: "robin" Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages? Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2012 21:09:43 +1100 Organization: Compilers Central Lines: 25 Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <12-03-033@comp.compilers> References: <12-03-012@comp.compilers> <12-03-014@comp.compilers> NNTP-Posting-Host: news.iecc.com X-Trace: leila.iecc.com 1331699392 50013 64.57.183.58 (14 Mar 2012 04:29:52 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@iecc.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2012 04:29:52 +0000 (UTC) Keywords: history, design Posted-Date: 14 Mar 2012 00:29:52 EDT X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com Xref: csiph.com comp.compilers:500 From: "SLK Systems" Sent: Friday, 9 March 2012 2:21 AM > >Personally, I'd say there's been precious little new in programming >>languages since Simula gave us OOP in the late 1960s. > > Yes, and milestones prior to that were > > assembly language - easier than binary coding Then FORTRAN and GEORGE, and probably others, which improved considerably on machine and assembly languages. > COBOL - promoting the use of descriptive identifiers > > And some later significant developments were > > C language - standardizing the syntax of procedural programming Long before C, Algol was used extensively for public presentation of algorithms (see Collected Algorithms of the ACM, initially published in Communications of the ACM); after Algol came PL/I (which incorporated some good features of Algol, COBOL, and FORTRAN), then Pascal.