Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes:<\/p>\n
Recalling a past Computer History Museum look at the evolution of programming languages, Doug Meil ponders the age-old question of Why Are There So Many Programming Languages? in a new Communications of the ACM blog post. <\/p>\n
“It’s worth noting and admiring the audacity of PL\/I (1964),” Meil writes, “which was aiming to be that ‘one good programming language.’ The name says it all: Programming Language 1. There should be no need for 2, 3, or 4. [Meil expands on this thought in Lessons from PL\/I: A Most Ambitious Programming Language.] Though PL\/I’s plans of becoming the Highlander of computer programming didn’t play out like the designers intended, they were still pulling on a key thread in software: why so many languages? That question was already being asked as far back as the early 1960’s.”<\/p>\n
One of PL\/I’s biggest fans was Digital Research Inc. (DRI) founder Gary Kildall, who crafted the PL\/I-inspired PL\/M (Programming Language for Microcomputers) in 1973 for Intel. But IBM priced PL\/I higher than the languages it sought to replace, contributing to PL\/I’s failure to gain traction. (Along the lines of how IBM’s deal with Microsoft gave rise to a price disparity that was the undoing of Kildall’s CP\/M OS, bundled with every PC in a ‘non-royalty’ deal. Windows was priced at $40 while CP\/M was offered ‘a la carte’ at $240.) As a comp.lang.pl1 poster explained in 2006, “The truth of the matter is that Gresham’s Law: ‘Bad money drives out good’ or Ruskin’s principle: ‘The hoi polloi always prefer an inferior, cheap product over a superior, more expensive one’ are what govern here.”<\/p>\n
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Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Recalling a past Computer History Museum look at the evolution of programming languages, Doug Meil ponders the age-old question of Why Are There So Many Programming Languages? in a new Communications of the ACM blog … Continue reading
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\nSource: Slashdot – Why Are There So Many Programming Languages?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"