A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages
posted by Artw on May 8, 2009 - 47 comments

Bytecode-based virtual machines are the Next Big Thing in programming. You can run Lisp, Ruby, Python, OCaml, and yes even COBOL on the JVM. Or if you prefer your languages to be a bit more melodic there's J#, A#, P# and F#. Even C/C++ has a bytecode compiler now. That's not to mention languages that have their own VMs like Erlang or that are writing their own like Parrot or PyPy. [more inside]
posted by Skorgu on Dec 4, 2007 - 61 comments

Web programmers take note, gotAPI is an excellent collection of searchable programming references wrapped up into a customizable interface.
posted by Roger Dodger on Sep 21, 2006 - 17 comments

Dave Winer offers us 2 views of the scripting world in 2005. He says that 'in one view, we are all inside Microsoft's box, sharing a common set of libraries and object hierarchies. In the other, we use our favourite tools and runtimes, our communities stay independent.' Frighteningly, he may well be absolutely right. What a great diagram; it reminds me of drawing when I was a kid.
posted by Atom Heart Mother on Aug 31, 2001 - 17 comments