Template talk:Programming languages/Archive 1

MUMPS is Industrial with a long History

• See the Wikipedia Article - (getting too long ) WkKiPedia MUMPS
• and WIkiBooks COmpuiter Languages Text WikiBook on MUMPS Programming

Intersystems Cache is a big company Fidelity offers Open GTM - Linux Open Source MUMPS

The whole VA Hospital System in the USA runs on MUMPS - VistA - as well as the Indian Health Service and some of the Demartment of Defense.

and now VistA is going Open Source as a full EHR for commercial practices and hospitals outside the VA.

Long history doesn't necessarily make language popular. It is niche tool unless I missed something in recent times. Pavel Vozenilek 01:19, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Just checking...since when does "popular" mean anything at all? You have probably used MUMPS today without knowing it. It is very much alive and in use today, industrially. --Connel MacKenzie 19:53, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

The fact that someone somwehere may use MUMPS does NOT establish a tool as major programming language. Pavel Vozenilek 00:38, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

You sir, make Wikipedia an evil place to visit. You obviously spend all your time here and have a strange agenda to which you adhere. Then, you change your arbitrary criteria at a whim, not even checking to see that your new criteria also proves you wrong? Fix what you've broken here. --Connel MacKenzie 06:10, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

I still await the reference that MUMPS is as popular as other database systems. FoxPro isn't here, neither Digita's RBase, not DB2, neither thousands of others systems. The purpose of the template should be to list only most popular systems, not all. Pavel Vozenilek 23:38, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Just came across these remarks. MUMPS (or M as some call it) is used industrially throughout medicine, worldwide. It surely touches more patients's lives in the US (being used by the VA Hospital System, the DoD Hospital System (though in a variant there, I understand), and in much of the Indian Health System; the first two are the two largest hospital systems anywhere), but it's used in still more European hospitals, though not in such large organizations. That's a lot of code, in a lot of places, doing a lot of very useful and vital stuff. Hardly trivial or even honestly dismissable. It's in current, and long term, use and has every prospect of continuing to be so. On this basis, it should be in the major language category . Albeit in the not popularly well known group (eg, Jovial was once very widely used in DoD projects). It is not historical in any serious meaning of the term. Ihile it's true that few schools teach MUMPS (it's really industiral and not academic!) and so most computer science people aren't familiar with it, and it's true that it's not used for writing viruses or cgi routines, and MS hasn't introduced a .M yet, these are not bars to inclusion.

The template should be changed forthwith. Comments? ww 05:24, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Look, even the MUMPS article says that it "never gained widespread popularity". A "major programming language" should satisfy one of two criteria:

1. It is extremely popular (the vast majority of programmers have heard of it, and a large population of programmers can program in it)
2. It has been extremely influential in programming language history

MUMPS is neither. There are many languages that are popular in some narrow application domain. Is MUMPS really one of the 20 most important programming languages in history, on a par with SQL or C? k.lee 02:53, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Smalltalk 'academical' or 'industrial'?

Hey, I just came here because I was looking over this box and noticed someone put Smalltalk into the industrial category (!?). Who in their right minds would use Smalltalk for anything other than educational purposes? Can we please move it into Academic? —Sean κ. ⇔ 18:01, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Some random new guy moved it. It was originally in academic. He had some pretty good justification — you may want to take it up with him. Deco 08:42, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm not going to start an rv-war here. I elaborate my arguments here. My impression is that it was the glue technology for databases, quick to roll out and thus ideal for fast-changing financial industry needs. I'm sure IBM, one of the major vendors of Smalltalk, had much to do with its adoption on their sites. --AllanBz 03:20, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

I guess I have a bias since I learned Smalltalk in a Programming Language Design course, and know nothing about IBM databases. And of course, I used Squeak, which is a Smalltalk environment written specifically for educational use. I don't have the Blue Book lying around anywhere, and I can't find the entire thing online, but I'm fairly certain that the original intent in writing Smalltalk was not practical use. I'd would like to see references to how Smalltalk is used in industry, though. —Sean κ. + 03:44, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

<grumble> ...didn't expect no bloomin' Spanish Inquisition... </grumble>

IBM sold VisualAge Smalltalk, not the database. (Actually, they sell DB/2 and now Informix, but those had no explicit connection to VA ST.) Smalltalk is more than Squeak, you know. The major implementations in the eighties and nineties were Smalltalk V, VisualWorks, and VisualAge.

At Washington Mutual, a Smalltalk image was used to interface to those things through which tellers run MICR checks. At Chase, I think it was on an OS/2 system and presented the old Chemical logo; I don't remember what it did, though it may have had something to do with CRM. This was before Chemical bought JP Morgan, so I don't think it had anything to do with the Kapital system mentioned on this page. By the way, another page. As for Chrysler, I wasn't there, and besides, I'm saving that for an article.

If anyone here is interested, the stuff I was saving was the Extreme Programming#History section. --AllanBz 05:13, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps ST-72 and ST-76 were only research languages, but ST-80 was definitely for use. Adele Goldberg writes that Xerox started casting around to disseminate Smalltalk-80 in order to

1. expand the programming community to gain more general experience with how people can use the language
2. expand the programming language researcher community using Smalltalk
3. influence hardware designers to consider ways to increase performance of Smalltalk implementations
4. establish a standard as an OOP and a graphical IDE

(—paraphrased from the Green Book) Points 1, 3, and 4 argue against a pure research language. That Digital, Apple, HP, and Tektronix took them up on it (by agreement dedicating full-time personnel to their implemenation projects) also argues that technologists could immediately see practical uses for it. That Squeak image you used is a direct descendant through Apple of the PARC images, three versions of which went to the four partners (plus UC Berkeley, but that weakens my point, so I'll leave it out). Kent Beck's Sorted Collection may be more help with the history.

Crap, I've spent more time writing this than I wanted to have spent. —AllanBz 04:35, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

I'll have to concede to your expertise on this one. I am familiar with ST-80, I read most of the Blue Book, but I was still shocked to learn that it was implemented for industrial use. From my experience, I found it was easy to crash the system on purpose, and wreak havok that was impossible to undo without reverting to a previous state, for example. —Sean κ. + 23:58, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

That's because Squeak is crap. You're just lucky you didn't have Mark Guzdial for a professor. :-) The commercial Smalltalks are considerably better. Deco 00:14, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Are we in agreement then? I was waiting for Stevie to weigh in before moving Smalltalk into industrial. —AllanBz 03:42, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've pretty much been convinced; I didn't want to challenge anyone, just wanted to hear the argument for. This is out of the range of my expertise. —Sean κ. + 04:04, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Is Smalltalk a major industrial language today? Or just notable? If it was "major," but not any longer, that makes it historical. But if its academic use outweighs its industrial use today, and that use is "major," that makes it academic. I realize "major" is subjective, but I guess we should just realize that not every language can be in the "major" camp just because it's used a lot in some quarters. Narrow instead of wide use tends to detract from "major" status in my view. On top of all this, Smalltalk is #46 on the TIOBE list. That would seem to me to indicate either academic or historical, but not industrial, if it were a major industrial language today, it would just about have to be in the top 20. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 04:30, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

The TIOBE list isn't a good justification for what's "academic" or "industrial" since Objective-C and the Bourne shell are both below Smalltalk yet both are definitely industrial languages and Smalltalk is definitely active today with Squeak so it's not historic. - DNewhall Aug 5, 2005

Why is Smalltalk again in acamedic? Discussion seems to be over.

Powerbuilder

I took out Powerbuilder, can anyone attest to this being a major programming language? I visited its website and Wikipedia article, and I'm not convinced it's notable. —Sean κ. ⇔ 23:37, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

This was just added two hours before you came along. We would've deleted it just as quickly if we noticed first. Thanks. Deco 23:43, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Powerbuilder became a dominant programming language during the heydays of client-server development, before the Internet came along -- See http://www.lannigan.org/powersoft_powerbuilder_history.htm . I assert that it's a major programming language. --Perfecto 20:43, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps it was major, but who still uses it?

Some of the firms who participated in the beta program were American Airlines, Microsoft, 3M, Fidelity Investments, Coca-Cola, and many others.

and,

Despite the troubles at Sybase, Powersoft's PowerBuilder technology still enjoyed a dominant role in new client server development, until 1996.

It could be historical, but it certainly isn't on par with giants like BASIC and COBOL. —Sean κ. + 23:13, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

I'll vote for it sitting in the "Historical" category. It clearly was major, but not any longer. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 23:06, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

I restored the link, as it was already longstanding before its recent removal. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 23:26, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! --Perfecto 00:45, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It's not purely historical. It may be the best place on the template for it, but there are major institutions using it (primarily financial), and major new revisions launched regularly. Some of the household names are the FBI, Hitachi, and the PRC railways, for the largest railway ticket vending and reservation system in the world. I'm biased - my day job is coding PB :) akaDruid 09:48, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Vote on Ruby

Ruby keeps being added without any attempt at consensus. Sooooo, let's have a vote. Place your vote under Include or Exclude. If you vote for Include, please suggest a category. Thanks!

Include (Ruby)

• Include. Ruby is huge in Japan, and probably one of the top 5 scripting languages in the world. Deco 00:15, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Oh yeah, category. Industrial, clearly — it's rarely used outside of industry. Deco 09:20, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
• Include. The same with Deco -- Taku 00:34, May 27, 2005 (UTC)
• Include. Ruby is larger than Python in Japan, and huge all around the world. Many companies are endorsing Ruby along with industry heavy weights (Pragmatic programmers and Martin Fowler). Ruby isn't something that will be a major language, it already is. --Steve
• Include. I say include --192.150.10.200
• Include. It's at least mentioned as much as some of the rarer languages on the list and it's a serious competitor to Perl and Python. Plus, I think Ruby is in the mainstream enough to garner a enough attention to warrant it being on the list. — Hao2lian
• Include. The Ruby on Rails (RoR) movement is picking up steam in the category of website/database development. That said, Ruby is this decade's fad interpreted language, not unlike Tcl in the 1990s. I put Tcl and Perl and Ruby and PHP all in the same category of interpreted languages that have a worldwide community that fervently claims that language to be highly useful in a particular domain of use: if one belongs on this list, then they all do. —optikos 18:52, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
• Include. Ruby is a highly respectable challenger among scripting languages, frequently favorably contrasted with Perl by Perl users (speaking as a Perl user). Its community is a rich source of smart ideas. Ruby is the language in which portupgrade is written - a tool familiar to most FreeBSD sysadmins. Ruby on Rails has inspired numerous imitators - in the same way that Zope caused Python to be considered a major programming language. Ruby should be in the list. — Mark (Mkmcconn) ** 21:23, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
• Include. I believe Ruby is here to stay and is gaining momentum. Recently, I've begun to see job ads requiring Ruby and Rails experience (Vonage, Aug 2006). Ruby appears to be object-oriented like Java but with fewer typing restrictions and with lexical scoping (hope I'm getting that right) and it's interesting strictly from an academic perspective--but it's also getting lots of real use. Commercial hosting services for it are even readily available these days.Harborsparrow 20:17, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Exclude (Ruby)

• Exclude. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 23:26, May 26, 2005 (UTC) - It's notable, and it gets a few write-ups here and there, but it's still a boutique language with a small, but seemingly fanatical following. Perhaps it will become major, but to say it is today is silly.
  • If we end up adding Ruby, I say we add ActionScript at the same time. It's even higher on the Tiobe popularity list than Ruby and has also been called a fast-rising star amongst languages.
  • I'm considering changing my vote in the near future, as Ruby seems to be rising steadily in the TIOBE list. I may be saying Include later this summer. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 22:15, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)
• Exclude for now. Ruby has a community that wants it to be a major language; it's where Python was several years ago. But it is not a language that has a great number of people using it yet [1] and it is not a language that has had a substantial influence on the field yet. --FOo 03:18, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
• Exclude IMHO. I never encountered them in the wild in practice, except in some FreeBSD ports tree tools made by a believer. And I've seen really odd ball languages in practice industry use over the years. Marcov

Abstain (Ruby)

• I've heard nothing but great things about Ruby, but I'll to see what everyone else here says before I vote. —Sean κ. + 23:49, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Status (Ruby)

June 4 2005

There are currently five votes to include, and two votes to exclude, with one abstaining. However, according to Wikipedia tradition in counting votes, votes coming from anonymous users, new accounts or accounts with low contributions are usually discounted--and this applies to four of the five Include votes.

If I discount these particular votes by half, it becomes 3 to 2 in favor of including. This, in my view does not indicate a consensus as of yet. I would recommend an extension to the voting period. Does one week sound good? Or do you not agree with my analysis? — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 21:17, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

What is the status now? Since we have no consensus I'll try removing it (that should stir things up). Ideogram 17:58, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Splitting Industrial

I suggest we split off some of the languages from Industrial into a new category, High-level. For example,

Industrial

ABAP | Ada | AWK | Assembly | C | C++ | COBOL| Fortran | Lisp | PL/SQL| SAS | sh

High-level

C# | Delphi | Java | JavaScript | Objective-C | Perl | PHP | Python | Smalltalk| Visual Basic

—Sean κ. + 23:47, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

I'd rather not — every time we categorize them more it makes the list more controversial, and occupy more lines. I personally find your classification highly controversial (I would label almost all of these languages as high-level). It's also not clear to me that the exploring reader would benefit from this classification. Deco 00:20, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

How about the categories "Languages generally used closer to the system level" and "Languages generally used closer to the application level" ;) ? —Sean κ. + 00:24, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm with Deco. However, your ideas sound good for new categories or list articles. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 02:03, May 27, 2005 (UTC)

Visual Basic .NET

User:Stevietheman reverted my change of "Visual Basic" -> "VB" | "VB.NET", on the basis that he did not think that Visual Basic .NET is a major language.

I disagree. Here is why:

• VB.NET fits the (vauge) criteria for "major programming language"
  • It has a significant number of book written about it, more than many contemparies. If I search Amazon.com for "PHP" I get 368 results. "Python" and "C#" both get 411, and many of these are clearly not about the language. "Visual Basic .NET" gets 477, all about the language.
    • MS inertia, that's all. Of course it was going to get many books written about it. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 20:53, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
      • It's not just MS publishing the books. They wouldn't do it unless they thought they'd make money out of it. GreenReaper 23:17, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • It has thousands (and let's be honest, it's more like tens of thousands) of "industrial" users around the world. Some of these are the classic stereotype of a "programmmer", some of them are just people who do programming now and then in their line of business, in a similar way to shell scripting for administrators.
    • As far as those sticking with MS, it's mostly going to C#, let's be real. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 20:53, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
      • I think you are wrong - were you a VB programmer yourself? VB.NET syntax is very close to VB syntax (very, very close), and contains the VB libraries. It is easier for VB programmers to read. It is also the one that has conversion tools to it. It is the one that VB programmers will try first. It is close enough to VB for management to decide "hey, we should move to VB.NET, not that strange C# thing". For all these reasons, it is more likely to be chosen. --GreenReaper 23:17, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • It is of historical importance, because it represents the movement (or in some cases, attempted movement) of a body of programmers from a language that could only charitably be called "object-oriented" to one which cannot be discussed without talking about objects.
    • Nobody is arguing about notability. This template is about whether it's "major". — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 20:53, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
      • It was one of the criteria mentioned for inclusion on the list. Several academic ones are notable but not major, in that sense. --GreenReaper 23:17, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• It is regarded as a first-class .NET language by Microsoft, an equal to C#, but intended for different uses. This argument is weakened by the fact that they theoretically regard J# the same way, but everyone who uses .NET knows that's not the case - try finding equivalent samples for most articles in J# :-)
  • You argued against your point here, and convincingly, I might add.  :) — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 20:53, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
    • The second point is very important, though. It shows the difference between a real first-class language and a fake one - the real ones actually have examples written in them. :-) GreenReaper 23:17, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• It's not going away
  • Former VB developers who want to move on are having to make a choice between C# or VB.NET. Some are going to C#, but for most, VB.NET is far more comfortable (especially those that need to maintain a VB codebase that can only be converted to VB.NET)
    • Borland's Delphi has also been getting a lot of former VB6 programmers. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 20:53, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
      • It's probably been getting some, but how many? --GreenReaper 23:17, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • At the same time, Microsoft's intention is clearly to move future Office development on to Visual Basic .NET from Visual Basic for Applications. Although they maintain that support for VBA 6 is not going away (unlike Visual Basic), they have not added any new features to VBA and regard VB.NET as the platform for ongoing development, as evidenced by the provision of articles covering migration to VB.NET.
    • I seriously doubt this will become true. MS has a certain penchant for over-promising and under-delivering, and there's been a recent report of MS backing off .NET in the next version of Windows. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 20:53, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
      • I'm not quite sure what you mean by the un-delivering - the Visual Studio Tools for Office beta is here right now, and it's hard to see why they wouldn't want to follow it up - managed code is almost perfectly suited for office applications, that do not have hard performance bounds, and which require languages that can be learnt and mastered with relative ease. --GreenReaper 23:17, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• VB.NET is not Visual Basic. Nor is it C#. The presence of these languages should preclude the inclusion of VB.NET.
  • I agree here, but that doesn't also mean it's "major." — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 20:53, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
    • I wished to head off any argument for including it under VB. :-) --GreenReaper 23:17, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I am aware of the lack of regard which VB.NET has within most of the open-source community, as evidenced by the state of the VB.NET compiler for Mono, mbas (though it's improving, and 1.2 may actually have a working version). I doubt that VB, VBA or VBScript is particularly popular, either (though see Gambas), but they are widely used in the Windows world. Their successor is a major language for those of us who work there, and as such deserves inclusion in this list. GreenReaper 19:43, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'll start a vote in the next section. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 20:26, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

Whether a language is open-source or not doesn't work itself into the discussion of major status or not. It never has, and I suppose it never will. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 20:53, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

Sure it does! My feeling is that it is more likely that Wikipedia users that are interested in the programming articles are professional programmers who have an interest in giving back to the community, and as such are just the sort of people who will not be interested in open-source . . . and to such contributors, line-of-business-oriented languages for propiatary operating systems such as VB.NET may not be on their radar. I'm suggesting that the importance of a language may be undersestimated if they are not used by the Wikipedia community (or rather, that the wikipedia community of programmers does not fairly represent the general community of programmers).

Of course, I could be wrong, and just having suggested the possibility of bias I might deserve to be thrown out on my ear anyway, but eh. :-) --GreenReaper 22:18, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've not noticed any bias against coverage of proprietary languages in the Wikipedia. Just look at the template as it currently stands. So I feel you're arguing against a straw man. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 23:08, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

OK, we can burn that one then! --GreenReaper 23:23, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Vote on VB.NET

Include (VB.NET)

• Include: I believe the TIOBE list is being incorrectly calculated by not checking for "Visual Studio Basic .NET", and that VB.NET's real position should be around 12, not 29 22. The C# and VB.NET newsgroups get approximately the same amount of traffic (several thousand messages a month), which suggests to me that they have around the same popularity. --GreenReaper 22:30, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • It's important to realize we're speaking of programming languages, not development environments. Thus, not checking for "Visual Studio .NET" is as appropriate as not checking for "Zend Studio" (PHP). — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 23:03, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)
    • I'm sorry, I mistyped - I meant 'not checking for "Visual Basic .NET"', which is the official name of the language. GreenReaper 23:11, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • OK. Do we have verification from TIOBE that they're not checking for "Visual Basic .NET"? From what I gathered, the formula uses variations in cases like this, like it combines Kylix with Delphi when tabulating Delphi's numbers. If someone from TIOBE has clearly stated that they left out "Visual Basic .NET" from the formula, I will definitely change my vote to Include, no question. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 01:40, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)
        • I'm afraid I can't say, because I've not recieved any reply to the email I sent on the 4th. I will ask for confirmation from another email address, in case the first didn't get through. Hopefully they'll get back to me on that shortly. Considering the way it moved from 29 to 22 this month with no overt comment it may be that they did include "Visual Basic .NET" earlier, but that due to the weighted nature of the graph it hasn't built up to the full level yet. I guess we'll see! GreenReaper 01:57, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
        • It looks like it was indeed a problem. I just received this email from Paul Jansen at TIOBE: Thanks for your feedback on the TPC index. I didn't receive your first mail by the way. This is a very good suggestion! According to our calculations "Visual Basic .NET" has a market share of 0.851% which means that it will be at position 16 just between Lisp and Fortran. GreenReaper 03:23, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
          • That's good news for VB.NET then for making it on this list. I'll definitely have to support its inclusion now. By the way, I also had sent an email to Paul and I convinced him to remove "SQL" (as it's not a programming language) and instead show "PL/SQL" (which is). PL/SQL will be lower in the list than SQL was, but that will make the list even more accurate. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 04:52, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)
• Include. Due to recent developments (VB.NET moving up TIOBE list significantly in June, and TIOBE list leaving off "Visual Basic.NET" from formula), I'm enthusiastically switching my vote. VB.NET is definitely now a major language (for better or worse).  :) — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 04:54, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)
• IncludeP-unit 06:38, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
• Include. Strongly, in fact. Not only is VB.NET fully as capable of object-orientation as C# or Java, it is getting perhaps even more use throughout industry as of late 2006, and it's still a common first language for young programmers (based on my experience in tutoring kids). I can hardly believe anyone would even question that it's a major force to be reckoned with.Harborsparrow 20:20, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Exclude (VB.NET)

• Exclude, for now. 1) It's #29 on the TIOBE list, 2) MS is beginning to distance itself from .NET for the next version of Windows, 3) I've heard all kinds of talk about VB programmers either staying on VB6 or switching to C# or Delphi. I think VB.NET will start dropping soon, and will never become a major language. This all has nothing to do with my embracing open source (and I do), but rather the current reality as I see it, being a programmer of 15 years. Note: I may be changing my vote to Include in the near future, depending on where it sits in the TIOBE list later this summer. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 20:43, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
  • 1. Indeed? If the way they make those statistics is as described then I have a problem with it. The search for VB.NET turns up 19,600 results on google ('+"VB.NET programming" -tv') . . . but the official name for the language is Visual Basic .NET, and that ('+"Visual Basic .NET programming" -tv') turns up 113,000, which would place it 11th (just above SAS and below Javascript, although I only used Google for that). I will send them an email asking them if they have considered this. I suspect they have not, as bash programming (which is 30th) has 13,300 results in google.
    2. Microsoft is indeed saying it doesn't want to rewrite Windows in VB.NET, or most of its apps, just as you wouldn't rewrite them in COBOL (if COBOL was a language around nowadays). I suspect also that a lot of people complained to them about .NET-only interfaces, so they want to reassure people that .NET will not be the only way to access features of Longhorn.
    3. I've heard a lot about it, too. People dislike change, and it was indeed a big change. But what about the people who are not complaining? We don't hear about them, because they don't complain. :-)
  • You may be right, but overall I feel that Microsoft has too much of an investment in VB.NET for them to stop pushing it. Basic has always been their language for semi-professional programmers, and they are encourainging these sorts of users onto it rather than C# - I think they will keep improving it until people accept it, just like they did with VB. I personally found the 2002 and 2003 versions of VB.NET harder to use because of the features removed such as edit-and-continue and the lack of global forms (yes, it's a hack, but a convenient one!) - having tried the 2005 version, I would say their restoration will greatly ease the transition from Visual Basic to VB.NET for those unwilling to move on just yet. And what is the alternative for VBA users? I don't see them switching to C#, but staying with VBA will become increasingly less tenable as time goes on. --GreenReaper 22:16, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • I very much encourage you to send your suggestions to Paul Jansen at TIOBE. He's very open to suggestions, and has even incorporated some of mine into his formula. Also note that this is a 12-month rolling value that doesn't just look at today's numbers, so as to smooth out any spikes due to temporary high news coverage or marketing efforts (wouldn't you agree this is a good thing?). It also doesn't just look at Google, but also Yahoo and MSN Search, as far as I know.
      • Yep, done so already, will see what he says. I agree that the idea of a rolling value is a good idea, although if it's been calculated incorrectly all that time it'd be nice if the current numbers for VB.NET were weighted more towards values that were likely to be correct. The Yahoo (20,500 vs 56,800) and MSN (14,332 vs 52,556) numbers are less dramatic, but only in that ~300%-400% difference is less dramatic than ~600%. :-)
      • Update: Well, the June results are out and it's up to #22, just below ActionScript and above Ruby (and Visual FoxPro ;-). I've not had a reply to my email yet, though, so I don't know if this is a related correction or just a natural shift (perhaps they only recently added VB.NET as a separate value anyway?)
    • Also, it appears that what has gone on is MS saying that many more things would be written in .NET than they are currently committing to... this is very much a backslide.
      • Yep. I agree. They intended to rewrite lots in .NET. They had to back down - I would guess they realised they couldn't rewrite all of that in the time provided. This isn't .NET-specific, though - they've pushed back lots of other things they planned to do for Longhorn, as well, like Indigo and WinFS. I think this reflects the fact that they've had to do a bunch more work on security in the mean time, and that like all of us, they were a little too optimistic with their scheduling. ;-) --GreenReaper 00:32, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • And, what of MS' investment in Visual FoxPro?  :) — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 23:51, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
      • I thought they just bought that to get the users? ;-) Seriously, though, I'm not really qualified to comment, but they appear to be trying to keep it separate, but allow people to connect it to .NET. It's not their prime focus, but it looks to be still ticking over. --GreenReaper 00:32, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Exclude. One simple reason: the article is quite minimal. I don't believe we should list articles on this list which don't have good, detailed articles written on them. Go expand Visual Basic .NET and come back. It's also a very young language; although C# is no older, it's more interesting than VB.NET in several ways (VB.NET is really little more than an extension of VB that adds .NET platform features). Also, I believe Steve is wrong about MS distancing itself from .NET. Deco 22:59, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • I will do that! I think you are off in your comment about extensions, though - they're not the same language. Saying VB.NET is VB with .NET extensions is like saying that C# is C++ with .NET extensions, which is false - that language is C++ with Managed Extensions, and it is very different. If what you suggest were the case, I assure you that VB programmers would not be complaining so much! :-) I guess this just shows that the .NET article needs a lot of improvement . . . its starting sentence is inaccurate misleading. --GreenReaper 23:38, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • It's somewhat less minimal now - are there any things you feel are uncovered in this version? GreenReaper 22:58, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • Excellent job, I'm very impressed. Considering the number of VB.NET programmers and the improved quality of this article, I am forced to change my vote to Include. Deco 04:36, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Comments (VB.NET)

• I think PHP is too low on the TIOBE list too.  :) And that's b/c Zend and php.net has been so excellent at making their documentation so good that the need for third-party sites trying to help people understand it are relatively minimal. Certainly, the rankings can be questioned, but if you look at most of the languages that are above VB.NET, it should be fairly clear from industry knowledge that they are above VB.NET in terms of usage... today. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 23:33, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
• When MS is reported to be backing away (even more) from using .NET facilities in the development of the next version of Windows, that speaks volumes. [2] Further, .NET is hardly even being used to develop commercial apps (in form of Windows clients), although the use of ASP.NET in the development of web applications is signficant. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 23:33, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

Yes. They don't want to rewrite their entire Windows codebase and base it on something that they're not 100% sure about. Back in 2001, when the idea of basing everything on .NET was proposed, things looked different. I think nowadays Microsoft has a better appreciation for the dangers of moving too fast.

You are also right that few commercial applications (by which I think you mean the sort of apps you'd buy online) seem to be written in it. A significant problem there is the requirement for the runtime - people are naturally loath to add 23Mb to their download. MS does not appear to be planning to allow internal compilation of the runtime, because "shrinkwrap" (or download) apps are not their target for VB.NET; business applications are. It is a language for the IT geek in non-computing-related companies, and in that sort of environment it is possible to specify that all your desktops have .NET.

The thing is, you don't see people announcing "Pizza Hut's finance division made a neat thing for calculating exchange rates in VB.NET to be used across the company". This is the sort of thing I was getting at above - line-of-business development is not as visible, and can lead to underestimating a language's importance. But it's still there, and still important. --GreenReaper 00:12, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• I suppose I'm safe now in declaring a consensus to include VB.NET. Congrats! :) — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 04:48, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

Pascal

Surely this is industrial or historical? It used to be used a lot for programming early Macs before C was encouraged instead. —Ashley Y 00:58, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC)

I always thought of Pascal as being more academic than anything. Especially with Delphi now being called a language on its own (and thus separating from Pascal for our purposes), it seems to me to be appropriate to drop into "academic" in that it's widely known that Pascal used to be the teaching language of choice in universities. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 01:59, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

IMHO the classification of Pascal as an academic language is stupid. Pascal compilers were delivered will all seventies and eighties OSes, and they were used. Turbo Pascal alone pretty was the dominant compiler of an entire decade. This view might be a bit US centric, Europe seems to have more mainstream Pascal use than the US.

Well aleast in the US Pascal is definetlly an academic language used to teach people new to programing. And has been for proablly a decade. However it is dying out now in favor of Java as a first language Lotu 00:02, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Pascal was widely used in industry during the 1980s (e.g., Texas Instruments). Pascal's industrial use is largely historical nowadays, as the fashion turned first to C then started shattering into multiple camps: C++, Java, Microsoft language du jour. I think that Pascal belongs in either academic or historical categories. The primary reason that companies such as Texas Instruments standarized on Pascal was that for a number of years colleges taught all of their undergrad students Pascal and structured programming. Pascal (or C in certain other companies) was synonymous with structured programming. The passing of structured programming as the current fad, having been replaced with object-oriented programming, also reinforces the assessment that Pascal's heyday is in the past. —optikos 18:59, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Pascal is much more utilized then many programming languages in the list, such as D, ABAP, Ada, AWK, Eiffel, JADE, REALbasic, REBOL, RPG. There are many pure pascal compilers out there, and many new being created, such Palm & Pascal compiler, Pocket Studio for Palm, MIDletPascal which compiles pure pascal to java bytecode for mobiles, etc. There is also the powerful Free Pascal Compiler, which is even available on Fedora Core official repositories. I do not agree with removing pascal while other much less used and even known languages are marked as "major programming languages". --200.204.118.228 16:18, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Vote on ActionScript

ActionScript's profile seems to be rising fast in recent times. So I'm instituting a vote here.

Include (ActionScript)

• Include. Flash app development is becoming quite widespread, and the ActionScript language is becoming rather hot. It has also been moving up dramatically on the TIOBE list and appears close to cracking the Top 20.

Exclude (ActionScript)

• Exclude. 1. I find TIOBE's methodology a dubious measure of a language's importance. For one thing, it exaggerates the importance of anything web-related relative to non-web-related things. ActionScript's rising ranking is an example of this: it's for programming Flash, ergo people who make web pages are much more likely to write about it. 2. It appears that ActionScript is more properly understood as a library and environment for the ECMAScript programming language. In fact, I would actually vote for replacing JavaScript with ECMAScript too. k.lee 22:11, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Move ABAP to Historical?

I note that ABAP has just dropped more than 20 positions on the TIOBE list for June. And that appears to make it no longer a major language. Shall we move it to Historical then? Or should we wait a couple months and see if it bounces back? — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 22:27, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)

Name of "Visual Basic (VB)" item

Just to clarify: the reason I changed the template's VB item to read "Visual Basic (VB)" instead of just "VB" was to ensure that readers would have no problem making the connection between VB and VB.NET, and at the same time giving the full name of VB (the "VB" abbreviation as of itself is bound to be cryptic to non-insiders). --Wernher 10:42, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think just VB | VB.NET is necessary, and is better as it seems to reduce it to two lines on 800x600; I think the dual assumption that a) Visual Basic will be more non-cryptic, and b) that this matters is not true. Consider:

• If people do not know what the acronym VB means, they are unlikely to know what Visual Basic is, and hence what VB.NET is; therefore the connection between them will have little use
• If people are using this template as a way to find out about all the major programming languages, they will be clicking on the link, and will find the full name anyway

One other possibility to consider is Basic: VB - VB.NET - this makes the BASIC connection clear, although that seems a little odd. Of course, then we would have to do C: ++ - # - Objective for consistency. ;-)

What does everyone else think, though? GreenReaper 13:22, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I like it like it is right now. "Visual Basic" is right at my tolerance for maximum length of a language name, and just in case someone looking for VB.NET clicks on Visual Basic (particularly after VS2005 comes out with the name change), I added a disambiguation message to the top of Visual Basic. So Visual Basic, VB.NET is what I prefer. Deco 23:58, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I totally agree with Deco. Besides, we'll probably be adding Ruby and ActionScript soon anyway. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 02:26, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

I guess it is the official name of the language. The disambiguation looks like it should work. OK! GreenReaper 11:08, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Erlang

Although the anonymous person adding it did not discuss it here, I support the addition of Erlang. It has substantial industrial use. Deco 19:17, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Except that this "substantial" are some projects in Ericsson, Nortel and handful other organizations. Pavel Vozenilek 20:38, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

TFD

This template was nominated for deletion (on the grounds that the criteria for a language being 'major' are arbitrary). However, consensus was to keep it. The debate also mentioned that this template is redundant with template:Major programming languages. Since the latter isn't actually used anywhere and this one is, I'm going to merge the two of them since there's no point in the redundancy. The horizontal layout seems to be preferred. Radiant_>|< 12:50, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

• Done. The vertical variant can be found here. Its content is somewhat different, please discuss amongst yourselves which languages should or should not be considered 'major'. Radiant_>|< 12:55, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

There was quite a bit of discussion on this . . . the divisions were altered to provide for the fact that while there are some languages that are not in major use to create applications that lots of people people use, they are of major importance due to their use as (e.g.) teaching aids. GreenReaper 17:21, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to nominate the template for deletion again - afaict "Major" "Industrial" "Academic" are unverifiable categories masquerading as navigation. It's clear from the archived "Language inclusion criteria I" discussions that this was understood to be excessively subjective, but that was excused on the ground that "the function of the box is not to make claims but to aid navigation". It's clear from those archived discussions that they considered destroying the template in Dec 2004 but didn't because no one had complained! As a reader all I can tell is that these languages are claimed to be "Major", some are claimed to be "Industrial" (whatever that means), some are claimed to be "Academic" (whatever that means), and others defy this unverifiable dichotomy. IsaacGouy 17:28, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Indus

I've removed the addition of Indus, as I don't feel it fits any definition of - heck, it was just released. The user who added it is a new user, and their only edits are related to this language. See also Category talk:Programming languages. GreenReaper 11:09, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Inclusion of dialects

• Should Delphi, which is a dialect of Pascal with object-oriented extnsions, be included?
• Should Common Lisp, which is a particular specification of the Lisp, be included?

GreenReaper 15:17, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Objective Caml

OCaml isn't what we could call a widespread programming language. However, Scheme is in this table in the Academic section. Why?

Because Scheme comes from MIT and is widespread in american universities and common in foreign ones?

Outside France where Caml is in use everywhere in the educational system, Caml is taught at Caltech, Brown University, Michigan State university, University of Pisa, University of Bologna, University of Urbino, University of Technology, Sydney, California State University Northridge, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Washington,...

Is it because the Scheme language is good for programming introductory courses?

If you take a look at some Caml code, its ressemblance to mathematical sentences is striking, which is a very positive point towards its use in computer science courses. Caml is also a functionnal language and has proper tail-recursion; but it is much more difficult to write false programs in Caml than in Scheme, for it makes use of static typing with type inference.

Besides, OCaml is a serious industrial language for it is very well suited for automatic proof and program analysis. And, last but not least, Caml is very FAST.

I would say Scheme is not "major" now, but has had a significant contribution to Computer Science. Maybe it's historical. Today it's rarely used for anything except for writing trivial algorithms in education or as a scripting language. Ocaml is also not what you would call "major". At least not the language. But they are pushing compiler technology, indeed the focus in Ocaml was never on the language but the quality of code generated by the compiler. They arguably produced the most powerful contemporary compiler. Although for a not well-known language... Possibly becuase more well-known languages are unsuitable for certain global optimisations. So I'm uncertain, but if anything, Ocaml the compiler is major.

Some modifications...

• Eiffel? I'm uncertain, but I'd rather lean toward industrial. The main implementation is produced by a company, it is certainly unlike the other languages listed under academic. It's not developed as a research project at a university.
• Remove Lisp, it's not used any more. Currently used dialects are Scheme and Common Lisp, both already listed.
• Modula-2 is at best historic, especially that it's obsolete now (Modula-3). Besides, it's very rare.
• sh is not even Turing-complete. And it's mostly used as a glue language in UNIX.
• APL is sold to this day (it's called J now [[3]], and uses ASCII rather than a custom character set, but other than that, it's almost identical to APL, even developed by the same scientist). It runs on the new AMD64 architecture, that's something against it being historical, I think. Industrial seems to suggest somewhat widespread use, so maybe put it in academic?

Ugly APL/J

There's currently a huge wad featuring APL, then the text "historical dialect" followed by a link to the J language. This must be condensed - I suggest either removing one of these languages, or just separating them - none of the other languages here have textual explanations in the box, since it simply creates too much clutter. —EatMyShortz 05:11, 10 October 2005 (UTC):<=Ahem.........APL's The best,IT,[.nfo .ech:APL's Home!]:can DO!,so such little space!:Bless U Iverson!68.112.240.208 (talk) 11:15, 12 March 2018 (UTC)\Ahem:where're those Beautiful APLholic Chars?

awk

awk is a "major programming language"? ROFLMAO. Let's be serious. Rmisiak 00:18, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree. It is historical, but replaced by Perl, and then by Python. Nobody use it yet! - Splang 09:55, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Do we really need this template?

Do we really need this template? I think a list of major programming languages would be enough, we already have the category system and this templates only clutters the articles, no need to force this onto our readers I'd say... —R. Koot 21:28, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Keep- I think that we should cut down on the number of lanuages and only include major ones used today. We could also split up the list into different catagories (with better naems than these): Wide usage today, web, education, legacy, etc. P-unit 06:41, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Add section on web & splitting up the template into different secion templates

Do you think we should include a section for web lanuages in the template? These languages would include HTML, XML, ASP, PHP, Cold Fusion, etc. (list any more below, and include comments). Another suggestion would be to split up this template into different catagories (education, currently widely used languages, legacy, web) and inlcude the catagory as a new template seperate from this template, like all the other sections would be P-unit 06:43, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Probably not, ASP is really a wrapper for other languages of which variants are represented already (mainly VBScript/JScript), while HTML and XML are not _programming_ languages by any stretch of the imagination. (See Computer language.) PHP is there already and can be used for non-web applications, and someone recently added ColdFusion. -- Blorg 14:48, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

JSP?

The link is broken. Besides, if it's supposed to mean Java ServerPages, then it should be clear that that's no programming language, and thus should be removed from this template. Whaa? 18:24, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I removed it. It's clearly not a programming language. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 08:25, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Magik

Since there does not appear to be a definition of what a major programming language is it is obviously difficult to imagine how a language conforms.

It appears that if a person is not that familiar with a language it becomes automatically rejected as not a major programming language. This is clearly nonsense.

Magik is widely used in its market (GIS applications). In this context is performs an important role. Software written in Magik helps manages many of the world's power generation, cable TV and water networks. There is in fact a good chance that as I type the power that is supplying my computer is being transmitted over a network supported by software written in Magik. The next time you have a power outage the chances are that Magik software is helping to restoring power quickly.

In my company Magik is a critical part of our business operations. I would certainly classify it as major. I can see from the history that at least one other person thought so too.

I'm uncertain. Some languages on the template do have a limited domain, such as ABAP and SAS. However, it seems like the programmer pool of Magik is small enough that the large majority of programmers have never heard of it. Its role in the GIS industry may be important, but I'm not sure about its wider notability. Google hits on Magik programming are relatively sparse, about 50,000. However, if you can locate additional evidence of notability I might reconsider. Deco 02:27, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

This template is not well defined, is biased and simply wrong. Unfortunately, its deletion was not yet agreed. This doesn't change the fact that Magik is specialised tool and NOT major programming language. Pavel Vozenilek 03:35, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I have some sympathy with the above comment from Pavel since he himself observes that the definition of "major" is not well defined, it is difficult for me not to conclude that his reasoning behind his rejection of Magik as a major programming language is fundamentally flawed. Since I do not see any supporting evidence to justifying any of the other "major" programming languages in this template I must also conclude that the composition of this list, in its entirely, is also based on a subjective methodology. It does appear odd that the main argument against including Magik in this list is that it is based on a lack of knowledge of it. Obscurity does not equal irrelevance. Using a similar rationale one would assume that the new species found in the Foja Mountains (35 hits in Google) would be classified as not major discoveries. Since Pavel has rejected this edit outright but Deco appears more open to the provision of supporting evidence, I'll stand back and let you both debate the relative merits of each of your positions until you come to some sort of definitive conclusion. It is rather tiring to make an edit to this list only to have it removed moments later. 68.219.138.36 15:11, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is far from perfect and in deciding what is major/minor/good/bad/etc fails miserably. But if Magik is allowed into the template, in a month it will have dozen of another languages. Perhaps this would be way to reach consensus to delete it ... hmm.

I much encourage you to add more information about impact of Magik into Magik programming language article. People who are interested in GIS/Smallworld/Magik will look there, not on an obscure template placed on bottom of articles.

(And please sign your edits with ~~~~ to distinguis them visually.) Pavel Vozenilek 15:04, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

PL/SQL => SQL

I think it's better to refer to the general SQL language rather than one specific company's extension of it. Even if PL/SQL is the most used SQL version, there are still many others that are too widely used to not be considered "major", such as MySQL and PostgreSQL. --83.250.221.38 16:01, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

PL/SQL is NOT a dialect of SQL, it's an embedded procedural programming language used by Oracle in its server and client-side products. SQL certainly does belong in the list of major programming languages. I'm less sure of the argument for proprietary languages such as PL/SQL. --Tony Sidaway 09:26, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Recent additions and removals

I've restored Javascript, which was probably removed on the theory that it's a variant of Java, which isn't even remotely true; it has almost nothing to do with Java besides its name.

I restored Visual Basic and VB.NET, since these are drastic extensions of BASIC. I think anyone would agree that it's an entirely new and different language. I would entertain removing or merging these two, but certainly not merging them with BASIC. Also, we already voted on VB.NET above.

I also restored the unexplained removal of Visual FoxPro and ColdFusion.

I restored Managed C++, just because the supplied reason is invalid; its name is a name, not a description, and especially in the current versions it significantly extends C++ in a lot of nontrivial ways, to the point where some would feel comfortable calling it a separate language. I'm not entirely comfortable with it being present, but its user count and sufficient differentiation from C++ seem to say that it merits discussion. So, let's discuss it. Deco 05:09, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps we are going about this the wrong way. Rather than trying to maintain a short list of major languages, why not maintain a long list? Everybody has their own favorite major language and it is unlikely that a "top ten" will ever be agreed upon. Derek farn 12:25, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Another option: delete the template (on WP:TfD). Similarly named category was already deleted and this template isn't any better. History of additions/deletions here suggest that "major" is not universally understood and agreed classification. Pavel Vozenilek 06:02, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

This is correct. JavaScript is not Java.

Managed C++ is just C++. This is just a compiler. Not the template for compilers. 84.4.124.253 09:31, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Managed C++ is not C++. It is just marketing ploy to get more popular. Pavel Vozenilek 22:42, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Removing historical languages

Things as ALGOL, AWK are out of interest here. 84.4.124.253 09:33, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

A separate template may be a good thing? - Splang 09:53, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Why not Plankalkül?

If ALGOL has a place here, Plankalkül, Autocode and other so useful programming language may be added too!

84.4.41.76 07:51, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually the name is Plankalkül, not Plankalful :) I wonder why that have not been corrected sooner.

Splang 09:49, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Is Limbo notable?

As the header says, is Limbo notable? I've worked in software for a while but have never even met a Limbo developer but have met people that have used all the others. Also, the quantity (and, to a lesser extent, the quality) of the article doesn't match what's in the others even the more specialized or obsolete ones. - DNewhall

It is sure it is not a personal page. Thousand of results on Google. - Splang 09:51, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Limbo was used for Plan 9, something hoped to be replacement for Unix. Unfortunately, collapse of Lucent pulled the plans of world dominance down. Pavel Vozenilek 04:14, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Splitting ML

I believe the numerous dialects of ML (namely, Ocaml, Nemerle, SML of NJ, MLton, and other Standard ML implementations) should be added to Major programming languages (under Academic) instead of simply ML.

D

I wasn't aware that D was a major language. Am I wrong? matt kane's brain 21:06, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not convinced, either. From the article: "D is still under development, so changes to the language are made regularly . . . The official compiler by Walter Bright defines the language itself, and it is currently in the beta testing state." On that basis I am removing it. GreenReaper 23:34, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Even if somewhat inaccurate, check out this study. D is #20 and growing fast. Not only that, I've been using it for personal projects the last 8 months in my hobbyist 3D engine, both with great performance and great success. So I vote for inclusion. --JoeCoder 23 April 2006

Does that equate to real-world use though? That survey is based on Google hits, which seems to measure interest. matt kane's brain 15:21, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Like I said, it's somewhat inaccurate. A more accurate survey would be helpful, but I don't know of one. And I do admit some personal bias toward loving D. --JoeCoder 27 April 2006

D is in beta stage and while it looks interetsing t is by no way "popular". Pavel Vozenilek 22:40, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

AFAIK the largest application written in D is the D front end. From what I read on D newsgroups no one had dared to use it for large commercial project. Pavel Vozenilek 04:17, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

The TPC index is not "somewhat" inaccurate, it's "completely and hopelessly wrong". It's based on Google search results; as such, the hit count for D includes every single page that has text like "Question 2-d. Programming in C is useful because..." — Haeleth Talk 20:12, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Duplicates in the template

Scheme is reported two times, both in the industrial and in the accademic section. Where should it be better placed? I would suggest "industrial", as it's used at least in a operating system. --Kiam 16:19, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Is it an academic operating system, though? GreenReaper 16:59, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

REBOL

I added REBOL to the list: I don't use it myself, but its actively developed, geared towards industrial-commercial use, and it appears to take on a style of deployment that is relatively unique. Cwolfsheep 16:26, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

REBOL does not deserve to be on this list due to lack of large worldwide programmer community. REBOL borders on being a vanity entry or even an advertisement from the sole company that writes a REBOL compiler. —optikos 19:13, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I just put it on there because it appears to be active and its something different from other things I've looked at. I agree, its not in widespread use, but it'd be a better candidate than Dylan programming language or Brainfuck Cwolfsheep 03:11, 8 May 2006 (UTC).

REBOL is an interesting and unique language, but sadly it's adoption in numbers IMO doesn't warrant the attribute "major language". According to http://www.tiobe.com/index.htm?tiobe_index REBOL is currently not even in the top 100 as of May 2006 (measured by search engine hits/web popularity). It does have a rather small and busy community, but so do dozens of other languages not included here. RolandH 04:32, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Tiobe is anything but serious way to estimate "popularity" of a language (whatever it means). The first few places are obvious, the rest is garbage randomly changing every week. Popularity (whatever it means) is result of very many factors, mostly non-technical, and Google count isn't artificial intelligence capable to recognize such complexity. Pavel Vozenilek 22:47, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

But if something is scarcely mentioned (compared to the alternatives), it's presumably not as widespread in use and as widely accepted. Of course this doesn't indicate much about noteworthiness, usefulness, likability or quality, and of course one shouldn't draw too many conclusions from a ranking like Tiobe, but that wasn't my point anyway. I just wanted to point out that "major language" somehow contradicts "tiny user base". RolandH 21:39, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

very dubious template

first define whats a language? Borland pascal is very different from iso pascal yet they are lumped in together. Meanwhile modula-2 modula-3 and delphi all get thier own entries. Similarlly assembler gets one entry yet every processors assembler is a different language.

• Then there is the issue of relatively minor languages like D and REBOL I'd also like more info on how that survey quoted above for D works and in particular if single letter languages could be prone to false matches Plugwash

• The way I see it, this template should cover languages with either an active & demonstrable userbase, or industrially significant. Cwolfsheep 19:59, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

• • I agree. The main purpose is to provide convenient navigation between languages familiar to most developers. Deco 20:04, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

SAS

From my experience with academia, SAS is widely known and used, and should be included if we are going to have a separate section for academic languages. I can't find on this page where the decision was made to exclude it (it appears to have been included orginally). If there are any strong objections, feel free to revert. Mgcsinc 19:22, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

• Approve: I know this to be in use on Mainframe systems. Cwolfsheep 19:56, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

forth

Why is forth listed as other? To my mind it belongs under industrial progamming languages. Ideogram 02:57, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, Forth is major language for software used in observatories. Or at least it was at certain point in time. Some people had tried to use it as a language for portable drivers or embedded code, I somehow doubt it caught on. And it is cool for nerds, the syntax and so. Pavel Vozenilek 04:09, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

delphi

how is delphi different from pascal? even if it is different, how is it major? Ideogram 18:04, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Delphi is Object Pascal. I think we see Pascal as only the procedural part. Like there is C and C++, there is also Object Pascal and Pascal. Today Object Pascal is the real major language. It is major, just look at Tiobe. --Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho 18:57, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Are there any major suppliers of Delphi/Object Pascal other than Borland? Ideogram 19:24, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I think Lazarus (a free Pascal implementation) supports Delphi features. There's also a startup company that create "Delphi for .NET" (no idea how commercially successful they are). There was also failed effort to bring Delphi under Linux (as Kylix tool).

more dubious "major" languages; JADE, Lua

How are JADE and Lua "major" programming languages? Ideogram 18:08, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

There are other dubious languages there, such as: D, ABAP, AWK, REBOL. --Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho 18:58, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I already took care of D and REBOL. I'll delete JADE and Lua and see if anyone objects. Ideogram 19:27, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Lua is relatively popular scripting language for games. Not something massively used but the rest are usually home made languages. Pavel Vozenilek 03:58, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

OCaml

OCaml is managed by a research institution according to our own entry. Ideogram 19:38, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

It seems to be the most popular of all ML dialects. It is taught at many universities in France and Spain. Pavel Vozenilek 03:56, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

ABAP

I know nothing about ABAP. Why is it "Major"? Ideogram 19:39, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

ABAP is traditional programming language for SAP R/3, a huge and costly enterprise management system (they now support Java too, I think). If you deal with SAP, then ABAP is "major". Pavel Vozenilek 03:55, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

why three categories?

What's the rationale for separating it out into three categories instead of one list? Ideogram 19:46, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

To get more stuff in, I guess. Pavel Vozenilek 04:03, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Fixing the template

User:R._Koot suggested making some suggestions for fixing this template. Here we go: -Changes to template members must be discussed. If they are not discussed, they are to be reverted. Actually, I think that's my only suggestion. Pros/cons? matt kane's brain 20:29, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't realize that was policy. Or is that just your opinion? If you want to revert my changes I won't complain, but I would like to see them discussed and voted on at least. Ideogram 20:33, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

It is a proposal for a policy. It is realted to the proposed deletion of this template (see the top of the page). —Ruud 20:36, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

The main con is that it is impossible to give an objective argument why a certain language should or shouldn't be included. Actually on many languages I would be unable to convince myself if inclusion of some languages would be a good or a bad idea. —Ruud 20:36, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree that what constitutes "major" cannot be decided objectively. I would be in favor of just deleting the template. Ideogram 20:45, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's necessary to have an objective criteria if a consensus or even a majority can be reached. The biggest obstacle to this template being useful is the fact that it is constantly changing at random. I'd figure Wikipedia has ways of handling this. matt kane's brain 21:03, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Sure if we can hold votes and make them stick I would be in favor of that. Ideogram 21:26, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Suggested guideline for a "Major Language"

Having submitted a "bad" language myself, and reading other comments, and the noted crutching on TIOBE (I never even heard of the site before this discussion), I propose the following apply to any language considered "major:"

• Historical: the language must have made a serious contribution to the development of modern computing.
• Functional: the language must be, or have been taught, in a college or university.
• Industrial: the language must have significant use in the programming industry.
• Published: the language must be considered worthy of regular documentation by experienced programmers.

Examples of languages that meet all criteria: BASIC; Pascal; C/C++; C#; VB.NET; HTML; Java

Examples of languages that meet most criteria: ABAP (SAP's language); ML; Haskell; ColdFusion

Examples of languages that should be re-examined: AspectJ; Foxpro; Eiffel; J

Recently rejected languages: D & REBOL (both are "Industrial", but not much else)

Example languages that would not qualify: Dylan ("Industrial"); Brainfuck (no criteria are met)

Cwolfsheep 01:23, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I think these are good guidelines, but the real problem is the template is constantly changing with people adding their favorite language (just now someone added K programming language which I don't think qualifies). This problem will continue without some method of enforcing stability and compliance with a standard. Ideogram 01:42, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

History of this template doesn't give much of hope that it would work. Unless you will police the page and fight with the new additions all the time it'll degenerate quickly. Pavel Vozenilek 03:52, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

History of Wikipedia in general shows that it will not work without policing. matt kane's brain 16:50, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

And why there is a category "Other" ? Shouldn´t it be Historial? ----

@AspectJ: Meets criterion (1) (historical), because it is _the_ aspect oriented programming language, and criterion (2) because it is tought in academic courses (e.g. at the University of the Saarland at Saarbrücken). Jörg Knappen 13:08, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

So shall I add a disclaimer and start policing or wait until the TFD discussion is finished? matt kane's brain 16:13, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I would propose some different guidelines that are perhaps more concrete than those discussed above, such as:

• published, stable, and well-understood language specification (syntax and semantics)
• one or more commercially successful implementations (compilers)
• use in industry
• taught in universities would NOT be an absolute requirement, to me; academia hardly ever teaches VB.NET, for example, but still it's a major force in industry and among young programmers
• several books published about it Harborsparrow 20:31, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

random changes

Oh look, some anonymous user just added D back, without any attempt at discussion. This cannot continue. Ideogram 01:54, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks to k.lee for undoing these recent dubious additions. I personally have decided to refrain from editing this template until the vote for deletion is concluded. Hopefully the problem will just "go away". Ideogram 02:59, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I added the D language...and was surprised when it was removed since there was a link for the "K" language already present. Now, having noticed the "please discuss before adding" comment I now understand why there is some reluctance to add D. I honestly missed the notice first time around...so maybe it should be made more prominent. TJ 4 June 2006

Clipper

the-oasis.net claims to be "the largest file archive" for Clipper-related code on the web. There are maybe on the order of 50 libraries, and maybe on the order of 100 programs. This seems rather paltry. I've removed Clipper. k.lee 03:05, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Once upon a time it was quite popular (among those using small dBase). Yet another example how this template cannot be ever stabilized. Pavel Vozenilek 04:05, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Surprised by categorization

I'm curious about why this template uses categories that employ a kind of value criterion, rather than just describing the languages in terms of how they approach the programming task.

As far as I can tell, the development of this template has been guided by terms of history. The origin, purpose and importance of the languages has been evaluated in that light, and various categories have been chosen which contrast the histories of these languages, such as

• Historical
• Core
• Modern
• Special purpose

The present template is essentially a simplified version of this historical comparison:

• Industrial
• Academic
• Other

This strikes me as being an over-studious avoidance of more usual categorization schemes. Shouldn't they rather simply be compared as languages? For example:

• Procedural
• Object-Oriented
• Logical
• Functional

— Mark (Mkmcconn) ** 21:56, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Programming languages

I am trying to revive Wikipedia:WikiProject Programming languages.

Discussion of categorization schemes properly belongs there, especially if this template gets deleted, as seems likely. Ideogram 17:24, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

alphabetization

Here's a handy rule of thumb:

If an editor can't be bothered to alphabetize, they probably don't know what they're doing. Ideogram 17:28, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Inclusion of REALbasic

The link for REALbasic as a major programming language was recently removed, and Google's hit count was cited as the cause. I'm slightly confused how 2.3 million hits for a unique term is subject to removal, but programs like Modula-2 (also a unique term) weigh in with < 1 million hits, but make the cut. What is the proper process for having a language listed?

I'd like to see REALbasic listed as an industrial programming tool. The language has been around for over ten years, and has over [100,000 users]. If not as an "Industrial" language, at least under "Other" as it certainly ranks higher than some of the other languages listed. BudVVeezer 12:57, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

We're currently voting on deleting this template, precisely because we have no good answer to your question. Ideogram 05:10, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Hah, ok, that's another solution too.  ;-) Not certain if Wiki can do this or not, but perhaps a prioritized rotating list would work. You'd have a complete set of "major" languages (pulled from the Alphabetical_list_of_programming_languages list), that rotate which ones are displayed (ie: C, C++, VB, Pascal, C#, more), then come up with some criterion as to which ones go into what category.

Eh, then again, that still sounds painful to try to police... BudVVeezer 12:57, 6 June 2006 (UTC)