• lordnikon@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Dennis Richie is a personal hero of mine and i go out of my way to buy a cake every September 9th to celebrate his contributions to the world. It’s a real shame his passing was overshadowed at the time.

      • leopold@lemmy.kde.social
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        4 months ago

        B was based on BCPL, which I assume is where the name came from.

        But the actual A language would be APL, which stands for A Programming Language. It’s a few years older than B and was pretty popular, so it could’ve influenced the name.

        • Handles@leminal.space
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          4 months ago

          A Programming Language

          Gotta admire the wherewithal of continuing down the alphabet rather than just “Another Programming Language”, through “Yet Another Programming Language” to “Dude, Where’s My Programming Language”.

            • atzanteol
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              4 months ago

              It goes back further than you may think. YACC was written in “B” originally.

        • LeFantome@programming.dev
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          4 months ago

          It is hard for me to believe APL was popular. I forgot that Microsoft claimed to be making it for Motorola and Intel.

  • palordrolap@kbin.run
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    4 months ago

    Should have gone for something like “Dennis Richie Advanced Computing University Lab Annex.”

    Parses weird, but look at that acronym.

  • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
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    4 months ago

    Programming Languages today: Rust, Go, Typescript

    Programming Languages back then: C, B, C#, C++

    LOL

    • intelisense@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      C# is much more recent than C/BCPL etc. What’s interesting, though, is how many of C these more modern languages are inspired by C. C is also very much still in use!

      • LeFantome@programming.dev
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        4 months ago

        The name C++ is an inside joke as ++ is the C language increment operator, meant to imply that C++ is an improvement on C.

        I have heard several times that the name C# was meant to look like the ++ had been added again to the name C++. The syntax of C# was chosen to be familiar to programmers that knew C++.

        If we are saying old languages use letters for names and that newer ones use words, it is worth noting that C# was also heavily inspired by Java, which came first. Both Java and JavaScript are from 1995 ( iolder than C# ).

        In the grand scheme, Go is not much newer than C#. Go is from 2009 and C# is from 2000. That might seem like a lot but Go was intended as an alternative to C which is from 1972.

        C got its name as a progression over B, which started the whole single letter thing, but C syntax was chosen to look like ALGOL ( 1958 ). So we have to blame ALGOL for the look of C, C++, Java, C#, JavaScript, and even Rust.

        Two of the oldest languages as FORTRAN and Lisp. Language names were often abbreviations ( such as FORmula TRANslation for FORTRAN ). Lisp was originally LISP ( list processing ) but the name Lisp, from 1960, fits right in with Go and Rust I would say.

        The trend is certainly towards more whimsical names though. An early name for C was NB which stood for “New B”. If it were named like we do today, maybe it would have been called “Newbie” or some synonym of that. I kind of like Punk.

  • Thann@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    how much toe fungus can he consume in a sitting though?

    • t0mri@lemmy.mlOP
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      4 months ago

      Tell me when youre so passionate about something would you ignore the goat in your domain just because that person is not from the same country as you?