6 ms·

How Programming Languages Got Their Names

57 points by kylehigginson 3y ago

mr_toad 3y ago
Python, Delphi and Oracle all relate to the same Greek legend.
- astrobe_ 3y ago
  Rumors say that the priestess in this temple was having visions because of natural local fumes [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythia#Scientific_explanations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythia#Scientific_explanations
hgo 3y ago
I can't shake a vague memory that Java was named in an early brainstorming session with post-it notes on walls with tons of good and bad names, where eventually Java remained as the winner. I believe I've heard about this as a prime example of good brain storming methods from the early days when it wasn't at all obvious. Does anybody know if this is right or if I'm confusing it with something else?
- richev 3y ago
  Wasn't this how AltaVista got its name, but as a whiteboard remnant rather than post-it notes?
  - hgo 3y ago
    Ah, maybe. Thanks
- keithalewis 3y ago
  Java was originally called Oak.
- CalChris 3y ago
  Java was re-named from Oak/Green by its product manager, Kim Polese.
3ds 3y ago
No. Ruby is called Ruby because it is the better Perl.
- pilaf 3y ago
  I think both you and the article are correct. Here's a bit more context [1], it seems both Ruby and Coral were considered in part due to their connection with Perl, and in the end Ruby won because it "sounds better" and also because it's Matz's birthstone: 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20110717205734/http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/88819 https://web.archive.org/web/20110717205734/http://blade.naga... Edit: this also provides a clue for Perl's naming, it's "related to a shell" (I don't know if this is accurate)
  - pushedx 3y ago
    "Perl is the gem found in the shell"
- NeoTar 3y ago
  Joke for Pokémon fans: Surely it should be called Platinum then? [Explaining / Ruining the joke: Pokémon games come in paired editions - red/blue, gold/silver, sword/shield. For the fourth generation of games the paired editions are Diamond/Pearl. In many generations an 'upper' edition is later released - Yellow, Crystal, Emerald - this is a slightly enhanced remake, often with a tweaked story. For the fourth generation the upper edition was called Platinum.]
top_sigrid 3y ago
This was interesting, although a small list. But it is definitely lacking any sources to back these claims. From reading the article I have no idea, where the author got these anecdotes from.
debok 3y ago
Why would Kotlin be named after Kotlin Island? What's the connection?
- p4bl0 3y ago
  It targets the JVM. Java is also an island. Maybe that's it?
  - geminger 3y ago
    Also the three founders of JetBrains, the developers of Kotlin, all graduated from St. Petersburg State University.
- arrowsmith 3y ago
  Kotlin runs on the Java virtual machine, Java is an island, they picked another island.
- sesm 3y ago
  In early 2010s Java was widely used but the language and ecosystem was stagnating. This lead to an explosion of alternative JVM languages: Groovy, Scala, Clojure, etc. But most people didn't want an entirely new language, all they wanted was basically 'Java with lambdas'. One such language was Ceylon, and Jetbrains (after unsuccessfully trying Groovy) decided to create their own Ceylon and called it Kotlin.
- lordnacho 3y ago
  It's a less verbose island
- negus 3y ago
  Because early JetBrains development was based mainly in Saint Petersburg.
- pimlottc 3y ago
  It’s definitely more interesting to know /who/ named something and /why/, not just /what/ it’s named after.
tmountain 3y ago
Puff piece article. I expected something a lot more comprehensive.
- smohare 3y ago
  [dead]
p4bl0 3y ago
This list is disappointingly short. Here's a few more of the top of my head, feel free to expand the list! : C: a successor to B, itself derived from BCPL. C++: increments over C. D: a successor to C. LISP: LISt Processor. FORTRAN: FORmula TRANslator. ALGOL: ALGorithmic Language. Prolog: PROgrammation LOGique (logic programming in French). PHP: initially PHP/FI for "Personal Home Page Form Interpreter", later rebranded as "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor". JavaScript: named this way to be associated with the popularity of Java. Ada: in honor of Ada Lovelace. OCaml: initially Objective Caml, because it added OOP support among other things. Caml: Categorical Abstract Machine Language. ML (as in SML): Meta Language. SQL: Structured Query Language.
- tromp 3y ago
  > D: a successor to C As expressed in Haskell: 'D' == succ 'C' As another example: "IBM" == map succ "HAL"
  - tome 3y ago
    "WNT" == map succ "VMS"
- BerislavLopac 3y ago
  There is also C#, where # represents a duplication of "++", on top of each other. Technically, the # is not the sign for the musical sharp key (♯), but "C sharp" sounds better than "C hash", "C pound" or "C octothorp". :) Edit: On an unrelated note, TIL that the sign used on telephone keys is also not #, but ⌗ -- a.k.a. the "Viewdata square" [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viewdata#Keypad_symbols:_the_sextile_and_the_square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viewdata#Keypad_symbols:_the_s...
  - Y_Y 3y ago
    I assumed they just meant to comment out everything that came after C.
    - fluoridation 3y ago
BerislavLopac 3y ago
Oh, I was disappointed that it's missing some interesting (albeit often well-know) cases like C++, C#, JavaScript or even PHP.
dr_kiszonka 3y ago
Python: slow, yet powerful
- mr_toad 3y ago
  > […] with John Cleese suggesting "Python" as something slimy and slithery,[…] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Flying_Circus#Title https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Flying_Circus...
eterps 3y ago
Pascal: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal Oberon: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_(moon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_(moon) Ada: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace Eiffel: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Eiffel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Eiffel Sather: named afer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sather_Tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sather_Tower Nim: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrod https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrod Erlang (Ericsson language): named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericsson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericsson
- eterps 3y ago
  Erlang, also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agner_Krarup_Erlang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agner_Krarup_Erlang
- microtherion 3y ago
  Linda has a particularly unsavory origin story (hint: It has a connection to Ada): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_(coordination_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_(coordination_language) That probably wouldn't fly anymore in today's CS research. As for Oberon, the moon may have played a role, but according to stories recently told at Niklaus Wirth's memorial service, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and the mythological character in general https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon may have had more to do with it, as Wirth was said to have some flair for the theatrical arts in his private life.
  - Rochus 3y ago
    > "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and the mythological character ... may have had more to do with it" Which contradicts with what he wrote in his "Project Oberon" book: "Although the search for an appropriate name for a project is usually a minor problem and often left to chance and whim of the designers, this may be the place to recount how Oberon entered the picture in our case. It happened that around the time of the beginning of our effort, the space probe Voyager made headlines with a series of spectacular pictures taken of the planet Uranus and of its moons, the largest of which is named Oberon. Since its launch I had considered the Voyager project as a singularly well-planned and successful endeavor, and as a small tribute to it I picked the name of its latest object of investigation." Also the books "Programming in Oberon" (where Wirth was co-author) and "The Oberon System" say the same. If he really did have "some flair" for the arts (besides "the art of simplicity"), he hid it very well.
tromp 3y ago
TIL that Rust is named after a fungus instead of corroding metal.
- copx 3y ago
  ..and aptly named too: >the fungus Rust that is “over-engineered for survival”. Obviously Rust is indeed surviving (and thriving) and damn it is over-engineered. If C++ wasn't actively developed too, Rust would surpass C++ as the most complex programming language sooner or later. I wonder if we have already reached the point where no single individual fully understands Rust (C++ passed that threshold years ago [1]) [1] Yes, even Bjarne Stroustrup himself can only keep a fraction of C++ in his head at any given time, even if it is a large one, e.g. there was an interview where he got the behavior of unique_ptr in a certain scenario wrong and had to be corrected on camera by Herb Sutter (who certainly can't keep the entire language in his head either).
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    Yes that complexity has put me off learning Rust. I’ve had a brush with Haskell already, thx! I get more out of glueing things together than deeply getting into the language itself. Took me a while to realize that! So now I am learning Go (feel like I have learned it in an hour lol!) with the hope of having a long term language I like for side projects. I never was satisfied with NodeJS or C# for this for various reasons relating to the complexities of setting up projects esp. when they don’t wanna work.
- Asraelite 3y ago
  Sort of, maybe. See https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/27jvdt/internet_archaeology_the_definitive_endall_source/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/27jvdt/internet_archa... He doesn't remember exactly. I think with historical trivia like this it's very easy for facts to get simplified and for maybes to turn into certainties as information is passed along from person to person. I personally wouldn't trust a single claim in the article without checking first hand sources first.
tromp 3y ago
Haskell Curry has the honor of having two programming languages named after him: Haskell and Curry [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry_(programming_language)
- pyrale 3y ago
  There's one for his middle-name too [1]. [1] https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/b/brooks.htm https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/b/brooks.htm And while we're at it, another anecdote about naming the language [2]: > Hudak and Wise were asked to write to Curry’s widow, Virginia Curry, to ask if she would mind our naming the language after her husband. Hudak later visited Mrs. Curry at her home and listened to stories about people who had stayed there (such as Church and Kleene). Mrs. Curry came to his talk (which was about Haskell, of course) at Penn State, and although she didn’t understand a word of what he was saying, she was very gracious. Her parting remark was “You know, Haskell actually never liked the name Haskell.” [2] https://www.dotnetrocks.com/details/310 https://www.dotnetrocks.com/details/310
- dehrmann 3y ago
  I guess "currying" is also named after him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currying#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currying#History
  - 12_throw_away 3y ago
    I learned of Haskell (the language) and currying (the technique) before learning of Haskell Curry (the person). So whenever I see the name "Haskell Curry", it looks like a joke name at first glance. Like "wow, someone's parents were _really into_ functional programming", or maybe, he's the counterpart to Janet Javascript and Python Pete?
- jhbadger 3y ago
  It is weird that Haskell (programming language) is named after Curry's first name though. That isn't generally how you name things (other than people). About the only other thing I think of that works that way is America, named after the explorer Amerigo Vespucci. "Vespuccia" would have been a more logical choice.
peterhull90 3y ago
'Go' was named because "it's short, easy to type"[0] though I assume it being part of Google was also a contributing factor? [0]:https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2017/09/go-ten-years-and-climbing.html https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2017/09/go-ten-years-and-...
miggol 3y ago
For those of us who like the braces: Lisp comes from List Processor. Scheme was first called Schemer, which itself evolved out of the Planner language developed by Carl Hewitt at MIT. Schemer was shortened to Scheme to fit the ITS filesystem's six character filename limit (!) on the PDP-10. Racket is a kind of Scheme. (I like this one) Guile comes from Guy L. Steele, one of the initial Scheme developers. The other being Gerald Jay Sussman.
- tmtvl 3y ago
  Kawa Scheme: From the Polish word for coffee. Gambit: Another kind of Scheme. SBCL: Steel Bank Common Lisp, forked from CMU Common Lisp, CMU being the university named after the founder of a steel factory and a pair of bankers. Maclisp: Created for MIT's project MAC (the Project on Mathematics and Computation). Franz Lisp: A pun on the composer Franz Liszt.
sesm 3y ago
Clojure - an expansion from CLJ which stands for CLR, Lisp, Java.
Log_out_ 3y ago
Lua?
- rarafael 3y ago
  Lua means 'Moon' in Portuguese, as it is also their logo: https://lua.org https://lua.org
  - jecel 3y ago
    And it is the successor to DEL (Data Entry Language) and SOL (Simple Object Language). Since 'Sol' is 'Sun' in Portuguese, they decided it would make sense to move to Moon.
madcaptenor 3y ago
R: pirates Actually, there was an earlier language named S, for "statistics". R was intended as a successor to S - I suppose T would have been the natural name, then, or S++ - but also the inventors had first names starting with R. I've heard people speculate it has something to do with correlation coefficients, which it doesn't, but that r comes from "reversion" or "regression": https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/368224/why-is-r-used-to-denote-correlation https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/368224/why-is-r-us...
- mjhay 3y ago
  "R" wound up being a terrible name in terms of Google-ability and such, although it can be excused given that it was created in 1993. Csharp and Fsharp have no such excuse, though.
- bluenose69 3y ago
  In their paper (1), the authors state that R is to relate to S, but also to, in their words, "part to celebrate our own efforts". (Note their first names!). It's a great paper, by the way. 1. Ihaka, Ross, and Robert Gentleman. “R: A Language for Data Analysis and Graphics.” Journal of Computational & Graphical Statistics 5, no. 3 (1996): 299–314.
  - madcaptenor 3y ago
    I haven’t actually read it! I had assumed that they named it R and just left other people to notice that their names started with R, but no such false modesty for them.
shrubble 3y ago
FORTH = because the machine Chuck Moore was using wouldn't accept a longer name; he wanted to call it "Fourth" SNOBOL = (from Wikipedia) "According to Dave Farber, he, Griswold and Polonsky "finally arrived at the name Symbolic EXpression Interpreter SEXI." All went well until one day I was submitting a batch job to assemble the system and as normal on my JOB card — the first card in the deck, I, in BTL standards, punched my job and my name — SEXI Farber. One of the Comp Center girls looked at it and said, "That's what you think" in a humorous way. That made it clear that we needed another name!! We sat and talked and drank coffee and shot rubber bands and after much too much time someone said — most likely Ralph — "We don't have a Snowball's chance in hell of finding a name". All of us yelled at once, "WE GOT IT — SNOBOL" in the spirit of all the BOL languages. We then stretched our mind to find what it stood for. Common backronyms of "SNOBOL" are 'String Oriented Symbolic Language' or (as a quasi-initialism) 'StriNg Oriented symBOlic Language'. "
- astrobe_ 3y ago
  > FORTH = because the machine Chuck Moore was using wouldn't accept a longer name; he wanted to call it "Fourth" Additionally, he wanted to name it "Fourth" because it was targeting the fourth generation of computers [1] that featured the first hard disks (IIRC) - not because he thought of it as a fourth generation language. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_hardware_(1960s%E2%80%93present)#Fourth_generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_hardware_...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ulrischa 3y ago
So many missing in this list
bluenose69 3y ago
Julia was named because it was a "pretty name" (https://www.infoworld.com/article/2616709/new-julia-language-seeks-to-be-the-c-for-scientists.html?page=2 https://www.infoworld.com/article/2616709/new-julia-language...)
dansalvato 3y ago
Zig apparently got its name from this: https://gist.github.com/andrewrk/73742bf4b8ed795c85ce https://gist.github.com/andrewrk/73742bf4b8ed795c85ce Just rolled the dice on 'z' + vowel + consonant + consonant until something good came up.
- Dwedit 3y ago
  Is that real? There are plenty of references to Zero Wing on the website for the Zig language.
  - dansalvato 3y ago
    The gist I linked is shared by Andrew Kelley, creator of the language. My best guess is that he rolled something similar to 'zig' and was reminded of the Zero Wing reference before deciding to take off with Zig (for great justice).
kbr2000 3y ago
Awk: Aho, Weinberger & Kernighan [0] Tcl: (an embeddable) Tool Command Language [1] Forth: FOURTH as in "4th generation software", "successor to 3rd generation compile-link-go languages", or "software for 4rd generation hardware", but IBM 1130 naming cut it short one char [2] PostScript: after the postfix notation it uses and because it was to be the last thing that happened to an image before it was printed [3] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWK [1] https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Tcl+vs%2E+TCL https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Tcl+vs%2E+TCL [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_(programming_language) [3] https://spectrum.ieee.org/adobe-postscript https://spectrum.ieee.org/adobe-postscript
hayley-patton 3y ago
Smalltalk was named such as Alan Kay (https://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/50 https://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/50) > had mentioned to someone that the "prose" of then current programming languages was lower than a cocktail party conversation, and that great progress would have been made if we could even get to the level of making "smalltalk".

57 points by kylehigginson 3y ago

mr_toad 3y ago

Python, Delphi and Oracle all relate to the same Greek legend.

astrobe_ 3y ago
Rumors say that the priestess in this temple was having visions because of natural local fumes [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythia#Scientific_explanations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythia#Scientific_explanations

hgo 3y ago

I can't shake a vague memory that Java was named in an early brainstorming session with post-it notes on walls with tons of good and bad names, where eventually Java remained as the winner. I believe I've heard about this as a prime example of good brain storming methods from the early days when it wasn't at all obvious. Does anybody know if this is right or if I'm confusing it with something else?

richev 3y ago
Wasn't this how AltaVista got its name, but as a whiteboard remnant rather than post-it notes?
- hgo 3y ago
  Ah, maybe. Thanks
keithalewis 3y ago
Java was originally called Oak.
CalChris 3y ago
Java was re-named from Oak/Green by its product manager, Kim Polese.

3ds 3y ago

No. Ruby is called Ruby because it is the better Perl.

pilaf 3y ago
I think both you and the article are correct. Here's a bit more context [1], it seems both Ruby and Coral were considered in part due to their connection with Perl, and in the end Ruby won because it "sounds better" and also because it's Matz's birthstone: 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20110717205734/http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/88819 https://web.archive.org/web/20110717205734/http://blade.naga... Edit: this also provides a clue for Perl's naming, it's "related to a shell" (I don't know if this is accurate)
- pushedx 3y ago
  "Perl is the gem found in the shell"
NeoTar 3y ago
Joke for Pokémon fans: Surely it should be called Platinum then? [Explaining / Ruining the joke: Pokémon games come in paired editions - red/blue, gold/silver, sword/shield. For the fourth generation of games the paired editions are Diamond/Pearl. In many generations an 'upper' edition is later released - Yellow, Crystal, Emerald - this is a slightly enhanced remake, often with a tweaked story. For the fourth generation the upper edition was called Platinum.]

top_sigrid 3y ago

This was interesting, although a small list. But it is definitely lacking any sources to back these claims. From reading the article I have no idea, where the author got these anecdotes from.

debok 3y ago

Why would Kotlin be named after Kotlin Island? What's the connection?

p4bl0 3y ago
It targets the JVM. Java is also an island. Maybe that's it?
- geminger 3y ago
  Also the three founders of JetBrains, the developers of Kotlin, all graduated from St. Petersburg State University.
arrowsmith 3y ago
Kotlin runs on the Java virtual machine, Java is an island, they picked another island.
sesm 3y ago
In early 2010s Java was widely used but the language and ecosystem was stagnating. This lead to an explosion of alternative JVM languages: Groovy, Scala, Clojure, etc. But most people didn't want an entirely new language, all they wanted was basically 'Java with lambdas'. One such language was Ceylon, and Jetbrains (after unsuccessfully trying Groovy) decided to create their own Ceylon and called it Kotlin.
lordnacho 3y ago
It's a less verbose island
negus 3y ago
Because early JetBrains development was based mainly in Saint Petersburg.
pimlottc 3y ago
It’s definitely more interesting to know /who/ named something and /why/, not just /what/ it’s named after.

tmountain 3y ago

Puff piece article. I expected something a lot more comprehensive.

smohare 3y ago
[dead]

p4bl0 3y ago

This list is disappointingly short. Here's a few more of the top of my head, feel free to expand the list! : C: a successor to B, itself derived from BCPL. C++: increments over C. D: a successor to C. LISP: LISt Processor. FORTRAN: FORmula TRANslator. ALGOL: ALGorithmic Language. Prolog: PROgrammation LOGique (logic programming in French). PHP: initially PHP/FI for "Personal Home Page Form Interpreter", later rebranded as "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor". JavaScript: named this way to be associated with the popularity of Java. Ada: in honor of Ada Lovelace. OCaml: initially Objective Caml, because it added OOP support among other things. Caml: Categorical Abstract Machine Language. ML (as in SML): Meta Language. SQL: Structured Query Language.

tromp 3y ago
> D: a successor to C As expressed in Haskell: 'D' == succ 'C' As another example: "IBM" == map succ "HAL"
- tome 3y ago
  "WNT" == map succ "VMS"
BerislavLopac 3y ago
There is also C#, where # represents a duplication of "++", on top of each other. Technically, the # is not the sign for the musical sharp key (♯), but "C sharp" sounds better than "C hash", "C pound" or "C octothorp". :) Edit: On an unrelated note, TIL that the sign used on telephone keys is also not #, but ⌗ -- a.k.a. the "Viewdata square" [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viewdata#Keypad_symbols:_the_sextile_and_the_square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viewdata#Keypad_symbols:_the_s...
- Y_Y 3y ago
  I assumed they just meant to comment out everything that came after C.
  - fluoridation 3y ago

BerislavLopac 3y ago

Oh, I was disappointed that it's missing some interesting (albeit often well-know) cases like C++, C#, JavaScript or even PHP.

dr_kiszonka 3y ago

Python: slow, yet powerful

mr_toad 3y ago
> […] with John Cleese suggesting "Python" as something slimy and slithery,[…] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Flying_Circus#Title https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Flying_Circus...

eterps 3y ago

Pascal: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal Oberon: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_(moon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_(moon) Ada: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace Eiffel: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Eiffel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Eiffel Sather: named afer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sather_Tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sather_Tower Nim: named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrod https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrod Erlang (Ericsson language): named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericsson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericsson

eterps 3y ago
Erlang, also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agner_Krarup_Erlang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agner_Krarup_Erlang
microtherion 3y ago
Linda has a particularly unsavory origin story (hint: It has a connection to Ada): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_(coordination_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_(coordination_language) That probably wouldn't fly anymore in today's CS research. As for Oberon, the moon may have played a role, but according to stories recently told at Niklaus Wirth's memorial service, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and the mythological character in general https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon may have had more to do with it, as Wirth was said to have some flair for the theatrical arts in his private life.
- Rochus 3y ago
  > "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and the mythological character ... may have had more to do with it" Which contradicts with what he wrote in his "Project Oberon" book: "Although the search for an appropriate name for a project is usually a minor problem and often left to chance and whim of the designers, this may be the place to recount how Oberon entered the picture in our case. It happened that around the time of the beginning of our effort, the space probe Voyager made headlines with a series of spectacular pictures taken of the planet Uranus and of its moons, the largest of which is named Oberon. Since its launch I had considered the Voyager project as a singularly well-planned and successful endeavor, and as a small tribute to it I picked the name of its latest object of investigation." Also the books "Programming in Oberon" (where Wirth was co-author) and "The Oberon System" say the same. If he really did have "some flair" for the arts (besides "the art of simplicity"), he hid it very well.

tromp 3y ago

TIL that Rust is named after a fungus instead of corroding metal.

copx 3y ago
..and aptly named too: >the fungus Rust that is “over-engineered for survival”. Obviously Rust is indeed surviving (and thriving) and damn it is over-engineered. If C++ wasn't actively developed too, Rust would surpass C++ as the most complex programming language sooner or later. I wonder if we have already reached the point where no single individual fully understands Rust (C++ passed that threshold years ago [1]) [1] Yes, even Bjarne Stroustrup himself can only keep a fraction of C++ in his head at any given time, even if it is a large one, e.g. there was an interview where he got the behavior of unique_ptr in a certain scenario wrong and had to be corrected on camera by Herb Sutter (who certainly can't keep the entire language in his head either).
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Yes that complexity has put me off learning Rust. I’ve had a brush with Haskell already, thx! I get more out of glueing things together than deeply getting into the language itself. Took me a while to realize that! So now I am learning Go (feel like I have learned it in an hour lol!) with the hope of having a long term language I like for side projects. I never was satisfied with NodeJS or C# for this for various reasons relating to the complexities of setting up projects esp. when they don’t wanna work.
Asraelite 3y ago
Sort of, maybe. See https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/27jvdt/internet_archaeology_the_definitive_endall_source/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/27jvdt/internet_archa... He doesn't remember exactly. I think with historical trivia like this it's very easy for facts to get simplified and for maybes to turn into certainties as information is passed along from person to person. I personally wouldn't trust a single claim in the article without checking first hand sources first.

tromp 3y ago

Haskell Curry has the honor of having two programming languages named after him: Haskell and Curry [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry_(programming_language)

pyrale 3y ago
There's one for his middle-name too [1]. [1] https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/b/brooks.htm https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/b/brooks.htm And while we're at it, another anecdote about naming the language [2]: > Hudak and Wise were asked to write to Curry’s widow, Virginia Curry, to ask if she would mind our naming the language after her husband. Hudak later visited Mrs. Curry at her home and listened to stories about people who had stayed there (such as Church and Kleene). Mrs. Curry came to his talk (which was about Haskell, of course) at Penn State, and although she didn’t understand a word of what he was saying, she was very gracious. Her parting remark was “You know, Haskell actually never liked the name Haskell.” [2] https://www.dotnetrocks.com/details/310 https://www.dotnetrocks.com/details/310
dehrmann 3y ago
I guess "currying" is also named after him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currying#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currying#History
- 12_throw_away 3y ago
  I learned of Haskell (the language) and currying (the technique) before learning of Haskell Curry (the person). So whenever I see the name "Haskell Curry", it looks like a joke name at first glance. Like "wow, someone's parents were _really into_ functional programming", or maybe, he's the counterpart to Janet Javascript and Python Pete?
jhbadger 3y ago
It is weird that Haskell (programming language) is named after Curry's first name though. That isn't generally how you name things (other than people). About the only other thing I think of that works that way is America, named after the explorer Amerigo Vespucci. "Vespuccia" would have been a more logical choice.

peterhull90 3y ago

'Go' was named because "it's short, easy to type"[0] though I assume it being part of Google was also a contributing factor? [0]:https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2017/09/go-ten-years-and-climbing.html https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2017/09/go-ten-years-and-...

miggol 3y ago

For those of us who like the braces: Lisp comes from List Processor. Scheme was first called Schemer, which itself evolved out of the Planner language developed by Carl Hewitt at MIT. Schemer was shortened to Scheme to fit the ITS filesystem's six character filename limit (!) on the PDP-10. Racket is a kind of Scheme. (I like this one) Guile comes from Guy L. Steele, one of the initial Scheme developers. The other being Gerald Jay Sussman.

tmtvl 3y ago
Kawa Scheme: From the Polish word for coffee. Gambit: Another kind of Scheme. SBCL: Steel Bank Common Lisp, forked from CMU Common Lisp, CMU being the university named after the founder of a steel factory and a pair of bankers. Maclisp: Created for MIT's project MAC (the Project on Mathematics and Computation). Franz Lisp: A pun on the composer Franz Liszt.

sesm 3y ago

Clojure - an expansion from CLJ which stands for CLR, Lisp, Java.

Log_out_ 3y ago

Lua?

rarafael 3y ago
Lua means 'Moon' in Portuguese, as it is also their logo: https://lua.org https://lua.org
- jecel 3y ago
  And it is the successor to DEL (Data Entry Language) and SOL (Simple Object Language). Since 'Sol' is 'Sun' in Portuguese, they decided it would make sense to move to Moon.

madcaptenor 3y ago

R: pirates Actually, there was an earlier language named S, for "statistics". R was intended as a successor to S - I suppose T would have been the natural name, then, or S++ - but also the inventors had first names starting with R. I've heard people speculate it has something to do with correlation coefficients, which it doesn't, but that r comes from "reversion" or "regression": https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/368224/why-is-r-used-to-denote-correlation https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/368224/why-is-r-us...

mjhay 3y ago
"R" wound up being a terrible name in terms of Google-ability and such, although it can be excused given that it was created in 1993. Csharp and Fsharp have no such excuse, though.
bluenose69 3y ago
In their paper (1), the authors state that R is to relate to S, but also to, in their words, "part to celebrate our own efforts". (Note their first names!). It's a great paper, by the way. 1. Ihaka, Ross, and Robert Gentleman. “R: A Language for Data Analysis and Graphics.” Journal of Computational & Graphical Statistics 5, no. 3 (1996): 299–314.
- madcaptenor 3y ago
  I haven’t actually read it! I had assumed that they named it R and just left other people to notice that their names started with R, but no such false modesty for them.

shrubble 3y ago

FORTH = because the machine Chuck Moore was using wouldn't accept a longer name; he wanted to call it "Fourth" SNOBOL = (from Wikipedia) "According to Dave Farber, he, Griswold and Polonsky "finally arrived at the name Symbolic EXpression Interpreter SEXI." All went well until one day I was submitting a batch job to assemble the system and as normal on my JOB card — the first card in the deck, I, in BTL standards, punched my job and my name — SEXI Farber. One of the Comp Center girls looked at it and said, "That's what you think" in a humorous way. That made it clear that we needed another name!! We sat and talked and drank coffee and shot rubber bands and after much too much time someone said — most likely Ralph — "We don't have a Snowball's chance in hell of finding a name". All of us yelled at once, "WE GOT IT — SNOBOL" in the spirit of all the BOL languages. We then stretched our mind to find what it stood for. Common backronyms of "SNOBOL" are 'String Oriented Symbolic Language' or (as a quasi-initialism) 'StriNg Oriented symBOlic Language'. "

astrobe_ 3y ago
> FORTH = because the machine Chuck Moore was using wouldn't accept a longer name; he wanted to call it "Fourth" Additionally, he wanted to name it "Fourth" because it was targeting the fourth generation of computers [1] that featured the first hard disks (IIRC) - not because he thought of it as a fourth generation language. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_hardware_(1960s%E2%80%93present)#Fourth_generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_hardware_...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ulrischa 3y ago

So many missing in this list

bluenose69 3y ago

Julia was named because it was a "pretty name" (https://www.infoworld.com/article/2616709/new-julia-language-seeks-to-be-the-c-for-scientists.html?page=2 https://www.infoworld.com/article/2616709/new-julia-language...)

dansalvato 3y ago

Zig apparently got its name from this: https://gist.github.com/andrewrk/73742bf4b8ed795c85ce https://gist.github.com/andrewrk/73742bf4b8ed795c85ce Just rolled the dice on 'z' + vowel + consonant + consonant until something good came up.

Dwedit 3y ago
Is that real? There are plenty of references to Zero Wing on the website for the Zig language.
- dansalvato 3y ago
  The gist I linked is shared by Andrew Kelley, creator of the language. My best guess is that he rolled something similar to 'zig' and was reminded of the Zero Wing reference before deciding to take off with Zig (for great justice).

kbr2000 3y ago

Awk: Aho, Weinberger & Kernighan [0] Tcl: (an embeddable) Tool Command Language [1] Forth: FOURTH as in "4th generation software", "successor to 3rd generation compile-link-go languages", or "software for 4rd generation hardware", but IBM 1130 naming cut it short one char [2] PostScript: after the postfix notation it uses and because it was to be the last thing that happened to an image before it was printed [3] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWK [1] https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Tcl+vs%2E+TCL https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Tcl+vs%2E+TCL [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_(programming_language) [3] https://spectrum.ieee.org/adobe-postscript https://spectrum.ieee.org/adobe-postscript

hayley-patton 3y ago

Smalltalk was named such as Alan Kay (https://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/50 https://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/50) > had mentioned to someone that the "prose" of then current programming languages was lower than a cocktail party conversation, and that great progress would have been made if we could even get to the level of making "smalltalk".