Talk:Programming language/Catalogs

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IDEs?

Hmm. Looking at this list now, I wonder do "integrated development environments" belong in a list of programming languages? Maybe a line or two about IDEs belong in the programming languages article... --Eric M Gearhart 06:00, 8 April 2007 (CDT)

I agree. Visual Studio, for example, is not a programming language. It uses the free C# and VB.NET compilers available in the .NET software development kit (which is a free download from Microsoft). Mainly what Visual Studio does is act as a build system, accumulating the correct command-line build parameters after the user does things in the GUI. VS is not a compiler, is not necessarily specific to any one language (though the Express versions are), and including it under "list of programming languages" seems wrong. I think it belongs on the programming languages page instead. Pat Palmer 10:35, 20 April 2007 (CDT)
I'm archiving them here in case anyone doesn't want to lose the list:Pat Palmer 10:40, 20 April 2007 (CDT)


Problems with this page

It seems to me that there are some fairly fundmanetal problems with this page, and it probably ought to be reorganized. For example,

  • The distinction between compiled and non-compiled languages isn't really fundamental. In some cases, whether or not a language is compiled depends on the implementation you choose, or the same implementation will offer both options. It is also far from clearcut, with most real language implementations falling somewhere on a continuum between the two.
  • More basic distinctions are not even recognized here. Languages are commonly classified as procedural, declarative, functional, logic based, and (somewhat controversially) object oriented.
  • Some categorizations simply make no sense. for example, JBoss is an application server (and a J2EE implementation), not an IDE. I have idea why it is listed as an IDE. Toad is a command line tool used with Oracle databases, not a language.
  • 4GL is really more of a marketing term than anything else, and seems to be rather out of fashion. Do we need it?
  • UML is a modeling language, and it's by no means clear that it should be here at all.
  • DML (data manipulation language) and DDL (data definition language) are not really languages at all, but terms used to refer to subsets of SQL.
  • Some names (such as BasicScript, which presumably refers to VBScript) are inaccurate.
  • There are glaring omissions from this list, such as: Object Pascal, Objective C, AppleScript, J2ME, Scheme, Common LISP, Standard ML, OCaml, Haskell, Smalltalk, Algol 60 and Algol 68 (the two are quite different), Prolog, SNOBOL,Transact-SQL, and significant languages of historical interest (such as BCPL and B).
  • Assembler is not really a language, but a class of languages.

Greg Woodhouse 18:13, 14 April 2007 (CDT)

Compiled vs. Interpreted no longer so helpful

The division into compiled vs. interpreted is no longer helpful, in my opinion. The lines have blurred. For example, SQL is interpreted (theoretically) by databases, but actually it is just-in-time (JIT) compiled in most cases, and programmers who place their SQL into stored procedures then ensure that it is purely compiled. C# and VB.NET are theoretically interpreted, but JIT-compiled by default, and again, they may be ngen'd (pre-compiled to native code entirely) so they are not interpreted at runtime at all. Markup languages such as HTML and XML are still purely interpreted, but it may confuse some people to think of them as programming languages. In short, I would ditch the division of programming languages into compiled vs. interpreted. It is out of date.Pat Palmer 10:30, 20 April 2007 (CDT)

please do not categorize here

The various methods o categorizing computer programming languages can be discussed on programming languages; please do not re-add categories here, as they are bound to be controversial.Pat Palmer 10:56, 20 April 2007 (CDT)

removed assembler

Assemblers are a class of "compiled" languages in which the instructions are close to machine language and in fact, often have a one-to-one correspondence with machine instructions. So they are symbolic languages allowing a programming to work at a higher, easier level, but they are very different from so-called "high level" programming languages. Finally, there are different assemblers for each type of computer processor, and maybe multiple ones for a single processor. So I don't think we should just include "assembler" in the list here. The programming languages page should describe them, however.Pat Palmer 10:56, 20 April 2007 (CDT)

HTML

I would call HTML a markup language rather than a programming language. It is not a "general purpose programming language", and it does not produce programs which run. Instead, it is just interpreted by web browsers, which use it to decide what to display to users. So I have removed it from this list. I think there should be a separate markup language article someday.Pat Palmer 11:00, 20 April 2007 (CDT)

Works for me, LaTeX and assorted others would also fit that bill. "Data and Formatting Representation Languages." You could put XML (and its various dialects) among other things within that category too.

--Paul Derry 11:43, 20 April 2007 (CDT)

Hmm yes but on that coin where does the line get drawn? You could add PDF in there too... heck even a simple text CSV file is technically a "way of representing data" :) I know I'm being difficult. I agree Pat, HTML definitely isn't a "programming language" Eric M Gearhart

I think the line would have to be drawn at where a language's primary use is in question. XML is typically used for representing data. PDF has programmatic features as well as representative features, but what do we pay attention to the most? The representative portion. --Paul Derry 12:32, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

I would draw the line by considering whether the language has certain fundamental features such that it could be used to represent a Turing machine: the ability to do loops and if-statements, for example. I don't think there are any loops in HTML. Postscript, on the other hand, I consider to be a full programming language: you can write things in it to do calculations such as listing prime numbers. --Catherine Woodgold 16:02, 20 May 2007 (CDT)

ON HOLD: placing things here that are not gen. purpose, or not languages, maybe

Some of these don't seem like languages per se; others are special purpose. Perhaps they'll go on a separate list, later?Pat Palmer 01:52, 11 September 2007 (CDT)

  • 4GL - 4th gen. language? is this one of those low-on-meaning phrases?
4GL is a high-level language mixing SQL with BASIC-like control-flow syntax. It's still available with the Informix database at the very least. Maybe it's always been a strictly Informix product; I don't know. Anyway, it's definitely general-purpose. Petréa Mitchell 16:51, 20 September 2007 (CDT)
  • bash - and other Unix/Linux shell languages (sh, csh, ksh etc.)
  • Delphi - this is an IDE (and a company), not a language
  • Developer - what the?
  • SQL - a whole set of languages for different databases
  • TOAD - a data modeling or report language for Oracle?

Supage of programming language

What do you think about making this article a "catalog" subpage of programming language? -- Alexander Wiebel 04:00, 30 January 2008 (CST)

Any time there's a "List of" anything, it should be a catalog subpage--that's by design of the subpage scheme. --Robert W King 09:10, 30 January 2008 (CST)

Don't agree to delete OR move this article

I have moved this article back to its original title "List of Programming Languages" because I feel that we need such a list at present, since otherwise the "Programming language" article would become too large by itself. The title still ought to be, in my opinion, "List of programming languages"; just calling it "programming languages" makes it sound like a general article about what those ARE; also, it cannot be found easily under it's current title, and links to it broke; I am leaving a link under the Catalog part of "Programming languages" but don't that it was moved without a chance for discussion, since several of us have been contributing to it over time, and broken links were left behind. I see no reason to delete this article at present.Pat Palmer 22:39, 31 January 2008 (CST)

Sorry, I've been told that the list of delete notices is a technical error. Whew! I was confused when I wrote the above because a lot of unexplainable stuff seemed to be happening.Pat Palmer 00:17, 1 February 2008 (CST)

name of this article

Because "programming languages" (plural) is a field of study within the academic discipline of computer science, I propose leaving the name of this catalog to be "List of programming languages" for added clarity.Pat Palmer 00:59, 1 February 2008 (CST)

I am sorry, if I acted to fast. I just agreed with Robert (list articles should appear as catalogs together with the article they belong to) and thought that this opinion was something like a policy. I agree that the name "List ....." adds clarity and that we should keep the name. However, I am still convinced that we should move this article to something like Programming_language/Catalogs/List_of_programming_languages. I do not think that lists should be separate articles. ... Is there I policy? Is there a discussion on this issue somewhere else? -- Alexander Wiebel 06:08, 1 February 2008 (CST)
If this were an article about the actual study of programming languages, I might agree with you Pat, but really the article is more or less a canonical "List" of languages. In that respect, I think it should be a catalog under "programming language". If you think it should not go there, then there should be more substance to this article other than a rundown of the types of programming languages available, or perhaps, there should be some other section or other article that deals specifically with the academia aspect of programming (which could be Computer science). --Robert W King 08:37, 1 February 2008 (CST)

I just fixed the subpages for the List_of_programming_languages, the problem was due to this edit on the metadata page. However, I can't figure out why this would exist on its own. What is the rationale for not having it as a catalog such as Programming_language/Catalogs/List_of_programming_languages or similar? Chris Day (talk) 12:48, 1 February 2008 (CST)

It's not a rationale exactly. I am quite happy that a link to this article appears under "Catalogs" for Programming language. However, if we rename the article with the catalog type path, it will no longer appear in the list of "All articles" in the Computer Workgroup, which I think is a shame. I like finding it there. To new authors coming along, it suggests a place to go and start working. If it's renamed as it was before, it seems to disappear from the "All articles" list, and one can find it only if one happens to go to Programming language or stumble across a link to it elsewhere. There is a discussion (which I recently started; I think it's under Articles but can't remember) about this in the forums but I don't have much time to monitor it, and I'm not sure any grand consensus has emerged yet as to how to handle a case like this.Pat Palmer 21:10, 2 February 2008 (CST)
I think Jesse Weinstein has created Categories for all subpages, so I think there's one for Computer Catalogs and that's where it would be listed under. See [[Category:Computers_Catalogs]] Also, that it would be found under "Programming Language" is exactly the point; that's really where it should be according to the design of the subpages system. --Robert W King 21:14, 2 February 2008 (CST)

To add the "list of" article, placed as a catalog, to the category of main articles, simply add this to the catalog page: 

[[Category:CZ Live]] [[Category:Computers Workgroup]]

Stephen Ewen 22:03, 2 February 2008 (CST)

In any case, I don't believe there should be one exception to the rule when we've been trying to get the rest of the articles that are "lists" into the catalog subpage; that would negate the spirit of the subpage initiative, and thus making one exception to the rule would open up argument for the rest of the "lists". --Robert W King 00:45, 3 February 2008 (CST)

I think the categories could be added to a redirect page, too, so the "list of" would show up categorized as an article that way. Also, a note could be placed at the top of Programming language,

For a detailed list of programming languages, see the Catalog of programming languages.

Surely, these are reasonable concessions. Stephen Ewen 01:00, 3 February 2008 (CST)

I see that people are determined to do this as though it were extremely important. So, wasn't there an extensive talk page associated with the "List of programming languages"? If so, where is it now? I think that the list does need to be a separate article with its own discussions. However, I'm not willing to fight a long fight over it. I find this insistence on form for form's sake really frustrating.Pat Palmer 20:38, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
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