Talk:Programming language/Catalogs

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)

• JBoss
• JBuilder
• JDeveloper
• Visual Studio
• CodeWarrior
• XCode

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)