Programming Languages
History and Fundamentals
by Jean E. Sammet · first published 1969
25% recommend75% neutral
The primary purpose of this book is to serve as a reference for an overall view of higher level languages. The book brings together in one place, and in a consistent fashion, fundamental information on programming languages, including history, general characteristics, similarities, and differences. A second purpose of the book is to provide specific basic information on all the significant, and most of the minor, higher level languages developed in the United States. The third purpose of the book is to provide history and perspective for this particular aspect of the programming field. - Prefa
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One I like: Jean Sammet, Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals, from 1969. https://archive.org/details/SammetProgrammingLanguages1969 And related, the HOPL proceedings, the first at https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.1145/800025 and the rest…
on “The Joy of Computer History Books” ↗In re: the vast number of available programming languages... not really a new problem. I've always been amused by the "Tower of Babel" illustration on the cover of Jean Sammet's 1969 book, Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals. http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51jYiKlauWL._SX330_BO1...
on “The self-hating web developer” ↗According to an amazon reviewer [1], Sammet's book Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals (from 1969) already discusses ~120 different languages! And gives code examples in 30 of them. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Languages-Fundamentals-Au...
on “Learning Ada” ↗Too late to edit, but I've gone and done it: scanned through Sammet's Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals for languages with identifiable assignment statements. I skip assembly-style, English-like (COBOL etc.), and functional-style (LISP etc.) syntax, and for summary purposes ignore…
on “Why Does “=” Mean Assignment?” ↗…went into choosing character sets.²³⁴ 1963 ASCII had an up arrow ‘↑’ dropped in 1967 in favour of ^ (because furriners wanted accents), and a left arrow ‘←’ dropped in favour of ‘_’.⁵⁶ ¹Jean Sammet, Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals 978-0137299881 ²Charles E. MacKenzie, Coded Character Sets: History and Development 978-0201144604 ³http://www.trailing-edge.com/~bobbemer/SURVEY.HTM ⁴R W Bemer, Design of…
on “Why do programming languages use curly braces?” ↗Though it looks only useful for the listing and factual description of languages at that time: 47[12].- -JEAN E. SAMMET, Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1969, xxx $ 785 pp., 24 cm. Price $18.00 ($13.50 student edition). Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals is a monumental…
on “Jean Sammet, co-creator of COBOL, has died” ↗