Ruby Forum Ruby > Programming Language History Visualization (#219)

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## Programming Language History Visualization (#219)

Olá Rubyists,

This week's quiz is to create a a visualization of the history of
programming languages. The output should be a directed graph with
edges indicating which languages influenced other languages. A good
source for the data is Wikipedia[1].

Have fun!

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_%28programming_language%29

Daniel Moore wrote:
> ## Programming Language History Visualization (#219)
> 
> Olá Rubyists,
> 
> This week's quiz is to create a a visualization of the history of
> programming languages. The output should be a directed graph with
> edges indicating which languages influenced other languages. A good
> source for the data is Wikipedia[1].

Here's a couple of other ones:

Encyclopedia of Programming Languages: <http://HoPL.Murdoch.Edu.Au/>

The famous Computer Languages Poster: <http://Levenez.Com/lang/>

O'Reilly's version of the above:
<http://Wiki.OReillyNet.Com/languageposter/>

Diagram & History of Programming Languages:
<http://Merd.SourceForge.Net/pixel/language-study/diagram.html>
(Nice extra for the Quiz: this one's got machine-readable sources for
the diagram!)

And another one: <http://EPEMag.Com/zuse/Images/43ab.gif>

Mother Tongues of Computer Languages:
<http://DigiBarn.Com/collections/posters/tongues/>
(This one is by far the least technically accurate. It misses or
misconstrues several important connections, e.g. Modula-3 is not
derived from Modula, it was an independent development that only uses
the Modula *name* (after asking Wirth for permission, of course);
Netscape did not license the name Java from Sun to ride its hype,
exactly the opposite is true: Sun paid (bribed?) Netscape to rename
LiveScript to JavaScript in order to ride *its* hype; C# is much less
influenced by Java and C++ than this chart suggests, its major
influences are Modula-2, Turbo Pascal and Delphi, and so on.)

Programming Languages Genealogy Project:
<http://Everything2.Com/?node_id=858421>

A Chronology of Influential Computer Languages:
<http://People.KU.Edu/~nkinners/LangList/Extras/famous.htm>

Alphabetical list of programming languages: <http://SK.NVG.Org/lang/>

History of Programming Languages:
<http://EECS.UCF.Edu/~leavens/ComS541Fall97/hw-pages/history/>

Dictionary of Programming Languages:
<http://CGIBin.Erols.Com/ziring/cgi-bin/cep/cep>

And of course Wikipedia:
<http://Wikipedia.Org/wiki/Category:Computer_languages>

jwm

There were no submissions to this week's quiz. Jörg W Mittag shared
several links to existing programming language history visualizations
as well as alternate sources to gather the data from.

If you are interested in solving the data gathering portion of this
problem here is a good technique from Ilya Grigorik's blog: [Ruby
Screen Scraper in 60 seconds][1].

Ruby Quiz needs your help! [Please suggest quizzes often!][2]

[1]: http://www.igvita.com/2007/02/04/ruby-screen-scraper-in-60-seconds/
[2]: http://rubyquiz.strd6.com/suggestions

On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 10:56 PM, Daniel Moore <yahivin@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ruby Quiz needs your help! [Please suggest quizzes often!][2]

The 'suggestions' link really ought to be a lot more prominent! I'd go
as far as to make it a fourth header on par with 'home' and 'archives'

martin