# Ruby a "4th generation language"? Credible sources? **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [July 31, 2011, 12:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-a-4th-generation-language-credible-sources/210114 "2011-07-31T12:50:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![luislavena](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/0ea827/32.png) [@luislavena](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/luislavena)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2011, 12:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-a-4th-generation-language-credible-sources/210114/1 "2011-07-31T12:50:41Z")
I’ve noticed that Wikipedia says that “C#, Java” are 3’rd generation languages[1] and “Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby” are 4’th generation languages[2]. My question is: Are there any credible sources that categorize these languages in this way? [1] [Third-generation programming language - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-generation_programming_language) [2] [Fourth-generation programming language - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_language) ---
**Author:** ![alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/alby)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2011, 2:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-a-4th-generation-language-credible-sources/210114/2 "2011-07-31T14:02:56Z")
On Jul 31, 2011, at 3:50 AM, Albert S. wrote: > [2] [Programming language generations - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_language) > It’s Wikipedia, and being a community driven content site people will > still say things without citing sources. That’s why we have good ole > [citation needed]. Honestly though, will people throw Ruby out as a > language choice because of an article Wikipedia has? If so does the Ruby > community really want someone that makes such narrow minded decisions? I > honestly believe that the decision to work with a language is determined > by more valuable conditions such as documentation, community activity, > popular uses (Rails), and how easy it is for the user to work with. TLDR; I call BS Regards, Chris W. Twitter: [http://twitter.com/cwgem](http://twitter.com/cwgem) ---
**Author:** ![alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/alby)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2011, 6:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-a-4th-generation-language-credible-sources/210114/3 "2011-07-31T18:20:36Z")
On Sun, Jul 31, 2011 at 07:50:44PM +0900, Albert S. wrote: > [2] [Programming language generations - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_language) > Problem solved: Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby have been removed from the > list of Web development 4GLs in the 4GL article. I probably wouldn’t > re-edit PHP out of the list if it reappeared, because it strikes me as a > bit of a borderline case, but Perl, Python, and Ruby _definitely_ do not > belong there. RSpec might, though. ---
**Author:** ![alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/alby)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 9:24am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-a-4th-generation-language-credible-sources/210114/4 "2011-08-01T09:24:41Z")
The Wikipedia articles are spurious. I think this is closer to the truth: > **[Talk:Second-generation programming language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Second-generation_programming_language)** > > The idea of "generations" of programming languages appears to have arisen as a bit of marketing jargon particularly around the epoch of the so-called "fourth-generation" languages. The proposed distinctions imply that trends in language popularity are progressive rather than being driven by a combination of marketing fads and shifting requirements. > It is increasingly obvious, however, that this is the case: while there is a broad general trend towards greater abstraction from the hardware, it is... Third generation came into mark the first languages a level above assembler. Fourth generation was applied to things like Focus which dealt with typical DP tasks by removing some of the chores, particularly empty datasets or starts/ends of datasets. That theme would lead you to say SQL or say PL/SQL were 4GL but of course people now expect more of a programming language so would reject these as ‘languages’. Things moved away from this pattern. We seemed to revert to lower level languages like C but added in all sorts of powerful features and libraries. Ruby with its iterators deals with some things in a way 4GLs did. So while the terminology is obsolete, what is interesting is why the author wanted to distinguish Ruby from C#. As I recall, 4GLs were interpreted and thus capable of dynamic programming. Perhaps that’s what he/she was getting at. ---
**Author:** ![alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/alby)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 4:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-a-4th-generation-language-credible-sources/210114/5 "2011-08-01T16:51:54Z")
On Mon, Aug 01, 2011 at 04:24:43PM +0900, Mike S. wrote: > I think this is closer to the truth: > > [Talk:Second-generation programming language - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Second-generation_programming_language) In my experience, the language “generation” talk is (as noted early on that page) basically marketing. People use it to try to say their language is better than yours. People who are serious about software development and language design tend to refer to languages as being more or less “high-level” or “abstracted”, or as being more or less “domain specific”, while people who are more serious about selling you on an idea will sometimes refer to a language as a “4GL” as if that makes it good somehow. From what I’ve seen, when someone who actually knows what (s)he’s doing and cares about getting something done uses the term “4GL”, the term is used in a sort of sarcastic or derogatory way to mean “not a real programming language”. Suffice to say that there is a lot of skepticism out there about the generational jargon for language classification. Your mileage may vary. > Third generation came into mark the first languages a level above > assembler. Fourth generation was applied to things like Focus which > dealt with typical DP tasks by removing some of the chores, > particularly empty datasets or starts/ends of datasets. That theme > would lead you to say SQL or say PL/SQL were 4GL but of course people > now expect more of a programming language so would reject these as > ‘languages’. More of a language than PL/SQL . . . ? You’re aware that PL/SQL is actually a Turing-complete programming language – right? Granted, I wouldn’t want to use it for general purpose programming, but it is entirely capable of such (ab)use. Of course, I seem to recall that the idea of third generation languages as a term of jargon mostly arose as we approached the marketing hype around upcoming so-called fourth generation languages. Businesses started thinking about how to sell people on the idea of non-programmers being able to do all of your programming, and eventually ended up with what they called 4GLs, which actually programmers looked at with severe suspicion because of the way they tended to give people with no skill the ability to create something with no value (in their view, at least) while still effectively devaluing the contributions of software developers in the eyes of middle managers. I think 3GL has mostly arisen as a term used to denigrate anything in common usage that is not a 4GL according to the marketing geniuses trying to sell you a drag-and-drop automation system. Back when languages like C and its descendants started to appear, I think everyone basically just called them “high level languages”, and not “third generation languages”. Maybe all of this is just my perception, based on the people with whom I interacted at the time and the reading that I did over the years. I suppose I might have completely missed a lot of people using the term 3GL years ago, before the rise of 4GLs as products. Perhaps a little ironically, I _have_ actually seen a 4GL that might actually provide some of what it promises as a way to make it possible for non-programmers to do some programming – _some_, I say. I speak of Google’s Android App Inventor. It has some limitations that make it unsuitable for some purposes, and unenticing to me as a developer, but it really does allow some pretty arbitrary software development goals to be achieved by someone who is not familiar, or comfortable, with traditional programming tasks involving the work of writing source code. > Things moved away from this pattern. We seemed to revert to lower level > languages like C but added in all sorts of powerful features and > libraries. Ruby with its iterators deals with some things in a way 4GLs > did. > > So while the terminology is obsolete, what is interesting is why the > author wanted to distinguish Ruby from C#. As I recall, 4GLs were > interpreted and thus capable of dynamic programming. Perhaps that’s what > he/she was getting at. That’s a very strange way to distinguish between a so-called 3GL and a so-called 4GL, and seems to disagree with every other means of differentiating between them that I’ve ever encountered. Interestingly, it would make Objective Caml both a 3GL and a 4GL, depending on how you use it, as well as something in between – because the “official” implementation of OCaml comes with a compiler, a bytecode VM, an interpreter, and even a REPL. How do you classify Common Lisp using such criteria – a language available in a plethora of implementations, including compilers at one extreme and interpreters at the other? How do bytecode VMs fit into this system of categorization anyway? Ruby is very heavily moving toward VMs and away from basic interpreters, including the new reference implementation for 1.9.x, Rubinius, and so on. Does that make it no longer suitable for identification as a 4GL according to the criteria of someone basing categorization on interpreter vs. compiler implementations? ---
**Author:** ![alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/alby)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 5:01pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-a-4th-generation-language-credible-sources/210114/6 "2011-08-01T17:01:13Z")
On Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Chad P. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > actually a Turing-complete programming language – right? > Actually, PL/SQL is a pretty good procedural language with a decent > module system. Unfortunately it’s abused even in the domain where it > resides (Oracle database) but the blame cannot be put on the language. It’s also noteworthy that SQL is not a programming language _at all_. It’s a declarative language used to describe tuples and sets of tuples. Full story @ [SQL - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sql) Kind regards robert ---
**Author:** ![alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/alby)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 10:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-a-4th-generation-language-credible-sources/210114/7 "2011-08-01T22:47:33Z")
Chad P. wrote in post #1014196: > That’s a very strange way to distinguish between a so-called 3GL and a > so-called 4GL, and seems to disagree with every other means of > differentiating between them that I’ve ever encountered. Well I agree. So what’s your theory? Why did someone see Java as a 3GL yet Ruby as a 4GL? ---
**Author:** ![alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/alby)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2011, 1:16am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-a-4th-generation-language-credible-sources/210114/8 "2011-08-02T01:16:20Z")
On Tue, Aug 02, 2011 at 05:47:35AM +0900, Mike S. wrote: > Chad P. wrote in post #1014196: > > > That’s a very strange way to distinguish between a so-called 3GL and > > a so-called 4GL, and seems to disagree with every other means of > > differentiating between them that I’ve ever encountered. > > Well I agree. So what’s your theory? Why did someone see Java as a 3GL > yet Ruby as a 4GL? Good question. Probably some kind of anti-“scripting” language bigotry, I guess. I didn’t say that’s necessarily not how the guy decided to differentiate between third and fourt generation languages. I just think that the fact it’s an interpreted language makes for some ridiculous criteria, in and of itself. ---
**Author:** ![alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/alby)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 5:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-a-4th-generation-language-credible-sources/210114/9 "2011-08-01T17:12:18Z")
On Tue, Aug 02, 2011 at 12:00:31AM +0900, Robert K. wrote: > > More of a language than PL/SQL . . . ? You’re aware that PL/SQL is > > actually a Turing-complete programming language – right? > > Actually, PL/SQL is a pretty good procedural language with a decent > module system. Unfortunately it’s abused even in the domain where it > resides (Oracle database) but the blame cannot be put on the language. Yeah, that was kinda my point. > It’s also noteworthy that SQL is not a programming language _at all_. > It’s a declarative language used to describe tuples and sets of > tuples. Full story @ [SQL - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sql) That’s true of SQL itself. It’s not true of PL/SQL, which is a lot more than just SQL. ---
**Author:** ![alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/alby)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2011, 9:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-a-4th-generation-language-credible-sources/210114/10 "2011-09-05T21:11:36Z")
Roger P. wrote in post #1019851: > We tell it to read a file > and it spits out Fortran > Probably a useful way of looking at generations. A 4GL builds on 3GL > contructs, taking away the need for you to write predictable things. 4GLs were of their time. That time has passed. Write one today and Rubyists would call is a DSL, not being reflective enough to see all languages are domain specific to varying degrees. 4GLs were good. Apart from keeping me in beer for more than decade, they encouraged you to do simple things in preference to flashy things. Most things in business are open to simple solutions, and you write things faster and with less errors. Ruby is prone to over-sophistication, with certain clever people like David Heinemeier H. unable to resist the temptation. ---
**Author:** ![alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/alby)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2011, 9:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-a-4th-generation-language-credible-sources/210114/11 "2011-09-02T21:12:41Z")
> I’ve noticed that Wikipedia says that “C#, Java” are 3’rd generation > languages[1] and “Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby” are 4’th generation > languages[2]. I was once chatting with a fellow at church who programs mainframes. He said “oh yeah we program in a 4GL language. We tell it to read a file and it spits out the Fortran necessary to do all the reading and parsing.” Which immediately made me think of Ruby’s File.read So…just sharing it because it was funny at the time 🙂 -r ---
**Author:** ![alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/alby)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2011, 2:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-a-4th-generation-language-credible-sources/210114/12 "2011-09-06T02:55:28Z")
On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 2:13 PM, Mike S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > 4GLs were good. Apart from keeping me in beer for more than decade, they > encouraged you to do simple things in preference to flashy things. Most > things in business are open to simple solutions, and you write things > faster and with less errors. Ruby is prone to over-sophistication, with > certain clever people like David Heinemeier H. unable to resist the > temptation. Can you clarify this? I have a suspicion that what you are calling “over-sophistication” is just one way of talking about the implicit “magic” of convention over configuration. If you know the conventions, then is Rails (What I assume you are referring to when you criticize DHH) actually overly sophisticated? And if you don’t know the conventions, then isn’t the problem ignorance rather than sophistication? A follow up question. If you are referring to more than convention over configuration, then is it actually overly sophisticated, or is it just a set of techniques that weren’t common and thus initially seemed sophisticated, until people became more familiar with them? For example, design patterns seem overly sophisticated when you are unfamiliar with them. But after you learn them, they aren’t so confusing, and they allow you to solve some complex problems. ---
**Author:** ![alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@alby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/alby)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2011, 8:09am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-a-4th-generation-language-credible-sources/210114/13 "2011-09-06T08:09:16Z")
True - once you’ve become sophisticated, you might as well enjoy it. The thing is the web sites I’ve been involved in over the last few years are all ultra-simple (partly to lead the customer to effortless purchase) - much the same as, say, call centre apps I used to program 30 years ago. Yet Rails is vastly more baffling than Focus - a thousand times more powerful but I’m not sure that’s ever so useful. We used to do rapid changes to systems supporting hundreds of people selling thousands of policies an hour running a mainframe to the max yet not a single person felt they were missing a lambda.