On Programming

A series of articles by Sterling “Chip” Camden:

1. The Early History of Programming Languages
2. An introduction to object oriented languages
3. The ascent of scripting languages
4. Scripting Languages and the Web
5. An introduction to functional programming

Notes:

• The first programming jobs consisted of flipping switches and moving cables around...
• Java: "...led to the creation of gratuitous classes merely to enclose functions, and thus to an over-abundance of nouns in the code conversation...often becomes an exercise in verbosity."
• History of the scripting languages: from the JCL to Unix Shell to Pearl to Ruby.
• Lisp appeared around the same time as Fortran and COBOL the 3rd generation languages.
  
• "...Lisp is the first language to be based on the lambda calculus... It boggles the mind to realize how much more advanced Lisp was (and still is) than its contemporaries...
• Author's favorite language is Ruby.