Talk:Programming language generations

Purpose

This page has two purposes. One is to satisfy the discussion suggestions for the existing first-generation, second-generation, and third-generation programming language by drawing them together into a coherent sequence, rather than trying to make dictionary-like definitions. This is especially needed in view of the second purpose, which is to summarize and illustrate two (historically) divisions of the languages into generations, which is essentially impossible to fix while they are treated separately because it means giving different names to the same pages and the same names to different pages.

I called these two divisions historical and modern. The "modern" descriptions are all drawn, with limited editing, from the 3 existing wikpedia pages on the 3 generations of languages, and reflects a view common on the web, but for which an early published source I can not find (yet). The "historical" descriptions reflect a view common among most practitioners in the field through the early 1990's, and annotated by reference to various published sources.

I have avoided including the fourth- and fifth- generation pages in this organization for three reasons: 1) there is no "historical" view different from the "modern" one, 2) the material on those two pages is very different in manner of treatment, scope, advocacy, and technical precision from the material on the pages for the first three generations, which makes a jumble of all the material become too diffuse and disorganized, and 3) I believe that in many cases, the generational term was coined in anticipation of possible languages and that there is not enough coherence or insufficiently wide-spread adoption to have, in hindsight, justified the term. I believe I am not alone in that view and that, for example from her comments in the HOPL-II keynote, Jean Sammet may concur, though perhaps she may be more succinct about it. In any case, I believe a generational overview should include their mention, and refer to the content more capably advocated there than by myself.

I hope we can continue to improve this page and plan, if all goes well, to remove the 1GL, 2GL and 3GL pages, replacing them by redirects here.CSProfBill (talk) 14:26, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Second Generation

No mention of the autocodes, I see --Redrose64 (talk) 15:01, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Nor did I mention Plankalkül or one or two others. I have tried to avoid making particular assignments of languages to generations, relying on their assignment by figures placed in history. (You may also note that I avoided placing "C"). My own knowledge of autocoder is limited, but I've always thought of it as kind of transitional - rather too limited and narrow to be widespread, but only because it was early and useful. Also, I was trying to avoid this being another "History of Programming Languages" article, to focus mostly on the generational naming stuff. I have no objection to someone who can pin a reasonable reference to including it in the appropriate place. But I find authorative references difficult with respect to this breakdown since nobody seems to much use the generational terms in written articles. ThanksCSProfBill (talk) 17:30, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]