veering OT: language history

[Dave]

On 27 Jan 2009, at 17:46, Mark Wieder wrote:

> Dave-
>
> Tuesday, January 27, 2009, 3:37:50 AM, you wrote:
>
>> Assembler/More Assembler/More Assembler/Dartmouth Basic/Assembler/
>> SNOBOL4/SPITBOL/LISP/C/Pascal/C++/RunRev/RealBasic/SQL/Objective-C
>
> Starting to get off topic here,

Who cares?! lol

> but I don't think SQL counts as a
> language any more than HTML does, and for the same reason. My cutoff
> point for the definition is support for conditional branching. Without
> at least if-then-else constructs you can't do decision making, and so
> you're just stringing macros together rather than programming.

I tend to agree, but I know plenty of SQL'ers that would disagree.  
There is a kind of a branch structure in SQL but it isn't used to  
transfer control, but rather to pick data.
>
> That said, I don't think my history was linear:
>
> Dartmouth Basic/assembly/more assembly/Forth/more
> assembly/C/Pascal/C++/JavaScript/Java
>          |    |    |
>          |    |    |-Perl
>          |    |    |-Python/Ruby
>          |    |-Visual Basic/VBA/VBScript
>          |-Hypercard/SuperCard/Rev


I forgot about JavaScript!

Did you use Dartmouth Basic on an old Teletype? I still have a paper  
tape and listing of a Basic Program to draw a picture made up of  
overprinted characters on a line printer!

All the Best
Dave