History of Programming Languages

by Richard L. Wexelblat (Editor)

History of Programming Languages (Acm Monograph Series) [Hardcover] Richard L. Wexelblat (Editor)

Genres: Programming, History, Computer Science, Computers

758 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1981

Reviews

[Aneel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The papers and presentations from the ACM's conferences on the History of Programming Languages. The first was interesting mostly for the historical descriptions of how the languages were created. The second was fascinating because the philosophies behind the languages were so different. The chapters on Lisp, Smalltalk, Forth and C++ were particularly interesting. I now have a hankering to play around with each of them (I never thought I'd want to learn C++, but Bjarne Stroustrup's explanations of why the language features work the way they do makes me want to give it a try). The Lisp chapter reminded me what I loved about coding in Lisp: a mix of programming elegance and humor that I haven't found elsewhere.

[ABIMBOLA GLORIA · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm excited to get started on this journey

[0xd34df00d · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book (conference? papers collection?)'s first-hand display of how the whole notion of programming appeared together with my soft spot for retrocomputing and the nostalgia for me-the-kid making first steps in programming a couple of decades ago (simpler times!) is an explosive mix.