Six programming languages built in Cambridge, MA

http://bostinnovation.com/2011/07/26/6-programming-languages-invented-in-the-hub/

by thejerk • 15 years ago

38 28 15 years ago

bostinnovation.com

sandofsky• 15 years ago

C was invented at Bell Labs, which is in New Jersey.

For Scala, the article even says, "although not created in Boston".

And Logo and Scheme are dialects of Lisp.

My takeaway is that Boston is the home of LISP and APL.

makmanalp• 15 years ago

Goes well with the academic background, to be honest.

jleader• 15 years ago

While Iverson started the work that led to APL while at Harvard, It believe the language itself was implemented when he was working for IBM. I'm not sure where that was, but I suspect it was Armonk, New York, and not Boston (nor even Cambridge).

woodrow• 15 years ago

Another one (not in the article): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLU_(programming_language)

IdeaHamster2• 15 years ago

Also worth noting that New Jersey is the only state to have a programming language named after it. Just saying...

deepGem• 15 years ago

And which would that be ? Just curious.

durbin• 15 years ago

The title and focus of this post is a good example of the problem I think Boston has: they want to do research and create some languages - they don't like going into the trenches and doing the lower level stuff that builds companies. that's an extreme generalization but I think it applies at least a little.

thisrod• 15 years ago

Do you consider being John McCarthy or Dennis Ritchie to be a problem? I doubt that they do.

jsavimbi6• 15 years ago

Just an aside for anyone who cares about maps and city boundaries, Cambridge is not a part of Boston and never was in any shape or form. I know the Boston Innovation guys are [really] trying to stretch it with this piece, but they got what the asked for when they named themselves after a city where very little innovation takes place.

simonsarris• 15 years ago

For almost everyone in the world outside of Cambridge, Boston and Cambridge are equivalent.

Even where I live in New Hampshire they're considered the same.

jsavimbi6• 15 years ago

Sure, and Portsmouth, Worcester and Providence are all a part of Boston too, when you look at it from a financial perspective. But they're not. They are their own incorporated cities with elected governments, complete with by-laws and regulations, independent agencies, school systems, taxing, licensing and terms for residents and natives alike. Just like Bostonians and Cantabrigians. So no, not even in the remotest of terms, are Boston and Cambridge the same. They're not even in the same county.

And when you're writing a piece that even you know stretches the known boundaries of truth in order to promote your events publication, the least you can do is aim for a little bit of accuracy, even if it's just to save face. Truth isn't trivial.

wgrover3• 15 years ago

In the author's defense, Cambridge is surrounded on three sides by Boston (Charlestown to the east, Back Bay to the south, and Allston to the west, all part of Boston).

jsavimbi6• 15 years ago

That's incorrect.

Cambridge is bounded in its majority by Somerville, Belmont, Watertown, Arlington and Boston descending in size of the borders. The only areas where Cambridge physically meets Boston are located along Charlestown and East Cambridge and only so because they filled in Miller's River and I can hardly put a fair price on geographical ties based on what lies beneath the expressway. People from East Cambridge do not have any historical or cultural ties with Charlestown and vice versa, except when the townies get locked up at the East Cambridge courthouse. Prior to that, there was no land-to-land contact and I cannot grant you the River Charles as a border because it is administered and policed by the state.

It's a separate city in a separate county with a separate culture of its own. Sure, if you're not from around here it's easy and practical to lump everything together as who really cares about imaginary lines on a map, but then again we lump all outsiders together as tourists so no harm, no foul. One thing is to speak out of convenience, but to purposely confuse the two is to mislead the reader.

I'm from one and I live in the other. To me there's a very big difference. And don't even get me started on Brookline.

losvedir• 15 years ago

Eh, I live in Cambridge but I tell everyone that I live in Boston. I suppose the article should have said the "Greater Boston Area."

mctavjb9• 15 years ago

Oh come on, BostInnovation is not a misnomer. There are plenty of certifiably innovative startups and several well-known VCs on the Right Bank of the Charles. Runkeeper and Cloudant are on the same floor of my former office building in the South End. Flybridge and Spark Capital both have offices in the Back Bay. There's a cleantech incubator called Greentown Labs in the Fort Point Channel district that houses some very innovative companies, as well as all of the Mass Challenge finalists in the Seaport (editorial comments about Mass Challenge aside, many of these companies are IMHO quite novel and interesting). A new ed-tech startup and a micro-VC firm have recently set up shop in the Leather District near South Station. Oh yeah, and there's Skyhook Wireless and Where.com, and well, the list goes on...

wgrover3• 15 years ago

Out of the MIT Media Lab: Processing: http://processing.org Scratch: http://scratch.mit.edu

Out of Mass General Hospital: MUMPS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS

shaunxcode• 15 years ago

"APL was originally popular for computer graphics programming."

define "graphics"? I suppose matrix operations and the ability to visualize them could count?

mhd001• 15 years ago

How about adding Victor Yngve's COMIT. First string-processing language, developed at MIT in the late 1950's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COMIT).

Six programming languages built in Cambridge, MA

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