Where are programming languages created? A zoomable map

https://pldb.io/blog/whereInnovation.html

by marinesebastian • 2 years ago

80 75 2 years ago

pldb.io

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK• 2 years ago

Everyone knows the best pl are created in Denmark.

bazoom425• 2 years ago

The languages created in Denmark does not seem particulary notable?

flohofwoe4• 2 years ago

Anders Hjelsberg and Bjarne Stroustrup are both Danish, who together account for what feels like 90% of all popular programming languages ;)

Quothling4• 2 years ago

As a Dane I'm curious which ones you're thinking of. The ones which are typically associated with Denmark are C++ and PHP and neither were developed in Denmark and I think it would be fair to call PHP more Canadian than Danish. Ruby on Rails is another but Ruby was developed by Matz.

I'm not sure BETA or FCL are really in the "Best" category. :p

bazoom425• 2 years ago

C# was developed by a Dane, but it wasn’t developed in Denmark. The creator of PHP was born in Greenland, but again the language was developed elsewhere.

3836293648• 2 years ago

And your most reasonable language is missing! (Futhark)

joshdavham• 2 years ago

It makes sense that most software innovation has so far happened in the USA, Europe and Japan, but I wonder what this map might look like by the end of the century...

wiseowise2• 2 years ago

but I wonder what this map might look like by the end of the century...

Why would it suddenly change?

RandomThoughts32• 2 years ago

Well for one, the world demography is deeply changing with population aging everywhere but a significant lag between countries which are already greying (Japan, Europe), countries which rely heavily on immigration to keep the median age stable (the USA) and countries which are just beginning to age but have large population (India, China, Brazil).

aardvark179• 2 years ago

I think there is likely also bias in the data (what was considered significant) and inaccuracies in locations (many things assigned to Google’s head office).

firesteelrain5• 2 years ago

In the US at least, programming languages were either developed by large corporations (Sun Microsystems, Apple, Google, Bell Labs, IBM) or research institutions (MIT) or Government (Ada, COBOL).

fanf2• 2 years ago

Ada was designed at Honeywell-Bull in France.

t-3• 2 years ago

Finland is surprisingly sparse. I've always had the impression that it usually seems to be rather over-represented in other fields of computing.

flohofwoe4• 2 years ago

Could be many reason I guess (after all, there's only 5.5 million Finns around), but the map is a bit pointless IMHO because it only counts university and research lab projects. Most recent languages I'm aware of (and which are actually useful in the real world) had been started by individuals in their spare time.

phire• 2 years ago

It lists languages designed by commercial companies too.

The main reason it avoids showing languages created by individuals is that it can be hard to narrow down their location. Also, it would count as doxing.

wiseowise2• 2 years ago

but the map is a bit pointless IMHO because it only counts university and research lab projects

No, it doesn't. There's JetBrains, Eclipse foundation, Corel, etc.

firesteelrain5• 2 years ago

Which most recent (and how recent) were started by individuals in their spare time?

Perl is one that comes to mind and it’s old.

racingmars• 2 years ago

"Microsoft Notepad." "BMP image format."

Seemed like the definition of "programming language" was quite odd (given the title of the submission to HN is "Where are programming languages created?"), but then I noticed the actual title of the page is "Where does software innovation happen?" and is not restricted to programming languages.

varjag2• 2 years ago

At the same time it misses Russia's Kotlin.

mseepgood2• 2 years ago

While Kotlin is a Russian island the Kotlin programming language was created by JetBrains which is a Czech company founded by Russians with headquarters in Prague. You will find Kotlin on the map in the Prague circle.

cherrybajan• 2 years ago

Way back in USSR days, there used to be this language called Nairi or something like that

pentacent_hq• 2 years ago

Elixir is probably the most prominent language that originated in Brazil (at Plataformatec in São Paulo) but the data CSV lists an address in Texas.

orhmeh09• 2 years ago

Ah, let's not forget Lua =)

ClawsOnPaws• 2 years ago

I would have thought that would be Lua, not Elixir?

breck2• 2 years ago

Thanks! Updated: https://github.com/breck7/pldb/commit/75bfe910f8b3723389964b...

shooshx• 2 years ago

"A not very zoomable map"

laurentlb• 2 years ago

In the CSV file, I see that the Google software is attributed to Mountain View, even when the actual teams were not in Mountain View.

(I found the visualization hard to use, at least on mobile, so I used the CSV file)

FredPret2• 2 years ago

As with so many things, this is basically a map of GDP / area.

In this case there's another layer on top of that where # of programming languages scales faster after a certain wealth threshold.

For instance, the city of Toronto has a GDP equivalent to a couple of specific countries (and larger than most countries), but created more programming languages than the equivalent countries.

lokimedes2• 2 years ago

It may be a bit shallow, but as a Dane, I take some pride in the number of languages created by my countrymen, considering our modest population.

*Many have migrated to the US on their way, but still…

kamikazeturtles• 2 years ago

Many Danes migrated to the UK a thousand years ago and now their descendants, who migrated to the US 200 hundred years ago, are also making great contributions in programming language theory. Lots to be proud of

dunham• 2 years ago

I'm working on a toy language (in the US), and I'm 1/8th Danish.

lokimedes2• 2 years ago

You're in good company: Bjarne Stroustrup, Rasmus Lerdorf, Anders Hejlsberg, Peter Naur, Dunham...

vitus• 2 years ago

Seems weird to attribute Haskell to Microsoft. Simon Peyton Jones joined MSR Cambridge in '98 (about a decade after the name "Haskell" was chosen), Erik Meijer joined Microsoft in 2000, and nobody else linked from the Wikipedia page for Haskell has obvious affiliations with Microsoft.

As far as I can tell, Haskell was an academic collaboration mostly between Jones (UCL briefly, mostly University of Glasgow), Wadler (University of Edinburgh), and Hudak (Yale).

breck2• 2 years ago

Pull requests to update this welcome: https://github.com/breck7/pldb/blob/main/concepts/haskell.sc...

sebnun• 2 years ago

Genexus is placed on Argentina, but the company is from Uruguay.

Where are programming languages created? A zoomable map

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