Archeology in programming languages
Today is the four year encyclopedia of Progopedia programming languages - a project in which I have been participating for almost two years now.
By the anniversary, Progopedia achieved a pleasant roundness not only of dates, but also of numbers: it now describes exactly 100 languages! Gastronomic Chef has become the 100th language. Normal mainstream languages ​​in the encyclopedia, too, there are even more than esoteric. But personally, I find it more interesting to write about the latter, which I do, in particular, on Habré - after all, to become an expert on Hanoi Love is much faster and easier than on Haskell ;-)
In general, the task of even a superficial study of languages ​​becomes nontrivial, as soon as they move away from the mainstream. Websites dedicated to languages ​​die, and even their mirrors and archives are lost in the darkness of time, the authoring implementations, from a language used once there are only lines in a dictionary. There are quite funny cases.
')
One day, I undertook to clean up my favorite article about Brainfuck and its dialects. I came across a glaringly incomplete article about BrainSub , and I went in search of information about this dialect. There were as many as two worthwhile references: ours on the Progopedia and the remote page on Esolangs.org . In the discussion it turned out that it was a magnificent dialect of Brainfuck - written in assembler, with libraries and a 175 KB user manual. The author intended to remove the “esoteric” stamp from BrainSub and use it for learning and even writing medium-sized applications, and first wrote a Wikipedia article about it. Of course, nothing good came of it - the editors instantly classified the language as “insignificant” and sent it to Esolangs, where it belongs. Over the next year, as many as two people became interested in the language, and the author realized that he could not continue this way anymore. He dashed out an angry message to insignificant people who still did not appreciate his masterpiece, walked in passing through other ezo-languages ​​— pitiful hand-made articles described in two paragraphs and worth no more than 10 minutes of attention — and cleaned up the article. Finally, he said that he would wait until he was appreciated and wrote his article about him, preferably directly to Wikipedia!
No, I absolutely do not understand people who destroy their work due to the fact that “every day, in which his work goes unnoticed, hurts his self-esteem,” without doing anything for her, work, popularization. The maximum that is available to my understanding - these are people who simply cease to support the site of the language, and he dies his own death, such as, for example, Omgrofl . But at least they can write and ask if they have an interpreter left (usually not left, but the person still enjoys the interest).
There are also pleasant exceptions. For example, recently the author Braincopter re-laid out in the open access source, which had long been considered lost.
Yes, definitely there is something about archeology. And you know what? I like.
By the anniversary, Progopedia achieved a pleasant roundness not only of dates, but also of numbers: it now describes exactly 100 languages! Gastronomic Chef has become the 100th language. Normal mainstream languages ​​in the encyclopedia, too, there are even more than esoteric. But personally, I find it more interesting to write about the latter, which I do, in particular, on Habré - after all, to become an expert on Hanoi Love is much faster and easier than on Haskell ;-)
In general, the task of even a superficial study of languages ​​becomes nontrivial, as soon as they move away from the mainstream. Websites dedicated to languages ​​die, and even their mirrors and archives are lost in the darkness of time, the authoring implementations, from a language used once there are only lines in a dictionary. There are quite funny cases.
')
One day, I undertook to clean up my favorite article about Brainfuck and its dialects. I came across a glaringly incomplete article about BrainSub , and I went in search of information about this dialect. There were as many as two worthwhile references: ours on the Progopedia and the remote page on Esolangs.org . In the discussion it turned out that it was a magnificent dialect of Brainfuck - written in assembler, with libraries and a 175 KB user manual. The author intended to remove the “esoteric” stamp from BrainSub and use it for learning and even writing medium-sized applications, and first wrote a Wikipedia article about it. Of course, nothing good came of it - the editors instantly classified the language as “insignificant” and sent it to Esolangs, where it belongs. Over the next year, as many as two people became interested in the language, and the author realized that he could not continue this way anymore. He dashed out an angry message to insignificant people who still did not appreciate his masterpiece, walked in passing through other ezo-languages ​​— pitiful hand-made articles described in two paragraphs and worth no more than 10 minutes of attention — and cleaned up the article. Finally, he said that he would wait until he was appreciated and wrote his article about him, preferably directly to Wikipedia!
No, I absolutely do not understand people who destroy their work due to the fact that “every day, in which his work goes unnoticed, hurts his self-esteem,” without doing anything for her, work, popularization. The maximum that is available to my understanding - these are people who simply cease to support the site of the language, and he dies his own death, such as, for example, Omgrofl . But at least they can write and ask if they have an interpreter left (usually not left, but the person still enjoys the interest).
There are also pleasant exceptions. For example, recently the author Braincopter re-laid out in the open access source, which had long been considered lost.
Yes, definitely there is something about archeology. And you know what? I like.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/119450/
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