[Chicago] History of programming

[Randy Baxley]

I like this.  Especially the talk about being anal and refering to JAVA.
Normal Wiki searches and the corporate rewrite of JAVA history will not get
you the full story.  JAVA was such a fun concept when it began.  At that
time I did scientific programming with reintrant ( calls / invocation ),
((( calls.invocation))), (calls, invocation) in all of the mentioned
languages as well as PL/1, LISP, REDD, QUERY and a double entry language
that I fail to remember at this time.  There was no dynamic allocation of
memory at that time so no variable length arrays.  The CS/EE class for
machine design prof thought he was having good fun when he asked us to
design a LSI chip that would allow this.  He was really ticked when I did
it though of course still limited by one machine.  No one else in the class
did it so then it was my chance to be ticked that he still gave them A's.
Those carrys are important.


On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 11:01 PM, Jeremy McMillan <jeremy.mcmillan at gmail.com
> wrote:

>
> http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/59045/call-vs-invoke-informatics-context
>
> Notice this is in the wordsmith section of StackExchange...
>
> On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 7:08 PM, Lewit, Douglas <d-lewit at neiu.edu> wrote:
>
>> I agree with Randy!  I love the word "invocation"!  It sounds like I'm an
>> apprentice sorcerer trying to invoke a certain god or goddess, or angel or
>> demon to do my bidding!  ***Evil laughter in the background!***
>>
>> What's interesting is how programming languages rise to popularity for
>> whatever reason, lose their popularity and almost fade away into
>> obsolescence, and then eventually return like a Phoenix from the burning
>> hot ashes!
>>
>> Last summer I took this seven-week numerical class at Oakton College.
>> The class was divided into three groups, depending on which programming
>> language you used.  We C++ people, Java people, and finally Fortran
>> people.  Interestingly enough, there was ONLY one student using Java!
>>  (Poor kid didn't even really know what he was doing! )  The rest of the
>> class was equally divided between C++ and Fortran, and yet.... in the "real
>> world" (the world I try to avoid as much as possible ) Java is many times
>> more popular than C++ and Fortran.  The professor said that Fortran is
>> making a comeback, and he believed that was partially because of Python.
>> Although honestly I am not aware of any connection between Fortran and
>> Python, other than both languages are very popular with engineers and
>> physics majors.
>>
>> The thing about this that I personally find very frustrating is that it
>> can take YEARS to fully master a  programming language.  Then when you're
>> finally ready for a job in that language, people tell you, "Oh sorry, that
>> language is now obsolete!  We don't use that anymore.  Why don't you learn
>> Language X or Y or Z or whatever?"  A good example of that would be the
>> Pascal, Cobol and Perl programmers.  Can you imagine spending 5 years of
>> your life learning Pascal, Cobol and Perl..... and then your interviews
>> tell you, "Oh sorry, those languages are now extinct.  Come back in 5 years
>> after you learned one of the more modern languages!"
>>
>> And of course to some degree I blame the professors in our various
>> computer science departments.  Shame on them for not keeping up with
>> current trends in their industry!
>>
>>
>> On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 6:08 PM, Randy Baxley <randy7771026 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=history+of+computer+progamming+nomenclature&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
>>>
>>> I would think Madam Z might call the spirits all night and never invoke
>>> them.  Myself I just like to say instatiate.  No correlation.  Sorry Mr.
>>> Nash.
>>>
>>> On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 5:42 PM, Jason Wirth <wirth.jason at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Does anyone know resources for the history of programming? For example:
>>>> function call vs function invocation.
>>>>
>>>> Why do we use these terms? More importantly, why use "invocation" when
>>>> the simpler word "call" exists?
>>>>
>>>> This is one example. I'm sure there are many other interesting nuggets
>>>> of history.
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>>
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>
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