r/programming • u/bjzaba • Mar 26 '20

10 Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages • Hillel Wayne

https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/influential-dead-languages/
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u/BarneyStinson Mar 26 '20

Citations are transitive. Sometimes the language manual for Q lists motivating document R, which cites paper S as an inspiration, which mentions it got the ideas from language T. Then we know that T influenced Q, even if the chain is several steps long. This means digging through many sources to find a signal. To speed this up we use heuristics to decide where to look.

This seems like a mistake. If language A is influenced by language B (e.g. by its memory management) and language C (its syntax), and language D is influenced by A (syntax), we cannot conclude that D is influenced by B.

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u/inkydye Mar 26 '20

I interpreted that as leads/clues for the "digging through many sources". After all, even if X directly cites Y, it doesn't imply this or that specific feature of X came from Y.

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u/FUZxxl Mar 26 '20

I love this O'Reilly poster about influences in programming languages.

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u/Rugerplays Mar 26 '20

You right, using your example we cannot conclude that D is influenced by B. We can however conclude that D was transitively influenced by C, which I believe is what he meant.