Another year, another language
summary
A rapid history that traces concrete shifts: hardware changes from Babbage’s engine to multi‑core CPUs drive new language designs, and a community site shows 1500 solutions for “99 Bottles” across many languages. Fortran and COBOL solve specific domains; Algol 68 tries to include everything and largely fails (compilers never fully implement it). Java succeeds as a free platform, JavaScript wins via the browser, Kotlin cuts boilerplate with nullability in type system, and Haskell enforces purity via an IO monad so impure code can’t compile. The claim: languages change to fix real problems, not fashion.
AI-written summary · about