Marco Tech Blog

December 14, 2013

Programming Languages of 1995

Today I was doing some research, and noticed how 1995 has been a unique year in the history of programming languages.

posted by marcocantu @ 9:21AM | 8 Comments [0 Pending]

Programming Languages of 1995 

 Should have asked Nick. He was there at the launch at
SD ‘95 in the Moscone Center

Comment by Senad on December 14, 16:23

Programming Languages of 1995 

increasing Hardware Performance , that#s why asm 
become obsolete for PC Software development

and 

Object oriented is the common way to delevelop 
complex Software Tools

will there be something new in the future ????? 
 

Comment by FranzB on December 14, 17:31

Programming Languages of 1995 

Very interesting observation, but does Object Pascal
really qualify as "very popular" like the other ones
you listed? 

Also, Delphi 1.0 debuted in 1995, but pinning down
Object Pascal's "birthday" is somewhat difficult since
most of the Object Pascal language itself was already
present in Borland Pascal (1992) and one could argue
that its roots go back further into the Turbo Pascal
time frame. Delphi 1.0 was equal parts revolution (VCL
and BDE) and evolution (Object Pascal). The other
languages are much easier to pin down a firm birthday
for. This doesn't take away from the significance of
the 1995 year, though. 

The web page you linked to lists Ruby's date as 1993,
which is again debatable depending on what criteria
you're using. It was conceived in 1993, but its first
public release was 0.95 in December 1995! That would
be another entry for your list. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_(programming_language)#First_publication

Comment by Joseph on December 14, 20:28

Delphi was not a new language 

Delphi was not a new language, it changed its object 
model somehow but "Borland Object Pascal" was created 
with Turbo Pascal 5.5. Delphi was only the late 
answer to Visual Basic RAD and visual design 
capabilities built atop it.
Java was not designed with the web in mind, nor 
visual development. It was designed for cross-
platform, and client side, only later became a server 
side language. PHP and JavaScript were developed with 
the web in mind.
Anyway the years 1991-1993 saw the born of languages 
like Python, Ruby and LUA. It's interesting to note 
that while language like Java (Sun), JavaScript 
(Netscape) and later C# (but this is MS Java...) had 
behind more or less large corporations to propel 
them, languages like PHP, Python and Ruby started as 
a "one man effort" and became popular languages 
anyway, and it happened at the same time the open 
source movement got stronger. PCs and programmer 
skills were not so advanced no longer a big company 
was needed to create, develop and make accepted a new 
programming language. That was the real paradigm 
shift. After all visual development is still not 
widely accepted, while web development soared thanks 
to free tools also.

Comment by Luigi D. Sandon on December 14, 23:43

Programming Languages of 1995 

Senad, I was there at SD '95 as well, when Delphi was first launched.

Joseph, while Delphi is based on Pascal, what would be like saying that 
Java or C++ are based on C. They are, but are different languages. 
Delphi introduces a new object reference model, the property-method-
event model, exception handling, Windows integration, and so many 
other features that make sense considering it a new language. many 
features were added later, but more in an incremental way.

Good point about Ruby, adding to the 1995, makes my point even 
stronger.

Luigi, good point that web scripting language become popular without a 
company backing them and due to their open source nature. While VB 
had a role, the design of Delphi and VB are so striking different that 
claiming one was the "late answer" to the other is clearly downplaying 
Delphi.

 

Comment by Marco Cantu [http://www.marcocantu.com] on December 15, 23:02

Delphi was a late answer because it took four years to answer 

Visual Basic was released in 1991. Borland took four 
years to answer with Delphi - and with a 16 bit only 
version while in August 1995 VB4 was 32 bit also. 
That's why I said it was a "late answer". Meanwhile 
VB was able to gain a lot of market share eating into 
Turbo Pascal one. Borland, like other companies, made 
the mistake to try to milk the dying DOS market for 
too long (BP7), and didn't understand Windows was the 
way to go, until too late.
Sure, Delphi had many advantages, but Borland 
marketed it stubbornly against VB (and Access/FoxPro, 
after the dBase/Paradox debacle) in some 
ways "diminishing" them, instead of building atop 
them and trying to sell it as an all-round 
development tool positioned between C++ And VB.
You can still see that inheritance in the actual 
development of Delphi, very "desktop 
frontend"-oriented even when a lot of development 
moved to server side software were Delphi has been 
always weak, even if NT4 server was released in 1996.

Comment by Luigi D. Sandon on December 16, 08:47

Programming Languages of 1995 

 "while Delphi is based on Pascal, what would be like
saying that Java or C++ are based on C. They are, but
are different languages." -Marco

I was about to say the same thing. The mantra "Object
Pascal was not new because it was based on Turbo
Pascal, which was based on Pascal." is getting old.
Engage the brain a little, and you'll see that
standard doesn't hold.

Luigi, VB is dead. Delphi lives. :-)

Comment by Kyle Miller on December 16, 21:15

Programming Languages of 1995 

August 1995 - Windows 95 Released 

Comment by Christopher Burke [http://www.craznar.com] on December 17, 01:27