Will Do
Thoughts on technology, the world, and life.

On the classification of programming language names:

Artificially shortened names:

  • Scheme (from “Schemer”, following on from “Planner” and “Conniver”; shortened to fit in 6 characters because ofa limitation of the ITS operating system)
  • Perl (from “Pearl”, the precious stone; shortened to avoid a clash with “some obscure graphics language called Pearl”)
  • Forth (from “Fourth”, because its creator considered Forth a “fourth-generation language”; shortened to fit into 5 characters because of a limitation on the IBM 1130)

The origins of some programming language names are fascinating.

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