Talk:JavaScript

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Language families[edit]

Programming languages are like natural languages, so can we put a box to the side of the page like on a natural language page, that has the languages pedigree? for example,


Spanish
Castilian
  • español
  • castellano
Pronunciation[espaˈɲol] ⓘ
[kasteˈʝano] ⓘ, [kasteˈʎano] ⓘ
SpeakersNative: 500 million (2023)[1]
Total: 600 million[1]
100 million speakers with limited capacity (23 million students)[1]
Early forms
Latin script (Spanish alphabet)
Spanish Braille
Signed Spanish (using signs of the local language)
Official status
Official language in




Regulated byAssociation of Spanish Language Academies
(Real Academia Española and 22 other national Spanish language academies)
Language codes
ISO 639-1es
ISO 639-2spa
ISO 639-3spa
Glottologstan1288
Linguasphere51-AAA-b
  Official majority language
  Co-official or administrative language but not majority native language
  Secondary language (more than 20% Spanish speakers) or culturally important
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

38.43.22.44 (talk) 21:26, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As you can see, Spanish is descended from Latin, which is descended from Proto Indo European. Could we show the same with Javascript, to show that it is descended from C++, which in turn is descended from SIMULA? 38.43.22.44 (talk) 21:33, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note: the sources cited are accidental. 38.43.22.44 (talk) 21:35, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Programming languages are like natural languages. No they aren't. That being said, like many collections of things (family trees, biological taxonomies, books in a library) they can be arranged in a hierarchy. At least, some of them can. I'm supposing some of them would be better described as creoles. I'll leave it to others to discuss whether this is of value. But perhaps this would be better discussed at a higher-level, general page like Wikipedia:WikiProject Software. Largoplazo (talk) 00:58, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Programming languages are like natural languages, so can we put a box to the side of the page like on a natural language page, that has the languages pedigree? Yes, you can; it's called {{Infobox programming language}}, and it's already there.
As you can see, Spanish is descended from Latin, And, as you can see from that infobox, JavaScript is descended from Java,[4][5] Scheme,[5] Self,[6] AWK,[7] and HyperTalk[8]
which is descended from Proto Indo European. Which is only implicitly mentioned in the {{Infobox language}} infobox in Spanish language.
That infobox gives a taxonomy, not a history; the taxonomy has Indo-European at the top, meaning that it's the topmost category in which Spanish belongs; all languages in that category descend from the Proto-Indo-European language. The "Latin" in the Language family section of that infobox refers to a "Latin" subfamily of the Latino-Faliscan languages. That subfamily can either be thought of as being the Romance languages, if you include the Latin language as a Romance language, or Latin plus the Romance languages, if you consider the Romance languages to be the descendants of Latin.
Whilst JavaScript inherits some syntax and ideas from some other languages, it also has ideas of its own, so it's not clear from its influences to which hierarchy of families it belongs (more than just Java, and it doesn't inherit everything from Java) So the infobox has, instead, there are various language types, or programming paradigms - a language may use more than one paradigm - predecessors ("influenced by"), and successors ("influenced")
Could we show the same with Javascript, to show that it is descended from C++ Is it descended directly from C++, or it it descended from - or, rather, influenced by - Java, which is, in turn, influenced by many languages, including but not limited to C++? Guy Harris (talk) 06:52, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
JavaScript is a Lisp-like language with Java-like syntax. C++ has nothing to do with it except that it was one of the first popular object-oriented programming languages. Which goes to show that this is a bad idea: including this won't teach anybody anything and will invite endless bickering. Rp (talk) 08:57, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Then what is this? https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Genealogical_tree_of_programming_languages.svg 38.43.22.44 (talk) 17:56, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's a directed acyclic graph of influences of languages on other languages that appears to omit the influence of C on C++ and the influence of Smalltalk on Objective-C, so perhaps it should be titled "Incomplete graph of influences of programming languages on other programming languages".
It also shows LiveScript as having no "ancestors" (meaning "languages that influenced it"), with JavaScript as an immediate descendant and ECMAScript as an immediate descendant of JavaScript, showing neither any syntactic influence from Java nor any semantic influence from Lisp or Scheme. Guy Harris (talk) 21:18, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
ok 38.43.22.44 (talk) 22:20, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Guys, I don't want to dispute, please, I just would like something like the thing over here→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→
I think it could be useful. 38.43.22.44 (talk) 17:59, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't want to dispute But you submitted a proposal; did you seriously think that submitting a proposal does not risk dispute? If so, you made a mistaken assumption. (Even if you thought your particular proposal was uncontroversial, you made a mistaken assumption, as you have now discovered.)
I think it could be useful And I am unconvinced of that, for the reasons I've already given. It appears that User:Rp may also be unconvinced of that. Guy Harris (talk) 21:18, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah that is what I mean. Arrange a taxonomy of programming languages, with Javascript at the bottom and its oldest ancestor at the top. And its descendants too, like Ruby. 38.43.22.44 (talk) 17:54, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's not what a taxonomy is; a taxonomy is a hierarchical classification, meaning a sequence of categories, from most inclusive to least inclusive, such that everything in a less-inclusive category also being in the preceding more-inclusive category, with the taxonomy of a particular item being a sequence leading up to a category that includes the item. Such a taxonomy may reflect the history of the item, in that, for example, the taxonomy of the English language shows it as being an Indo-European language and thus descended from the Proto-Indo-European language, and a Germanic language and thus a descendant of the Proto-Germanic language, and so on. However, it doesn't reflect the huge dump of French vocabulary from the Norman conquest nor the major grammatical changes resulting from the influence of, it appears, Old Norse (Middle English § Transition from Old English), which would show up in a directed acyclic graph of major influences of human languages on other human languages.
If you want to show the languages that influenced JavaScript and the languages it influenced, all you have to do is Not. Remove. From. The. Article. The. Infobox. That's. Already. There. Guy Harris (talk) 21:18, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
ok 38.43.22.44 (talk) 22:18, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree with this proposal. The notion of a family is inherently flawed when it comes to JavaScript. It is a distinct language created (rather hastily in hindsight) for the specific purpose of dynamic webpages. The current "Influenced" lists in the sidebar are sufficient as-is. -Pmffl (talk) 14:05, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

ok. 38.43.22.44 (talk) 15:22, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Despite my blunt statement, I appreciate this thread. It was an interesting reminder of just how different natural languages are from our very recent (in terms of millennia of human history) computer revolution with lots of different programming languages. So please don't feel too bad about the outcome of this thread. -Pmffl (talk) 16:16, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
ok 38.43.22.44 (talk) 23:08, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ a b c Cite error: The named reference viva18 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Eberhard, Simons & Fennig (2020)
  3. ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2022). "Castilic". Glottolog 4.6. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Archived from the original on 28 May 2022. Retrieved 19 June 2022.
  4. ^ Seibel, Peter (16 September 2009). Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming. Apress. ISBN 9781430219484. Archived from the original on 24 December 2020. Retrieved 25 December 2018. Eich: The immediate concern at Netscape was it must look like Java.
  5. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference origin was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ "Popularity – Brendan Eich".
  7. ^ "Brendan Eich: An Introduction to JavaScript, JSConf 2010". YouTube. p. 22m. Archived from the original on 29 August 2020. Retrieved 25 November 2019. Eich: "function", eight letters, I was influenced by AWK.
  8. ^ Eich, Brendan (1998). "Foreword". In Goodman, Danny (ed.). JavaScript Bible (3rd ed.). John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-7645-3188-3. LCCN 97078208. OCLC 38888873. OL 712205M.
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