This poster, which originally appeared in Wired Magazine, gives us a peek at the strongest branches of computer languages.Just like half of the world's spoken tongues, most of the 2,300-plus computer programming languages are either endangered or extinct. As powerhouses C/C++, Visual Basic, Cobol, Java and other modern codes dominate our systems, hundreds of older languages are running out of life. An ad hoc collection of engineers-electronic lexicographers aim to save, or at least document, the lingo of classic software. They're combining the globe's 9 million developers in search of coders still fluent in these nearly forgotten lingua francas. Among the most endangered are Ada, APL, B (the predecessor of C), Lsp, Oberon, Smalltalk, and Simula.
Sources: Paul Boutin and Bret Hailpern at IBM Research and Todd Proebsting at Microsoft, The Retrocomputing Museum, and Gio Wiederhold at Stanford University.
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