"Ur-"
The author of this blog post has assembled a list of seven programming languages he dubbed “_ur-_languages”. To qualify for inclusion, a language should embody a coherent group of paradigmatic concepts in a pure form. That is, inclusion in the list is not based on historical merit (having been the first or earliest) but rather on purity of concept. It’s a bit odd to use the prefix “ur-”, which has a strong historical connotation. The list on its own works well: the examples it gives do indeed embody the respective paradigms in a very pure form.
To illustrate, I had initially stumbled over Smalltalk or Simula not being mentioned as the _ur-_languages for object-oriented programming. The list mentions Self instead. Given the purity perspective, this makes sense: there is nothing that could be taken away from Self, it’s minimalistic yet rich. It allows for all the flavours of OOP to be implemented with elegance and ease.
And still, “ur-” ... the author’s intent would perhaps be better reflected by picking a word that expresses peak purity, rather than one that suggests historical earliness.
Tags: the-nerdy-bit, hacking