Programming Language History [was Re: F/OS & the blind ]

[Bill Freeman]

Jon maddog Hall writes:
 > Paul,
 > 
 > p.lussier at comcast.net said:
 > > Lisp, as a language, has been around since 1959, making it the oldest
 > > programming language still in common use today.

	I thought that my copy of McCarthy's lisp book was dated 1957.
If I ever find it again I'll confirm that.  I also have a vague memory
of a claim around the MIT AI lab that lisp and fortran were the same
age.

 > Fortran was started in 1954, and released in 1957.  Cobol was also released
 > in 1959.  You can argue about the words "common use", but you should not argue
 > too loudly in the high performance computing arenas, nor in the business
 > circles.

							Bill