I regularly hear people asking which programming language to learn, and then reeling off a list of very similar languages (“Should I learn Java, C#, C++, Python, or Ruby?”). In response I usually tell them that it doesn’t really matter, as long as they get started. There are fundamentals behind them.
What do I mean when I say fundamentals? If you have an array or list of items and you’re going to loop over it, that is the same in any imperative language. There is straightforward iteration and there is iterating over all unordered combinations and a few other patterns, but those patterns are basically the same in C, Java, Python, or Fortran. Having neural pathways that fluently express intention in these patterns, the same way you express thoughts in sentence structures in English, are fundamentals.
But not all languages have the same set of patterns. The patterns for looping in C or Python are very different from the patterns of recursion in Standard ML or Prolog. The way you organize a program in Lisp, where you name new language constructs, is very different from how you organize it in APL, where fragments of symbol sequences are both the definitions of behavior and become the label for that behavior in your mind.
These distinct collections of fundamentals form various ur-languages. Learning a new language that traces to the same ur-language is an easy shift. Learning one that traces to an unfamiliar ur-language requires significant time and effort and new neural pathways.
This article could’ve been: learn the different paradigms, here are my favorite languages that follow the paradigm. Done.
Honest question, do you believe that your anti-ai license has any measurable impact on what these companies do with the data they vacuum up from your comments?
Using licenses to take a political stance is a valid idea. It’s even worthwhile, if there’s little uptake for it. Signaling opposition even if it’s symbolic only, has some value.
An aggressively scraping AI company could easily ignore it and it would be hard to prove a violation.
Let me rephrase your question: does individual action have impact on the whole?
With that kind of thinking, nobody should do anything ever. No need to vote because your will as a single voter doesn’t matter. No need to stop eating meat because most others won’t. No need to try to reduce energy consumption because most others won’t. No need to boycott a product because most others won’t.
So, honest question back: is that really how you want to think?
Open your mind a little; collective action has an impact but individual action may not. Paraphrasing Cloud Atlas, certainly an ocean is nothing more than a vast collection of raindrops, but each individual raindrop collectively acts as a body of water. This dissolves your false dilemma.
In college, one of the best courses I took was Programming Languages. It covered a smattering of languages illustrating different approaches and methods. Maybe a week or so on each plus you had to write some code in each.
So, dear OP, what are the Seven deadly ur-languages?
- ur mom lmao
- Uruk-hai
- Urethra
- Urdu language
- Ursa Major
- Ursa Minor
- Uranus
OP just wanted to use “ur-” and got carried away
Amazing. I can give myself 6/7 points - I have not done anything in ML, but I’ve seen Miranda, and it was a clusterfuck…
And what he completely left out are HDLs like VHDL and Verilog, which are a totally different animal requiring a totally different mindset. And I have seen otherwise seasoned programmers being unable to grasp this area of expertise.
Is ur an English word? Known meaning in English languages? I don’t think so? I’m surprised they don’t mention why they name it ur-languages.
In German, the word prefix ur means origin, stemming from the word Ursprung (origin). Which makes sense as origin-languages. And could have been named origin-languages, honestly.
Yes, but it’s a prefix and can’t be used as a word on its own.
I am a native English speaker and I know it. It’s rare though.
Same meaning as in German and apparently we borrowed it from German.
Ur is used in German a lot to signify something being ancient or the origin.
Großvater means grandfather. Urgroßvater means great-grandfather.
Ursuppe - Primordial soup
Urknall - Big Bang
Ursprung - Origin
English uses it as a loan word and prefix.
Smells a bit Scandinavian to me. In Norwegian we also use “ur” that way, including “urspråk” (Ursprache, ur-language). We have a different word for origin (opphav), so ur remains a prefix that’s difficult for us to translate.
Going by Wikipedia however, the English translation for Norwegian urspråk and German Ursprache is proto-language.
Yes, although admittedly I only know it from Umberto Eco’s Ur-Fascism
Ah, I looked there on Wiktionary, but only
urnotur-😅
Oh! I assumed it was something to do with the city of Ur, being some sort of analogy for the root of civilisation or something
Why choose self as the exemplar? It may be the “purest”, but the list isn’t based on “purest” or pascal would be the exemplar of structured languages.
At the very least, improve readability by moving the disclaimer from the last sentence of the section to the first.
Self’s descendants are not well-understood in our popular culture. The two most popular (Turing-complete) languages, ECMAScript and Python, are both Self grandchildren, and Java is also a child of Self; yet, the article’s author incorrectly believes them to be ALGOL descendants because of surface syntax as well as the Java/ECMAScript focus on performance. Note also that the author doesn’t mention E (WP, esolangs), which is akin to Erlang in making message-passing explicit but descends from Self, unlike Erlang which descends from Prolog. (I will give them partial credit for noting that Smalltalk is an ancestor of Java.)
So, the exemplar should be a message-passing everything-is-an-object language designed for JIT with no Prolog influence. The earliest such language in the family tree is Self!
Where is INTERCAL, the ur-esoteric language?
INTERCAL is an ALGOL descendant. A holistic timeline of esoteric languages shows that esoteric languages don’t form a family; however, there are several families not mentioned in the article, notably cellular automata and string/wire diagrams.
