Programming Languages

Its amazing when you consider the evolution of a language. Take English for example:

You can't talk about Hamlet without having a skull picture!

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1:

"To be, or not to be? That is the question—

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And, by opposing, end them? To die, to sleep—

No more—"

Translates to:

"The question is: is it better to be alive or dead?
Is it nobler to put up with all the nasty things
that luck throws your way, or to fight against all those troubles
by simply putting an end to them once and for all?
Dying, sleeping—that’s all dying is—" (link)

Translates to:

"2b or no 2b...." (just kidding, I would never try to translate this!)

People always complain about modern talk jargon on the internet (LOLs etc), but seriously, how is this different from the evolution of shakespeare to modern english? People probably said the same things we did, "My! I dost not believe Mary! How can she simply drop the -st on dost?!?! Do? Is that even a word?"

Anyway, the topic of my post is programming languages. Here's a bit of nerd for you:

http://oreilly.com/news/graphics/prog_lang_poster.pdf

That link has a poster of The History of programming languages. It all began with a single language in 1954 called Fortran. Every programming language (at least in this graph) is derived from Fortran. What is interesting to note is the MASSIVE evolution of languages. All of the active languages in modern day didn't even exist 20 years ago! Putting it in different terms, all of today's programming languages will be obsolete in 25 years.

Hopefully this gives you a little more insight into how hard it must be to be a computer programmer today. We are constantly changing, updating, and trying to stay afloat in the every changing programming world. All the languages I program in for my job didn't exist when I was born!