Philosophies and Programming Languages

evariste.galois writes "Wikipedia has a special section called, 'Language Philosophy,' in every article for a programming language. This section looks at the motivation and the basic principles of the language design. What if we investigate further than that? What deeper connections between philosophies and programming languages exist? By considering the most influential thinkers of all time (e.g. Plato, Descartes, Kant) we can figure out which programming language fits best with aspects of their philosophy (Did you know that Kant was the first Python programmer)? The list is not exhaustive, but this is a funny and educative start."

Comments

What's the Point?

[Sponge Bath]

This read more like a 'If programming language X was a car then it would be a Y' type lists.
Good for a brief chuckle, but not particularly enlightening.

Re:What's the Point?

[Toonol]

Yeah, 2300 years ago. Plato is irrelevant

In the same sense that Galileo is irrelevant in modern physics. Irrelevant yet fundamentally important in the creation of the modern system of knowledge.

Is it even possible to make a less significant statement?

You just did. Any computer language that wasn't designed randomly has a philosophy behind it; there was some kind of principles behind the design. Flawed or elegant, there were choices about how to arrange abstract concepts.

Philosophy of computer science

[Anonymous Coward]

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/, has an introduction on philosophy of computer science which is far more interesting than this worthless drivel.

CS and AI are grounded in philosophy

[patlabor]

Computer Science is already grounded in Philosophy, especially in Artificial Intelligence. Have a look at Defeasible Logic (based on defeasible reasoning) for some recent developments. If you want specific programming languages, have a look at Prolog. Search for theorem solvers online. Or check wikipedia for Logic programming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_programming. For that matter, have a look at the Turing machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine. Bottom line, the field of Computer Science is based on logic.

Pascal was strongly typed long before Java

[maxwell demon]

From TFA:
"Java was the first strongly-typed language, in which everything must have a type (or share a Form) before it is being used"

The author obviously doesn't know Pascal. Not only does everything in Pascal have a type, and must be declared as such, Pascal doesn't even have the concept of a typecast. And much less implicit conversions than Java (the only way to get from a real to an integer is through a function like round or trunc). In Pascal, an array of 5 integers is a different type than an array of 6 integers (actually, you don't give a number, but a type for indexing, which may be an integer subrange type like 0..4, but might as well be e.g. an enumeration type).

Alternative list

[Kupfernigk]

Socrates - ADA (he used his logical skills to help the aristocrats gain power, the real reason he was executed.)
Plato - Java. (He believed in abstract objects but only had single inheritance)
Aristotle - SQL (he tried to systematise and arrange everything)
Aquinas - .NET languages. (Stuff pinched from everywhere and turned into an immense framework)
Hegel - C++. (Hegel surely wrote the first write-only philosophical language)
Descartes - Visual Basic (if you can make a picture of it, it must be right)
Pascal - Prolog.
Ada, Lady Lovelace - Lisp.
Bertrand Russell - Erlang or Haskell
Ludwig Wittgenstein - PL/1