Template talk:Programming languages/Archive 1

message: Ruby keeps being added without any attempt at consensus. Sooooo, let's have a vote.  Place your vote under Include or Exclude.  If you vote for Include, please suggest a category.  Thanks!
===Include (Ruby)===
* Include. Ruby is huge in Japan, and probably one of the top 5 scripting languages in the world. Deco 00:15, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Vote on Ruby

message: * Include. Ruby is huge in Japan, and probably one of the top 5 scripting languages in the world. Deco 00:15, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Include (Ruby)

message: *Exclude. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 23:26, May 26, 2005 (UTC) - It's notable, and it gets a few write-ups here and there, but it's still a boutique language with a small, but seemingly fanatical following.  Perhaps it will become major, but to say it is today is silly.
**If we end up adding Ruby, I say we add ActionScript at the same time.  It's even higher on the Tiobe popularity list than Ruby and has also been called a fast-rising star amongst languages.
**I'm considering changing my vote in the near future, as Ruby seems to be rising steadily in the TIOBE list.  I may be saying Include later this summer. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 22:15, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)
*Exclude for now. Ruby has a community that wants it to be a major language; it's where Python was several years ago. But it is not a language that has a great number of people using it yet  and it is not a language that has had a substantial influence on the field yet. --FOo 03:18, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Exclude (Ruby)

message: *I've heard nothing but great things about Ruby, but I'll to see what everyone else here says before I vote. —Sean κ. + 23:49, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Abstain (Ruby)

message: ====June 4 2005====
There are currently five votes to include, and two votes to exclude, with one abstaining.  However, according to Wikipedia tradition in counting votes, votes coming from anonymous users, new accounts or accounts with low contributions are usually discounted--and this applies to four of the five Include votes.
If I discount these particular votes by half, it becomes 3 to 2 in favor of including.  This, in my view does not indicate a consensus as of yet.  I would recommend an extension to the voting period.  Does one week sound good?  Or do you not agree with my analysis? — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 21:17, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
What is the status now?  Since we have no consensus I'll try removing it (that should stir things up).  Ideogram 17:58, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Status (Ruby)

message: There are currently five votes to include, and two votes to exclude, with one abstaining.  However, according to Wikipedia tradition in counting votes, votes coming from anonymous users, new accounts or accounts with low contributions are usually discounted--and this applies to four of the five Include votes.
If I discount these particular votes by half, it becomes 3 to 2 in favor of including.  This, in my view does not indicate a consensus as of yet.  I would recommend an extension to the voting period.  Does one week sound good?  Or do you not agree with my analysis? — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 21:17, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
What is the status now?  Since we have no consensus I'll try removing it (that should stir things up).  Ideogram 17:58, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[June 4]] [[2005]]

message: *Include: I believe the TIOBE list is being incorrectly calculated by not checking for "Visual Studio Basic .NET", and that VB.NET's real position should be around 12, not 29 22. The C# and VB.NET newsgroups get approximately the same amount of traffic (several thousand messages a month), which suggests to me that they have around the same popularity. --GreenReaper 22:30, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Include (VB.NET)

message: *Exclude, for now. 1) It's #29 on the TIOBE list, 2) MS is beginning to distance itself from .NET for the next version of Windows, 3) I've heard all kinds of talk about VB programmers either staying on VB6 or switching to C# or Delphi.  I think VB.NET will start dropping soon, and will never become a major language.  This all has nothing to do with my embracing open source (and I do), but rather the current reality as I see it, being a programmer of 15 years.  Note: I may be changing my vote to Include in the near future, depending on where it sits in the TIOBE list later this summer. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 20:43, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
**#Indeed? If the way they make those statistics is as described then I have a problem with it. The search for VB.NET turns up 19,600 results on google ('+"VB.NET programming" -tv') . . . but the official name for the language is Visual Basic .NET, and that ('+"Visual Basic .NET programming" -tv') turns up 113,000, which would place it 11th (just above SAS and below Javascript, although I only used Google for that). I will send them an email asking them if they have considered this. I suspect they have not, as bash programming (which is 30th) has 13,300 results in google.
**#Microsoft is indeed saying it doesn't want to rewrite Windows in VB.NET, or most of its apps, just as you wouldn't rewrite them in COBOL (if COBOL was a language around nowadays). I suspect also that a lot of people complained to them about .NET-only interfaces, so they want to reassure people that .NET will not be the only way to access features of Longhorn.
**#I've heard a lot about it, too. People dislike change, and it was indeed a big change. But what about the people who are not complaining? We don't hear about them, because they don't complain. :-)
**You may be right, but overall I feel that Microsoft has too much of an investment in VB.NET for them to stop pushing it. Basic has always been their language for semi-professional programmers, and they are encourainging these sorts of users onto it rather than C# - I think they will keep improving it until people accept it, just like they did with VB. I personally found the 2002 and 2003 versions of VB.NET harder to use because of the features removed such as edit-and-continue and the lack of global forms (yes, it's a hack, but a convenient one!) - having tried the 2005 version, I would say their restoration will greatly ease the transition from Visual Basic to VB.NET for those unwilling to move on just yet. And what is the alternative for VBA users? I don't see them switching to C#, but staying with VBA will become increasingly less tenable as time goes on. --GreenReaper 22:16, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Exclude (VB.NET)

message: *I think PHP is too low on the TIOBE list too.  :)  And that's b/c Zend and php.net has been so excellent at making their documentation so good that the need for third-party sites trying to help people understand it are relatively minimal.  Certainly, the rankings can be questioned, but if you look at most of the languages that are above VB.NET, it should be fairly clear from industry knowledge that they are above VB.NET in terms of usage... today. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 23:33, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
*When MS is reported to be backing away (even more) from using .NET facilities in the development of the next version of Windows, that speaks volumes.  Further, .NET is hardly even being used to develop commercial apps (in form of Windows clients), although the use of ASP.NET in the development of web applications is signficant. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 23:33, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
:Yes. They don't want to rewrite their entire Windows codebase and base it on something that they're not 100% sure about. Back in 2001, when the idea of basing everything on .NET was proposed, things looked different. I think nowadays Microsoft has a better appreciation for the dangers of moving too fast.
:You are also right that few commercial applications (by which I think you mean the sort of apps you'd buy online) seem to be written in it. A significant problem there is the requirement for the runtime - people are naturally loath to add 23Mb to their download. MS does not appear to be planning to allow internal compilation of the runtime, because "shrinkwrap" (or download) apps are not their target for VB.NET; business applications are. It is a language for the IT geek in non-computing-related companies, and in that sort of environment it is possible to specify that all your desktops have .NET.
:The thing is, you don't see people announcing "Pizza Hut's finance division made a neat thing for calculating exchange rates in VB.NET to be used across the company". This is the sort of thing I was getting at above - line-of-business development is not as visible, and can lead to underestimating a language's importance. But it's still there, and still important. --GreenReaper 00:12, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments (VB.NET)

message: Surely this is industrial or historical? It used to be used a lot for programming early Macs before C was encouraged instead. —Ashley Y 00:58, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC)
:I always thought of Pascal as being more academic than anything.  Especially with Delphi now being called a language on its own (and thus separating from Pascal for our purposes), it seems to me to be appropriate to drop into "academic" in that it's widely known that Pascal used to be the teaching language of choice in universities. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 01:59, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)
IMHO the classification of Pascal as an academic language is stupid. Pascal compilers were delivered will all seventies and eighties OSes, and they were used. Turbo Pascal alone pretty was the dominant compiler of an entire decade. This view might be a bit US centric, Europe seems to have more mainstream Pascal use than the US.
:Well aleast in the US Pascal is definetlly an academic language used to teach people new to programing.  And has been for proablly a decade.  However it is dying out now in favor of Java as a first language Lotu 00:02, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Pascal

message: ActionScript's profile seems to be rising fast in recent times.  So I'm instituting a vote here.
===Include (ActionScript)===
*Include.  Flash app development is becoming quite widespread, and the ActionScript language is becoming rather hot.  It has also been moving up dramatically on the TIOBE list and appears close to cracking the Top 20.
===Exclude (ActionScript)===
*Exclude.  1. I find TIOBE's methodology a dubious measure of a language's importance.  For one thing, it exaggerates the importance of anything web-related relative to non-web-related things.  ActionScript's rising ranking is an example of this: it's for programming Flash, ergo people who make web pages are much more likely to write about it.  2. It appears that ActionScript is more properly understood as a library and environment for the ECMAScript programming language.  In fact, I would actually vote for replacing JavaScript with ECMAScript too. k.lee 22:11, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Vote on ActionScript

message: *Exclude.  1. I find TIOBE's methodology a dubious measure of a language's importance.  For one thing, it exaggerates the importance of anything web-related relative to non-web-related things.  ActionScript's rising ranking is an example of this: it's for programming Flash, ergo people who make web pages are much more likely to write about it.  2. It appears that ActionScript is more properly understood as a library and environment for the ECMAScript programming language.  In fact, I would actually vote for replacing JavaScript with ECMAScript too. k.lee 22:11, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Exclude (ActionScript)

message: Although the anonymous person adding it did not discuss it here, I support the addition of Erlang. It has substantial industrial use. Deco 19:17, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Except that this "substantial" are some projects in Ericsson, Nortel and handful other organizations. Pavel Vozenilek 20:38, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Erlang 

message: This template was nominated for deletion (on the grounds that the criteria for a language being 'major' are arbitrary). However, consensus was to keep it. The debate also mentioned that this template is redundant with template:Major programming languages. Since the latter isn't actually used anywhere and this one is, I'm going to merge the two of them since there's no point in the redundancy. The horizontal layout seems to be preferred. Radiant_>|< 12:50, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
*Done. The vertical variant can be found here. Its content is somewhat different, please discuss amongst yourselves which languages should or should not be considered 'major'. Radiant_>|< 12:55, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
::There was quite a bit of discussion on this . . . the divisions were altered to provide for the fact that while there are some languages that are not in major use to create applications that lots of people people use, they are of major importance due to their use as (e.g.) teaching aids. GreenReaper 17:21, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: TFD

message: I've removed the addition of Indus, as I don't feel it fits any definition of - heck, it was just released. The user who added it is a new user, and their only edits are related to this language. See also Category talk:Programming languages. GreenReaper 11:09, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Indus]] 

message: * Should Delphi, which is a dialect of Pascal with object-oriented extnsions, be included?
* Should Common Lisp, which is a particular specification of the Lisp, be included?
GreenReaper 15:17, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inclusion of dialects 

message: There's currently a huge wad featuring APL, then the text "historical dialect" followed by a link to the J language. This must be condensed - I suggest either removing one of these languages, or just separating them - none of the other languages here have textual explanations in the box, since it simply creates too much clutter. —EatMyShortz 05:11, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ugly APL/J 

message: awk is a "major programming language"?  ROFLMAO.  Let's be serious.  Rmisiak 00:18, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. It is historical, but replaced by Perl, and then by Python. Nobody use it yet! - Splang 09:55, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  awk 

message: Do we really need this template? I think a list of major programming languages would be enough, we already have the category system and this templates only clutters the articles, no need to force this onto our readers I'd say... —R. Koot 21:28, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Do we really need this template? 

message: Do you think we should include a section for web lanuages in the template? These languages would include HTML, XML, ASP, PHP, Cold Fusion, etc. (list any more below, and include comments). Another suggestion would be to split up this template into different catagories (education, currently widely used languages, legacy, web) and inlcude the catagory as a new template seperate from this template, like all the other sections would be P-unit 06:43, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Probably not, ASP is really a wrapper for other languages of which variants are represented already (mainly VBScript/JScript), while HTML and XML are not _programming_ languages by any stretch of the imagination. (See Computer language.) PHP is there already and can be used for non-web applications, and someone recently added ColdFusion. -- Blorg 14:48, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Add section on web & splitting up the template into different secion templates 

message: The link is broken. Besides, if it's supposed to mean Java ServerPages, then it should be clear that that's no programming language, and thus should be removed from this template. Whaa? 18:24, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed it.  It's clearly not a programming language. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 08:25, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  JSP? 

message: I think it's better to refer to the general SQL language rather than one specific company's extension of it. Even if PL/SQL is the most used SQL version, there are still many others that are too widely used to not be considered "major", such as MySQL and PostgreSQL. --83.250.221.38 16:01, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: PL/SQL is NOT a dialect of SQL, it's an embedded procedural programming language used by Oracle in its server and client-side products.  SQL certainly does belong in the list of major programming languages.  I'm less sure of the argument for proprietary languages such as PL/SQL.  --Tony Sidaway 09:26, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  PL/SQL => SQL 

message: I've restored Javascript, which was probably removed on the theory that it's a variant of Java, which isn't even remotely true; it has almost nothing to do with Java besides its name.
I restored Visual Basic and VB.NET, since these are drastic extensions of BASIC. I think anyone would agree that it's an entirely new and different language. I would entertain removing or merging these two, but certainly not merging them with BASIC. Also, we already voted on VB.NET above.
I also restored the unexplained removal of Visual FoxPro and ColdFusion.
I restored Managed C++, just because the supplied reason is invalid; its name is a name, not a description, and especially in the current versions it significantly extends C++ in a lot of nontrivial ways, to the point where some would feel comfortable calling it a separate language. I'm not entirely comfortable with it being present, but its user count and sufficient differentiation from C++ seem to say that it merits discussion. So, let's discuss it. Deco 05:09, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Another option: delete the template (on WP:TfD). Similarly named category was already deleted and this template isn't any  better. History of additions/deletions here suggest that "major" is not universally understood and agreed classification. Pavel Vozenilek 06:02, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

text: This is correct. JavaScript is not Java.
Managed C++ is just C++. This is just a compiler. Not the template for compilers.
84.4.124.253 09:31, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Managed C++ is not C++. It is just marketing ploy to get more popular. Pavel Vozenilek 22:42, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent additions and removals 

message: Things as ALGOL, AWK are out of interest here.
84.4.124.253 09:33, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A separate template may be a good thing? - Splang 09:53, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removing historical languages 

message: If ALGOL has a place here, Plankalkül, Autocode and other so useful programming language may be added too!
84.4.41.76 07:51, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually the name is Plankalkül, not Plankalful :) I wonder why that have not been corrected sooner.
Splang 09:49, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why not Plankalkül? 

message: As the header says, is Limbo notable? I've worked in software for a while but have never even met a Limbo developer but have met people that have used all the others. Also, the quantity (and, to a lesser extent, the quality) of the article doesn't match what's in the others even the more specialized or obsolete ones. - DNewhall
: It is sure it is not a personal page. Thousand of results on Google. - Splang 09:51, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Limbo was used for Plan 9, something hoped to be replacement for Unix. Unfortunately, collapse of Lucent pulled the plans of world dominance down. Pavel Vozenilek 04:14, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is Limbo notable? 

message: Scheme is reported two times, both in the industrial and in the accademic section. Where should it be better placed? I would suggest "industrial", as it's used at least in a operating system. --Kiam 16:19, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Is it an academic operating system, though? GreenReaper 16:59, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Duplicates in the template 

message: I added REBOL to the list: I don't use it myself, but its actively developed, geared towards industrial-commercial use, and it appears to take on a style of deployment that is relatively unique. Cwolfsheep 16:26, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: REBOL does not deserve to be on this list due to lack of large worldwide programmer community.  REBOL borders on being a vanity entry or even an advertisement from the sole company that writes a REBOL compiler. —optikos 19:13, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I just put it on there because it appears to be active and its something different from other things I've looked at. I agree, its not in widespread use, but it'd be a better candidate than Dylan programming language or Brainfuck Cwolfsheep 03:11, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Tiobe is anything but serious way to estimate "popularity" of a language (whatever it means). The first few places are obvious, the rest is garbage randomly changing every week. Popularity (whatever it means) is result of very many factors, mostly non-technical, and Google count isn't artificial intelligence capable to recognize such complexity. Pavel Vozenilek 22:47, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  But if something is scarcely mentioned (compared to the alternatives), it's presumably not as widespread in use and as widely accepted. Of course this doesn't indicate much about noteworthiness, usefulness, likability or quality, and of course one shouldn't draw too many conclusions from a ranking like Tiobe, but that wasn't my point anyway. I just wanted to point out that "major language" somehow contradicts "tiny user base". RolandH 21:39, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  REBOL 

message: first define whats a language? Borland pascal is very different from iso pascal yet they are lumped in together. Meanwhile modula-2 modula-3 and delphi all get thier own entries. Similarlly assembler gets one entry yet every processors assembler is a different language.
* Then there is the issue of relatively minor languages like D and REBOL I'd also like more info on how that survey quoted above for D works and in particular if single letter languages could be prone to false matches Plugwash
* The way I see it, this template should cover languages with either an active & demonstrable userbase, or industrially significant. Cwolfsheep 19:59, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  very dubious template 

message: From my experience with academia, SAS is widely known and used, and should be included if we are going to have a separate section for academic languages.  I can't find on this page where the decision was made to exclude it (it appears to have been included orginally).  If there are any strong objections, feel free to revert. Mgcsinc 19:22, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  SAS 

message: Why is forth listed as other?  To my mind it belongs under industrial progamming languages.  Ideogram 02:57, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, Forth is major language for software used in observatories. Or at least it was at certain point in time. Some people had tried to use it as a language for portable drivers or embedded code, I somehow doubt it caught on. And it is cool for nerds, the syntax and so. Pavel Vozenilek 04:09, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  forth 

message: How are JADE and Lua "major" programming languages?  Ideogram 18:08, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are other dubious languages there, such as: D, ABAP, AWK, REBOL. --Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho 18:58, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I already took care of D and REBOL.  I'll delete JADE and Lua and see if anyone objects.  Ideogram 19:27, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Lua is relatively popular scripting language for games. Not something massively used but the rest are usually home made languages. Pavel Vozenilek 03:58, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  more dubious "major" languages;  JADE, Lua 

message: OCaml is managed by a research institution according to our own entry.  Ideogram 19:38, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems to be the most popular of all ML dialects. It is taught at many  universities in France and Spain. Pavel Vozenilek 03:56, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  OCaml 

message: I know nothing about ABAP.  Why is it "Major"? Ideogram 19:39, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: ABAP is traditional programming language for SAP R/3, a huge and costly enterprise management system (they now support Java too, I think). If you deal with SAP, then ABAP is "major". Pavel Vozenilek 03:55, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  ABAP 

message: What's the rationale for separating it out into three categories instead of one list?  Ideogram 19:46, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: To get more stuff in, I guess. Pavel Vozenilek 04:03, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  why three categories? 

message: User:R._Koot suggested making some suggestions for fixing this template. Here we go:
-Changes to template members must be discussed. If they are not discussed, they are to be reverted. 
Actually, I think that's my only suggestion. Pros/cons? matt kane's brain 20:29, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry I didn't realize that was policy.  Or is that just your opinion?  If you want to revert my changes I won't complain, but I would like to see them discussed and voted on at least.  Ideogram 20:33, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  It is a proposal for a policy. It is realted to the proposed deletion of this template (see the top of the page). —Ruud 20:36, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

text: The main con is that it is impossible to give an objective argument why a certain language should or shouldn't be included. Actually on many languages I would be unable to convince myself if inclusion of some languages would be a good or a bad idea. —Ruud 20:36, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that what constitutes "major" cannot be decided objectively.  I would be in favor of just deleting the template.  Ideogram 20:45, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't think it's necessary to have an objective criteria if a consensus or even a majority can be reached. The biggest obstacle to this template being useful is the fact that it is constantly changing at random. I'd figure Wikipedia has ways of handling this. matt kane's brain 21:03, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure if we can hold votes and make them stick I would be in favor of that.  Ideogram 21:26, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fixing the template 

message: Having submitted a "bad" language myself, and reading other comments, and the noted crutching on TIOBE (I never even heard of the site before this discussion), I propose the following apply to any language considered "major:"
*Historical: the language must have made a serious contribution to the development of modern computing.
*Functional: the language must be, or have been taught, in a college or university.
*Industrial: the language must have significant use in the programming industry.
*Published: the language must be considered worthy of regular documentation by experienced programmers.
Examples of languages that meet all criteria: BASIC; Pascal; C/C++; C#; VB.NET; HTML; Java
Examples of languages that meet most criteria: ABAP (SAP's language); ML; Haskell; ColdFusion
Examples of languages that should be re-examined: AspectJ; Foxpro; Eiffel; J
Recently rejected languages: D & REBOL (both are "Industrial", but not much else)
Example languages that would not qualify: Dylan ("Industrial"); Brainfuck (no criteria are met)
Cwolfsheep 01:23, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think these are good guidelines, but the real problem is the template is constantly changing with people adding their favorite language (just now someone added K programming language which I don't think qualifies).  This problem will continue without some method of enforcing stability and compliance with a standard.  Ideogram 01:42, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

text: History of this template doesn't give much of hope that it would work. Unless you will police the page and fight with the new additions all the time it'll degenerate quickly. Pavel Vozenilek 03:52, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  History of Wikipedia in general shows that it will not work without policing. matt kane's brain 16:50, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

text: And why there is a category "Other" ? Shouldn´t it be Historial? ----
@AspectJ: Meets criterion (1) (historical), because it is _the_ aspect oriented programming language, and criterion (2) because it is tought in academic courses (e.g. at the University of the Saarland at Saarbrücken). Jörg Knappen 13:08, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggested guideline for a "Major Language" 

message: Oh look, some anonymous user just added D back, without any attempt at discussion.  This cannot continue.  Ideogram 01:54, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  random changes 

message: the-oasis.net claims to be "the largest file archive" for Clipper-related code on the web.  There are maybe on the order of 50 libraries, and maybe on the order of 100 programs.  This seems rather paltry.  I've removed Clipper.  k.lee 03:05, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Once upon a time it was quite popular (among those using small dBase). Yet another example how this template cannot be ever stabilized. Pavel Vozenilek 04:05, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clipper 

message: I'm curious about why this template uses categories that employ a kind of value criterion, rather than just describing the languages in terms of how they approach the programming task.  
As far as I can tell, the development of this template has been guided by terms of history.  The origin, purpose and importance of the languages has been evaluated in that light, and various categories have been chosen which contrast the histories of these languages, such as 
*Historical
*Core
*Modern
*Special purpose
The present template is essentially a simplified version of this historical comparison:
*Industrial
*Academic
*Other
This strikes me as being an over-studious avoidance of more usual categorization schemes.  Shouldn't they rather simply be compared as languages? For example: 
*Procedural
*Object-Oriented 
*Logical  
*Functional 
— Mark (Mkmcconn) ** 21:56, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Surprised by categorization 

message: I am trying to revive Wikipedia:WikiProject Programming languages.
Discussion of categorization schemes properly belongs there, especially if this template gets deleted, as seems likely.  Ideogram 17:24, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject Programming languages 

message: Here's a handy rule of thumb:
If an editor can't be bothered to alphabetize, they probably don't know what they're doing.  Ideogram 17:28, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  alphabetization