Timeline for answer to First fictional programming language in sci-fi or fantasy? by odd135
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
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16 events
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| Jul 8, 2020 at 10:30 | comment | added | Mark Morgan Lloyd | @odd135 "Programming languages must be written!" I don't think it's necessary to plumb^H^H^H^H^H scale the heights of political correctness to discuss this. OP said that it shouldn't simply be a spoken set of instructions and the implication was that it should be entered via some form of terminal; I suggest that since APL is a bona-fide computer language and since I believe there is a Russian programming language using Cyrillic, then it would also be fair to consider computer languages based on Arabic or Chinese characters hence that high level descriptions like Scratch are entirely fair game. | |
| Jul 7, 2020 at 14:25 | comment | added | Ross Presser | @odd135 Sorry, didn't know about the earlier short story. I suppose you're not entirely wrong about what you say about individual scriptable programs, but you haven't convinced me, at least, that ICE qualifies. It's too broad of a category. One can talk about VBA, the language (previously) used by MS Office programs, without calling MS Office a programming language. I don't think you're going to convince most other readers of this question either, and that's why your answer has been seriously downvoted. (Though not by me.) | |
| Jul 7, 2020 at 14:16 | history | edited | odd135 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Addressing concerns raised in comments, embracing the darkness
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| Jul 7, 2020 at 13:33 | comment | added | odd135 | Yes, Burning Chrome was released before Neuromancer (omnimagazine.com/taking-agency). You're thinking of the 1986 short story volume of the same name. And there doesn't have to be a difference between a class of software and a programming language. As I mentioned, many video games and word processors have features that allow the user to program at a high level, and so can be referred to as programming languages within my definition of the term. | |
| Jul 6, 2020 at 19:23 | comment | added | Ross Presser | And ICE is not a language, nor a specific program. It's a class of software, like "word processor" or "spreadsheet software". | |
| Jul 6, 2020 at 19:22 | comment | added | Ross Presser | Burning Chrome is NOT earlier than Neuromancer. | |
| Jul 6, 2020 at 9:48 | comment | added | AncientSwordRage♦ | I don't think this meets the definition of a language, which requires writing. | |
| Jul 5, 2020 at 23:07 | comment | added | odd135 | All right, I've clarified my answer. Hopefully this clears some things up. | |
| Jul 5, 2020 at 23:06 | history | edited | odd135 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Clearing up confusion
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| Jul 5, 2020 at 21:43 | comment | added | Graham | ICE is clearly programmed, sure - but it isn't a language. It's a construct which does something. Somewhere, some programming has happened and the ICE is the end result, but it is a thing and not a language. The play Macbeth is constructed from English words, but that doesn't make the play a language. And no, Gibson never describes the process of coding except in the most general sense. | |
| Jul 5, 2020 at 21:03 | comment | added | odd135 | There's not enough room in these comment sections to go through a whole explanation of my thought process here, so I think that we'll have to agree to respectfully disagree on this point. I have read Neuromancer, and it was that book, in fact, that better describes ICE as a language, at least in my opinion. Burning Chrome was just the first occurrence of ICE, and so more relevant to this discussion. | |
| Jul 4, 2020 at 19:41 | comment | added | Owen Reynolds | His later book, Neuromancer expands on ICE, decks, cyberspace... and it's famous. You'll find many descriptions of ICE as a security program. As far as walls of ice, jacked-in hackers see cyberspace as a virtual world -- a wall of ICE is somewhat like a minecraft wall of RedStone. | |
| Jul 4, 2020 at 15:56 | comment | added | odd135 | You have to read the story to understand what I mean here. Gibson never describes "an ICE" when talking about the visual abstractions in his book; he says "walls of ICE," "the halls of Chrome's ICE," "castle of ICE," "her most sophisticated ICE is structured to fend off warrants." The usage of ICE in context of the phrases the author uses makes it clear that ICE is what much of the logical structures in the story's universe are constructed from, which is something that we would now call a programming language. All I said was that Gibson never named his counter-ICE language. | |
| Jul 4, 2020 at 4:06 | comment | added | Owen Reynolds | ICE seems to be a program and not a programming language. Like a mean firewall. In the last 1/2 of your answer you even say that: "while no name is given...". The stuff about dedicated electronics -- it's Sci Fi, so maybe Mr. Gibson was thinking that, but probably not. For real, late 1970's had special banking computers, but were still programmed. | |
| Jul 4, 2020 at 0:40 | review | First posts | |||
| Jul 4, 2020 at 3:03 | |||||
| Jul 4, 2020 at 0:36 | history | answered | odd135 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |