from the July 1985 issue of Unix World magazine by David Spencer Current third-generation languages such as C and FORTRAN will have to move aside at some point for a new family of fourth-generation languages. At 30 years old, FORTRAN is graying at the temples; third-generation programming languages are in their heyday. So you are probably wondering how we will speak to computers during the next decade. If current projections hold true, computers will seem (and talk) more like us fairly soon.

by Bill Tuthill from the January 1985 issue of Unix Review magazine C is descended from B, which was descended from BCPL. BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language) was developed in 1967 by Martin Richards. B was an interpretive language written in 1970 by Ken Thompson (1) after he abandoned a Fortran implementation for the PDP-7. BCPL and B were typeless languages, which may account for the type permissiveness of C. They restricted their scope to machine words and were rather low level.

by Judy Getts from the June 1987 issue of Computer Language Chuck Duff is the kind of man you’d expect to run into early in the morning in a university coffee shop, styrofoam cup in hand, talking Hegel with a student. You’d expect to see him in an art gallery rambling between the neoclassicists and linear chromatists, keen-eyed and at home, or even face-to-face in a folk-jazz cafe if you motioned the waitress aside and asked who is the James Beard behind the watercress crepes.

By Dan Azulay from the January 1984 issue of Electronic Fun with Comouters and Games magazine How this powerful language stacks up Those of you who have been driven to desperate acts because you’ve mastered BASIC and feel there is nothing left in life, take heart There’s always FORTH, a very fast, very efficient computer language that is rapidly becoming the language of professional programmers and game designers. If you’re planning to go to computer camp this summer you may be surprised to learn that in addition to honing your BASIC skills to a fine edge you might be presented with a language you’ve scarcely heard of—FORTH.

by Harvey Newquist III from the July 1987 issue of Computer Language Artificial intelligence is perhaps the most overused—and abused—buzzword in the current age of computer science. The AI arena has been divided into several factions, all of which help distort its real benefits and potentials. On the one hand we have the popular business media, which has billed AI as everything from the greatest creation since sliced bread to a worthless endeavor perpetuated by computer hucksters.