O’Reilly first discovered the History of Programming Languages diagram, created by Éric Lévénez, while visiting their French office. They were so taken with its level of detail and visual impact that they wanted to come up with a way to share it more widely. Originally, it was printed full size (eighteen feet in all) and ran it along a wall at their Mac OS X Conference last fall.
Its reception was extraordinary – in fact, so many people came by to make notations on the diagram, that it was decided there would be considerably wider interest if it could be printed in a smaller, more portable format. With Lévénez’ permission, O’Reilly collected comments from its authors, editors, and friends, and rebuilt the file so it could be printed in its current dimensions: 39″ x 17”. Lévénez maintains a site with his original diagram, change logs, an explanation of how he creates his charts, and links to additional resources such as Bill Kinnersley’s Language List of over 2,500 programming languages at www.levenez.com.
Along with the initial praise, there also came many suggestions for additions to the diagram. O’Reilly made only a small number of changes – in order to keep the file in a relatively manageable state; but there is a high level of historical knowledge and personal experience of the events in this poster among high tech enthusiasts generally, and computer programmers specifically.
O’Reilly is actively soliciting such suggestions, as well as general comments on their History of Programming Languages Wiki.
