14. Languages: To C or Not To C?
The limits of my language are the limits of my world.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 5.6, 1918 —Ludwig Wittgenstein
14.1 Unix’s Cornucopia of Languages
Unix supports a wider variety of application languages than does any other single operating system; indeed, it may well have hosted more different languages than every other operating system in the history of computing combined.1
1 See the Free Compiler and Interpreter List <ftp://ftp.idiom.com/pub/compilers-list/free-compilers> for details.
There are at least two excellent reasons for this huge diversity. One is the wide use of Unix as a research and teaching platform. The other (far more relevant for working programmers) is the fact that matching your application ...
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