{"id":3703,"date":"2012-01-25T23:36:37","date_gmt":"2012-01-26T07:36:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/?p=3703"},"modified":"2012-04-22T21:51:01","modified_gmt":"2012-04-23T04:51:01","slug":"how-many-default-languages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/how-many-default-languages\/","title":{"rendered":"How Many Default Languages?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was thinking back to my childhood, when my family first owned a computer. It was an MS-DOS-powered IBM PC. The default OS came with 2 programming environments, such as they were: GW-BASIC<\/a> and batch files<\/a>. It was a start, I suppose. I guess most any microcomputer you can name from that era came with some kind of BASIC interpreter. That defined the computer’s “out of the box” programmability.<\/p>\n

Then I started wondering how this compares to computers (operating systems\/distributions, really) these days. So I installed a fresh version of the latest Ubuntu Linux version (11.10 as of this writing; x86_32) and looked for programmability (without installing anything else). This is what I came up with:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. gcc\/C (only the C compiler; other components of the GNU compiler collection are installed separately)<\/li>\n
  2. Perl<\/li>\n
  3. Python<\/li>\n
  4. C#, as furnished by Mono<\/li>\n
  5. Bash — can’t forget about the shell as a full-featured programming language (sh is also present, but not t\/csh)<\/li>\n
  6. JavaScript — since Firefox is installed per default, JS counts<\/li>\n
  7. GNU Assember — thanks to Reimar for the reminder that if gcc is present, gas necessarily needs to be there as well<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I checked on C++, Objective C, Java, Ada, Fortran, Go, Lua, Ruby, Tcl, PHP, R and other languages I could think of, but the above items were the only ones present by default. At the same time, I checked my Mac OS X (10.6) box and it also has Ruby and PHP installed. It has a bunch of other languages, courtesy of Xcode, so I can’t certify anything about its out of the box programmability.<\/p>\n

    Still, I think “embarrassment of riches” pretty well sums it up. I try not to be crotchety old fogey complaining that kids these days don’t know how good they have it; rather, I’m genuinely excited for anyone who wants to leap into computer programming in this day and age.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    How programmable are modern operating systems when they’re freshly installed?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-programming"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t