Yesterday I was watching “Al 3elm wal Eman” show of Dr. Mustafa Mahmoud, it is a very interesting show I remember when I was young and it used to be shown on Channel 2 I liked the episodes of the insects so much, I hope that Dr. Mustafa Mahmoud gets well from his illness soon.
The episode was about the snakes their living, habits, species ,… He mentioned that one of the types is called Python, the python programming language popped out at my mind at that moment and I thought that this is why Python got its name, later it turned out to be a wrong assumption, and I decided to do a little research on how did the programming languages got their names and that’s what I reached, please If anyone knows extra info about those names or info about others share it with the public
Java
When SUN engineers first invented Java it was called “OAK” ( a tree), but the lawyers informed them that this name was taken to a company called OAK Technologies, so the held a long meeting ( some say it was about two meetings) to brainstorm for a new name, three major candidate names were Java, Silk and WebRunner, no one can say who exactly came out with the Java name.
References:
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-10-1996/jw-10-javaname.html
C
C was called C as a lot of its features came from a predecessor language called B so the engineers at Bell Labs wanted to stick to the sequence (I read a post that says there was a language called A predecessor to B language)
References:
http://www.blurtit.com/q610744.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_(programming_language)
.Net
The name .Net is somehow a conventional name, it seems that Microsoft wanted to beat SUN in the field of programming to the web and networks after SUN released the Java (about 1995) and the big market share it got, so Microsoft decided to beat sun in this by releasing .Net (about 2002).
I read a very nice 2alsha about this ‘Microsoft choose .Net as .Com was already registered
”
References:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/628145/why-was-net-called-net
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework#Versions
Python
When the inventor of Python was developing it he needed some name to be short and unique for his new language, he was a fan of a British TV show called “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” so he picked Python as a name.
References:
http://www.python.org/doc/faq/general/#why-is-it-called-python
Oracle ( I know that this conflicts with the post title but as it seems that eventually all the technologies we’ll work with will be Oracle’s (Hope not) I decided to mention it)
The name Oracle comes from the code-name of a CIA-funded project Ellison(Oracle co-founder) had worked on while previously employed by Ampex, I also read that oracle inn ancient greek or something meant the man that has the information and gives it whenever consulted
References:
http://w3schools.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=18715
http://www.oracle.com/timeline/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Database