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Forgotten Language: Jorf Could Have Been Python (or Ruby)

posted by CoolHand on Monday October 19 2015, @03:38AM   
from the oh-what-could-have-been dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

On one of those Sim­tel CDs I found Jor­f. (Josephine's Recipe Fil­er). It was a OO lan­guage, with an in­ter­preter for DOS or Win­dows, and it sup­port­ed stuff that was re­al­ly ad­vanced for the time, and it made my cod­ing a lot sim­pler.

Out of nos­tal­gy, I down­load­ed a copy (yes, it is still there), and ran it in Dos­BOX (yes, it still work­s), to check if it was as good as I re­mem­bered.

You know what? It is.

In fac­t, if it had come out 2 or three years lat­er, and as free soft­ware in­stead of share­ware... I think it would have been big.

Here are some high­lights og the lan­guage:

        OOP
        Has in­te­grat­ed win­dow­ing tool­kit (for DOS and Win­dows)
        It had an in­ter­ac­tive hy­per­tex­t/win­dow­ing tu­to­ri­al writ­ten in it­self. In 1993.
        It looks like a cousin of Python. A freaky cous­in, though.
                -Com­­ments start with |
                -Strings lim­it­ed with sin­­gle or dou­ble quotes
                -Au­­to­­mat­ic type con­ver­­sions
                -In­­ten­­ta­­tion con­trols flow :-)
                -No de­­clared da­­ta types
                -In­­te­­grat­ed ed­i­­tor and de­bug­ger

The article author's native language seems to not be English, but it's a fun little piece on a language that might have been.

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Original Submission

• Computer Language magazine Computer Language magazine (Score: 4, Interesting) by Snotnose on Monday October 19 2015, @04:13AM

  by Snotnose (1623) on Monday October 19 2015, @04:13AM (#251693)

  Back in the 80s there was a magazine called Computer Language. It typically featured 3-4 new languages every month. It was an interesting read. I never saw 99% of the languages in the wild, but I kinda wish I'd kept my stash so I could thumb through them now to see how many languages I recognize nowadays.

  --
  When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+2
  Interesting=2, Total=2
  Extra 'Interesting' Modifier		0
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		4

• Re:Computer Language magazine (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday October 19 2015, @02:21PM

  by nitehawk214 (1304) on Monday October 19 2015, @02:21PM (#251820)

  Even more interesting would be to see components of failed languages that made it into ones we have here today.

  --
  "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh

  Parent

• Re:Computer Language magazine (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2015, @10:03PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2015, @10:03PM (#252076)

  Yeah, there's a few magazines that were pretty interesting back in the day:

  Byte
  Dr. Dobbs Journal
  C++ Report (1990s)

  I'm leaving out the Sunday newspaper-sized ones that were mostly ads.

  Parent