This is perhaps a honey-trap for the suitable-question-enforcers, but it came up in conversation with some other developers, and it's certainly related to programming languages. And I don't think it's argumentative, which is the other common justification for closing a question. We'll see ...
+5
A:
Try checking Wikipedia and Reddit out. The first one is a list of all programming languages, and the second is a discussion on reddit about it.
Added
From the Wikipedia page, it appears that you could create:
- A
- G
- H
- I
MPer comment: should update Wikipedia so left-hand knows what the right is doing, and vice versa.- N
- O
- P
- U
- W
- X
Of course, it depends slightly on your definition of a 'one-letter' language; does 'M4' count as one letter (and one digit)?
mdec
2008-12-15 04:38:11
Actually M is taken, see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M_(programming_language)
jrcs3
2008-12-15 05:45:35
Surprisingly X is not taken yet.
Gamecat
2008-12-15 08:09:02
Microsoft once used the name X#, I think for something Erik Meijer was working on. Not sure what it turned into.
Daniel Earwicker
2008-12-21 01:24:52
+1
A:
Here's Wikipedia's list of programming languages. From the list, there appears to be some space left for single letter languages. Of course, the Wikipedia list is by no means an exhaustive nor authoratative list. I've noticed that the esoteric language i! is not on the list.
Also, searching on Google for "h programming language" did not lead to a page for a "H" proramming language. (At least not in the first page.)
So, perhaps there are some unclaimed letters in the alphabet, but I suspect that somewhere, there is indeed a language for each letter of the alphabet.
coobird
2008-12-15 04:42:54
+4
A:
With Unicode, a whole new world opens up for single letter programming languages. Twenty-four for Greek alone and the eastern languages make my mind boggle.
paxdiablo
2008-12-15 05:17:00
And digits. But then we would be forever confusing zero with oh. (Did you know that English is the only language where the name of the vowels are not identical to the sounds of the vowels?)
le dorfier
2008-12-15 07:27:48
Eh? In Greek, the first letter is alfa but the Greek word for man (andropos, think anthropology) is not pronounced alfa-ndropos. Apologies for my lack of Greek font.
paxdiablo
2008-12-15 07:40:11
And my 4yo son would beg to differ, he's not using the long vowel sounds yet (prefers A to AY, eh to ee and so on). :-)
paxdiablo
2008-12-15 07:41:35
+4
A:
If you're trying to come up with a name for a new programming language, I would point out that single-letter language names yield a very low signal-to-noise ratio in Google. Language names that rely on non-alphanumerics to distinguish them (e.g. C++, C#) are even worse. Adding "programming language" to one's search certainly improves matters some, but removes some of the appeal of the short name.
P Daddy
2008-12-15 05:29:17