Programming Linux
Many people think that programming Linux means using C. It’s true that UNIX was originally written in C and that the majority of UNIX applications are written in C, but C is not the only option available to Linux programmers, or UNIX programmers for that matter. In the course of the book, we’ll introduce a couple of the alternatives.
In fact, the first version of UNIX was written in PDP 7 assembler language in 1969. C was conceived by Dennis Ritchie around that time, and in 1973 he and Ken Thompson rewrote essentially the entire UNIX kernel in C, quite a feat in the days when system software was written in assembly language.
A vast range of programming languages are available for Linux systems, and many of them are free and available on CD-ROM collections or from FTP archive sites on the Internet. Here’s a partial list of programming languages available to the Linux programmer:
- Ada
- C
- C++
- Eiffel
- Forth
- Fortran
- Icon
- Java
- JavaScript
- Lisp
- Modula 2
- Modula 3
- Oberon
- Objective C
- Pascal
- Perl
- PostScript
- Prolog
- Python
- Scheme
- Smalltalk
- SQL
- Tcl/Tk
- Bourne Shell