The Programming Languages Beacon
v2.9 - November 2007
This table contains a list of major software products or utilities, with details about the programming languages used to implement them. Information on this is difficult to find, and a few small mistakes might have escaped the author's attention. Corrections, suggestions for additions or even references are welcome. The list is not supposed to be exhaustive but the most significant products are tentatively listed. The order of the products in each family obeys no specific rule, the reader should not understand it as a ranking.
The main programming language, the one with which most of new developments are done, is highlighted, while the ones used in older times and still present, or used only for a minority of the developments are indicated too. The pieces of software listed are usually very large, and the list of programming languages cannot be exhaustive. Miscellaneous languages are not mentioned. Sometimes, there are different products under the same line (eg "Games"), or different implementations of a single line (eg JVM implementations). In this case, the overwhelming trend is indicated. Miscellaneous counter examples are ignored.
The difference between C and C++ is a bit artificial, as it is always possible to argue that most of C code is C++ code, or conversely (as more than a few people use C++ more or less like C). The approximation made in this document tries to correspond to intuition.
indicates the major programming language for current evolutions.
refers to a technology which is still present, but is either stable or decreasing.
means that the product has died, and when it died, it used that technology
is meant to show an evolution towards the column it points to.
When the arrow is alone, it means that the amount of code corresponding to the technology in this column is either now null or negligible, having evolved in the direction of the arrow.
Release notes:
22nd of November 2007, v2.9: added Google Android.
21st of October 2007, v2.8: added a mail servers section.
Family/Product |
ASM |
C |
C++ |
Java |
C# |
Others |
Notes |
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Operating Systems
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Microsoft Windows
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Some attempts were made to put some C# in Windows Mobile (e.g. the soft keyboard). The result was judged too slow to be incorporated in the final product and was reverted to C++. | ||||
Linux
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Some Objective-C | The first version of user interface of the MacOS was inspired by the Xerox Alto user interface which introduced the WIMP concept. The user interface was implemented in SmallTalk, and to run it, the hardware was far too expensive for mass market. Early versions of MacOS used Assembler and Pascal | |||||
Sun Solaris
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| HP-UX | |
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Operating Systems for Mobiles
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Symbian is the leading operating system for phones. | ||||||
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Graphical Layers
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| Microsoft Windows UI | |
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| Apple MacOS UI (Aqua) | |
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| Gnome | |
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| KDE | |
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Desktop Search
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| Google Desktop Search | |
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| Microsoft Windows Desktop Search | |
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| Beagle | |
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Office Products
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Traditionally, MS Office was developed using assembler, then development moved to C, later, when C++ arose, everything new was done using C++. Currently there is no plan to change. A small attempt was made to develop a miscellaneous single panel in C#, a few years back. It is not known if it has been kept. | |||||
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Sun Micro Open Office, acquired in 1999 from Star Division. No attempt has been made to convert the code into Java. Java is however used for some miscellaneous modules. | ||||||
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(August 1997) |
Corel Office, initially developed in Assembler and C, moved to Corel Office for Java, fully developed in Java for portability in 1996, and abandoned in August 1997 because it was too slow. The code was later redeveloped using C and C++. | ||||||
| Adobe Systems Acrobat Reader/Distiller | |
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RDBMS
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Oracle |
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Only Assembler, C and C++ in the core. | |||
MySQL |
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IBM DB2 |
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Microsoft SQL Server |
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IBM Informix |
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| SAP DB/MaxDB | |
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Web Browsers
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see Mozilla |
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The code of Netscape browser was written in C, and Netscape engineers, all bought to Java (see M. Cusumano book and article) redeveloped the browser using Java. It was too slow and abandoned. Mozilla, the next version, was later developed using C++. | |||||
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Browser for Apple Mac OS X | |||||||
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HotJava never took off, it was far too slow compared to other browsers. It became a showcase for the Java applet technology and the product is now frozen since 1999. | |||||||
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Opera Mini (2007) has a very funny architecture, and is indeed using both C++ and Java. The browser is split in two parts, an ultra thin (less than 100Kb) "viewer" client part and a server side responsible of rendering. The first uses Java and receives the page under the OBML format, the latter reuses classical Opera (C++) rendering engine plus Opera's Small Screen Rendering, on the server. This allows Opera to penetrate various J2ME-enabled portable devices, such as phones, while preserving excellent response time. This comes obviously with a few sacrifices, for instance on JavaScript execution. | ||||||
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Mosaic was the first widely spread browser, it morphed into Netscape. | |||||||
Mail Clients
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Microsoft Outlook |
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IBM Lotus Notes |
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Development Environments
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| Microsoft Visual Studio | |
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| Eclipse | (see notes) |
Eclipse is mostly on the market not covered by MS Visual Studio. To build it, a specific graphical toolkit was developed, SWT to replace Java classical AWT. Unlike AWT which is full Java, and judged too slow for the intensive Eclipse users, SWT is a thin Java layer on top of native C/C++ code. |
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Virtual Machines
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| Microsoft .Net CLR | |
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| Java Virtual Machine (JVM) | |
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ERP
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| SAP mySAP ERP | |
ABAP/4 |
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| Oracle Peoplesoft | |
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Peoplesoft relied on BEA Tuxedo and C++ code, now moving to BEA WebLogic and Java, keeping the POOPL language. The C++ code is apparently not reengineered. | |||||
| Oracle E-Business Suite | |
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Business Intelligence
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| Business Objects | |
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Graphics Editors
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| Adobe Photoshop | |
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| The GIMP | |
Some Perl | ||||||
Search Engines
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Web Sites
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| eBay |
(2002) |
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Information on eBay architecture and the move from C++ to Java can be found here. | |||||
| Amazon | |
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| Games | |
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Compilers/Interpreters
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| Microsoft Visual C++ | |
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| gcc | |
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| javacc | |
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| Perl | |
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| PHP | |
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3D Engines
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| Microsoft DirectX | |
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| OpenGL | |
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| OGRE 3D | |
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Web Servers
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| Apache | |
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| Microsoft IIS | |
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Mail Servers
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| Microsoft Exchange Server | |
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| Postfix | |
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| IBM Lotus Notes Server | |
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| Apache James | |
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Web 2.0
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| MediaWiki | PHP |
Powers Wikipedia | ||||||
| TWiki | Perl |
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| Google Blogger | Unknown details, the software has been re-engineered several times, for instance in 2002 and 2006. | |||||||
| Flickr | PHP |
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CD/DVD Authoring
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| Nero Burning ROM | |
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| K3B | |
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Multimedia Players
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| Nullsoft Winamp | |
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| Microsoft Windows Media Player | |
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| Apple iPod software | |
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Peer to Peer
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| eMule | |
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| µtorrent | |
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| Azureus | |
Azureus is built on top of SWT, see notes corresponding to Eclipse. | ||||||
GPS Systems
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| TomTom | |
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| Hertz NeverLost | |
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| Garmin | |
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| Motorola VIAMOTO |
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Motorola VIAMOTO was a smart phone "connected" GPS implementation, with a Java client-side. It was re-branded by a number of car rental companies. For instance, Avis Assist was another name for the Motorola VIAMOTO product. Avis have withdrawn this product and are now offering Garmin in the USA and TomTom in Europe. Motorola withdraws the product in June 2007. Alamo/National who had re-branded the system "Navigation Station" will also discontinue the service. Some think cell phone navigation technology will be big. | ||||||
This page is maintained by Vincent Lextrait (e-mail vincent@lextrait.com)