Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of programming languages by category


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Wizardman 14:26, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

List of programming languages by category

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This is a list of programming languages by category, which is better served by actual categories. This was suggested on the article's talk page here. We already have a list of programming languages in alphabetical, chronological, and generational order. I don't think a categorical list adds anything over this and the categories (see Category:Programming languages). swa q  18:55, 26 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom - there's no annotation here, and hence no advantage over categories. If anything, this is inferior to categories, as it's really easy for a standalone list (like this one) to be overlooked when articles are added. Same logic probably applies to Alphabetical list of programming languages, incidentally - both lists were created way back in 2001 and 2002, before categories were available. Zetawoof(&zeta;) 21:34, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom - I agree with Zetawoof. --Allan McInnes (talk) 22:22, 26 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete - Categories suffice. Blaxthos ( t / c ) 22:37, 26 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep per WP:CLN. Klausness (talk) 00:37, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment There is already a list by name. What part of the categorical list is an advantage over categories that isn't covered in the alphabetical, chronological, or generational lists?  swa  q  02:04, 27 March 2008 (UTC)


 * It's human-readable, unlike a category, which requires lots of navigation and a lot of ugliness. Celarnor Talk to me 10:35, 27 March 2008 (UTC)


 * STRONG Keep. My normal test for something like this is to see if I can find information in the category as easily as I can in the list.  That was not the case here, and if I didn't have a background in CS, I probably wouldn't have been able to do it at all.  Apart from the dichotomy in navigability, it's important to remember our guidelines regarding redundancy in categories and lists (emphasis mine):"Developers of these redundant systems should not compete against each other in a destructive manner, such as by nominating the work of their competitors to be deleted because they overlap. Doing so may disrupt browsing by users who prefer the list system. Also, lists may be enhanced with features not available to categories, but building a rudimentary list of links is a necessary first step in the construction of an enhanced list -- deleting link lists wastes these building blocks, and unnecessarily pressures list builders into providing a larger initial commitment of effort whenever they wish to create a new list, which may be felt as a disincentive. Celarnor Talk to me  10:35, 27 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep per Celarnor's comments just above. In essence, the information may be redundant, but the presentation seems not to be. ChuckEsterbrook (talk) 18:26, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete. Many of the categories are inaccurate, misleading, or pure opinion; almost all are uncited; some are pure marketing terms with no basis in computer science research (e.g. "fourth-generation languages"). Basically this is an utter disorderly hodge-podge with no real chance of becoming orderly. As a result, it is not, and cannot become, more informative than misinformative to the reader. --FOo (talk) 07:59, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Fourth generation languages very much have a basis in computer science. Plus we have an article (Fourth-generation programming language) and an accompanying category for it.  The problems you seem to have with the articles are ones to solve by improvement, not deletion. Celarnor Talk to me  20:10, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep Dealing with accuracy problems is a editorial dispute only. DGG (talk) 02:15, 30 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep but probably deserves a major overhaul. There's a page on web browsers somewhere where browsers are categorised using colours and tables with notes and sources. This might be trickier to do for programming languages because there are so many of them, but I agree that the objections are editorial not fundamental. Like a stub, this page has potential, the fact that it hasn't reached that potential yet shouldn't be grounds for deletion. 09:31, 31 March 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.33.200.148 (talk)


 * It'd be difficult to impossible to come up with something similar for programming languages. Unlike web browsers, different programming languages generally have radically different feature sets which can't be accurately compared on a "checklist" basis. (As a thought experiment: what features would be listed?) Moreover, the possibility of a feature-based comparison of programming languages isn't really relevant here - what's being discussed is the existing list-by-category, and whether it's necessary. Zetawoof(&zeta;) 10:00, 31 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, it doesn't work that way. Web browsers have standards they can adhere to, and things such as tabbing and caching are fairly common things to compare them to one another with.  Programming languages are an array of tools that do things quite different from one another most of the time; including all possible 'features' would result in each feature being shared by one or two languages only.  The existing list is by the family of programming languages that it is in, which is exactly how it should be kept. Celarnor Talk to me  11:35, 31 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep. This list has annotations and as such it can offer more than a category. Sometimes, categories and lists can coexist, both being useful in different ways. I think this is such a case. --Itub (talk) 15:38, 31 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep Article is something one would expect in specialist encyclopedia on computer science. Wikipedia aims to be both a general and a specialist encyclopedia. --Firefly322 (talk) 20:28, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep This list can be added-to, in one place. That serializability makes it more manageable than a tree of items which must be visted, one article at a time. Thus this list is more manageable if single editors are involved. If a team of editors were to agree handle articles in parallel, then the tree of items would be doable, but not until we have reached that scale of cooperation. To assume otherwise would be to kill the concept at the outset. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 00:42, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.