Ask HN: What programming language was ______ written in? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What programming language was ______ written in?

20 pointsnewest_user29 comments

I am curious as to what programming languages were used to make various products and thought it would be interesting to keep a running list of as many as we could.

Feel free to list as many as you can in the comments section and I'll try adding it to the master list. Or you can ask about one and hopefully someone will answer.

  Facebook   - PHP and C++
  Mac OSX    - C and Objective C
  iOS        - C and Objective C
  Windows    - C++, C, and C#
  Linux      - C
  Android    - C
  Google     - C++, Python, Java
  Dropbox    - Python
  NSA        - Python
  Yelp       - Python
  Quora      - Python
  Youtube    - Python
  Slide      - Python
  NASA       - Python
  ...

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Funny that you asked this. Today I noticed Google answering this very question.

http://cl.ly/2p2K0Q0m2i0I2D3I2J1U/Screen_shot_2011-06-13_at_...

http://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ie=U...

I suspect once an organisation gets big enough, you're going to find perl and python in use somewhere.

The OSX kernel is written mostly in a restricted dialect of C++ once you get above the microkernel level isn't it?

The control software for the Space Shuttle is written in a custom PL/I based language called HAL/S (S for Shuttle).

The bottom layers of Android may be C, but most of the code you actually interact with is written in Java.

Smalltalk is written in Smalltalk.

It's unique in being far more than a language: once upon a time, it was an operating system (http://tekkie.wordpress.com/2007/07/19/squeak-is-like-an-ope...).

It's unique in being far more than a language: once upon a time, it was an operating system

Well, it shares that distinction with Oberon, so, not unique.

Whoops - a slip of the keyboard ;-)

Of course, Lisp is another one.

Perl - C

Python - C

PHP - C

(gc)c - C

Here are some industry applications using Lisp: http://wiki.alu.org/Industry Application

Windows is not written in C#. There is only one componentin Windows htat is in C# and that is the Windows Event viewer.

Can you provide links for NSA and NASA, please?

[Edit]: Thx for the links, guys!

  'NSA uses Python for cryptography and intelligence analysis.'

http://waprogramming.com/papers/vol1-no1/(73-76)%20Python%20...

...and...

http://www.python.org/about/success/usa/

Should update the list from the vid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKQS8EDG1P4&feature=playe... (timestamped)

There's also a list of other companies using Python I didn't mention in my earlier comment. That was a session speech given by Wesley Chun, author and long time programmer for Python and current Google employee along with the founder of Python, Guido van Rossom, at this year's 2011 Google IO conference.

Stackoverflow.com - ASP.NET

TurboTax - Java

Reddit - Python

Android in C? I thought it was Java.

WordPress - PHP

Buddypress - PHP

Joomla - PHP

Drupal - PHP

NSA Python

Yelp Python

Quora Python

Youtube Python

Slide Python

NASA Python

Could you please expand your acronyms?

I interpret NSA as National Security Agency and NASA as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (two agencies within the US Government). However, considering these are two entire agencies, it does not make sense to say that either is 'written in python'. They may use Python, but I know that they also rely heavily on other languages including C, C++, Java, C#, OCaml, and assembly among others.

Someone else asked for a reference and I provided the link in response also in this thread. I am not arguing it's the only language they use but python are languages they use nonetheless

MySpace - Java(Coldfusion) After 2007 C#,C

Yahoo - PHP, Java

Disqus - Python

LinkedIn - Java

Netflix - C, C++ C#

Baidu - PHP

QQ - PHP

Diaspora - Ruby on Rails

Windows is C, not C++

Should be both

How come Windows doesn't come with a compiler for c?

eBay: Perl

Amazon: Perl

Twitter: Ruby on Rails, Java

Optimizely: Python

LinkedIn: Java

Craigstlist: Perl

flickr: PHP, Perl, Java

Tumblr: PHP

Twitter moved off to Java last I heard if I read this correctly. Not sure if they still use any rails.

Source 1: http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/06/new-twitter-search/

Source 2: http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/01/new-twitter-search-relevant...

Most of their job postings still mention Ruby, so I suspect a big portion is Ruby/Rails based.

LinkedIn: Java/Ruby on Rails

Here are some sites written in Rails: http://rubyonrails.org/applications

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