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Lisp is known to be the first high-level interpreted programming language appearing in 1958.

Quoting from Interpreter (computing):

The first interpreted high-level language was Lisp. Lisp was first implemented in 1958 by Steve Russell on an IBM 704 computer.

But, there are older high-level programming languages, that were interpreted as well such as:

  • Short Code: appeared in 1950. Quoting from Wikipedia:

The language was interpreted and ran about 50 times slower than machine code.

  • Speedcoding: developed by John W. Backus (the creator of Fortran) in 1953 for the IBM 701. Quoting from Wikipedia:

The speedcoding system was an interpreter and focused on ease of use at the expense of system resources.

Is it the case that lisp is the first successful high-level interpreted programming language? Why is it particularly that people consider being the first interpreted language?

StackExchange123
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    I think that this is clearly opinion-based: what's 'high-level'? – ignis volens Dec 14 '22 at 18:06
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    SpeedCode is not what anyone today would call "high-level" – a more appropriate term would be "interpreted assembly language specific to the IBM 701". Also, ShortCode like `07Y10204X1Y1 0000X30309X1` may represent expressions rather than machine instructions, but high-level? Perhaps in 1950, but not any more. – molbdnilo Dec 17 '22 at 22:12

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I suppose the answer depends on the definition of a "high-level programming language". Even though Wikipedia does call Speedcoding such, the description gives no indication that it provided

strong abstraction from the details of the computer.

All it apparently offered were

pseudo-instructions for common mathematical functions: logarithms, exponentiation, and trigonometric operations

which is a far cry from sophisticated language constructs (functions, loops, conditionals) that are commonly associated with "high-level".

That said, this question probably belongs on Retrocomputing.

sds
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