Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Joy (programming language)

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 Speedy Keep per point #1 of that guideline (Nominator withdrew their nomination and no one else has !voted Delete). (Non-admin closure) Cybercobra (talk) 18:43, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Joy (programming language)

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This language does not meet the general notability guideline. Here's what I found on a search:

One paper by the author presented at EuroForth, which which has 3 citations according to Google Scholar and doesn't even appear in the ACM digital library
Another paper with one citation, according to ACM
An interview with the creator from "no stinking loops"
something else from "no stinking loops"
some blogs

Two extremely-poorly-cited papers don't establish notability from an academic standpoint, and two articles by "Stevan Apter of no stinking loops" isn't reliable and independent coverage from multiple sources. Christopher Monsanto (talk) 23:40, 12 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Counterpoint: Joy is notable for two reasons. First, Joy is itself the first attempt to establish any kind of theoretical basis for the success that stack-based languages have had in specific areas of computing; the most notable such success was Postscript, with Forth coming in a remote second. Second, Joy is an essential link in the evolution of stack-based programming languages from Forth and Postscript to the modern Factor language. Without the papers on von Thun's site (written using Joy as their notation) Factor would have looked very different.

Joy is a specific programming language which (fairly recently) broke new ground in a previously unstudied area of computer language syntax. That there are no researchers (in acadamia) working in this field does not mean the field does not exist; the field is notable for its extensive practical use and the fact that until von Thun (the author of Joy) wrote his research up on his website, there was no theoretical basis for all this practical common use. Will it ever be studied? That question is not something that should be decided as part of a discussion of whether to delete a page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wtanksleyjr (talk • contribs)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. -- Cybercobra (talk) 00:33, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. -- Cybercobra (talk) 00:33, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep because nothing good ever came of a deletion spree. Ubernostrum (talk) 03:48, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, per my reasoning here Throwaway85 (talk) 04:18, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: Sources presented by the nominator are more than enough for notability per WP:GNG. --Cyclopia ^talk 11:33, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: I'm a software developer and I'm going to argue for its notability in the area of programming languages as opposed to academic interest. I've never used Joy, and only played with Factor (which has Joy as one of its inspirations). I recall hearing about Joy years ago in some discussion on concatenative languages; it's thus been on my (randomly semi-informed programmer) radar for many years. Besides influencing Factor, it also influenced the Cat programming language (http://www.cat-language.com/). The wikipedia article on concatenative languages claims that Joy was the first language to call itself concatenative; I'd say that adds to the notability. This is an area of active interest among programming language designers (http://concatenative.org). I'd say Joy is an influential language in connecting concatenative languages like Forth to functional programming theory. Martijn Faassen (talk) 14:17, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - the sources the nominator has identified are sufficient to establish marginal notability. Thparkth (talk) 14:31, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I just finished reviewing the Cat (programming language) AfD and have recommended that Cat be merged into the Joy (programming language) article. The Cat article has sources that are not currently in the Joy article and that support the notability of Joy. Unscintillating (talk) 07:27, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Retract. I'm retracting this AfD for obvious reasons.... Christopher Monsanto (talk) 15:07, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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.