[dhosek]

I came of age in an era in which it was often important which version of a language you were programming in. Not all C code could compile with all C compilers (which was part of the motivation behind the C preprocessor), likewise with Pascal, BASIC, FORTRAN, etc. IBM had two different Pascal compilers for VM/CMS named, confusingly, VS/Pascal and Pascal/VS which were almost but not quite identical in functionality and features. On timesharing systems, you might discover all manner of legacy languages lurking on the (dishwasher-sized) hard drives. I checked out a book on SNOBOL from the library to understand what was happening in some SPITBOL code that I found on UIC’s mainframe that was part of the source for a C compiler. Most personal computers came with some version of a Microsoft BASIC in ROM, but there were differences from one platform to the next so you couldn’t necessarily just type in a program written in AppleSoft BASIC and run it in QBASIC under DOS. The fact that in 2022 JVM languages run identically anywhere and that Rust is (almost) platform-agnostic is, to be honest, kind of miraculous.