Path: news.daimi.aau.dk!olevi
From: olevi@daimi.aau.dk (Ole Villumsen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.beta
Subject: Where the name BETA comes from (was Re: BETA questions)
Date: 4 May 1995 12:34:15 GMT
Organization: DAIMI, Computer Science Dept. at Aarhus University
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Tim Teulings <rael@edge.ping.de> writes:

>Yes, the name of the language always gives my some inspiration.  Can  someone
>tell where this name came from?

It's a very old story. As far as I've understood, there once in some
Nordic Universities was the idea of developing 4 languages, named after
the first 4 letters in the Greek alphabet (using transcriptions from
classic Greek):

  ALPHA - a machine code langauge
  BETA  - a systems programming language
  GAMMA - an application programming language
  DELTA - a systems description language

This was *way* long before the terms alpha and beta release were ever
invented. Only BETA and DELTA were developed (enough that I ever heard
of them), and in addition a (cleaner) variant of DELTA named EPSILON.
On the other hand, BETA made it so well that it is now used also for
programming applications.

I find it funny to think that the Greeks call the letter VITA nowadays.

Ole V.