The only notable similarities I see are lack of special characters, all caps by default (most languages from this era are actually case insensitive), and using English words. Those characteristics were in vogue 50 years ago because many computers didn't support lowercase characters, and the set of non-alphanumeric characters supported tended to vary a lot between machines. Here's what the Jargon File had to say about EBCDIC, for example:
> EBCDIC: /eb´s@·dik/, /eb´see`dik/, /eb´k@·dik/, n. [abbreviation, Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code] An alleged character set used on IBM dinosaurs. It exists in at least six mutually incompatible versions, all featuring such delights as non-contiguous letter sequences and the absence of several ASCII punctuation characters fairly important for modern computer languages (exactly which characters are absent varies according to which version of EBCDIC you're looking at).
alt Hacker News
The only notable similarities I see are lack of special characters, all caps by default (most languages from this era are actually case insensitive), and using English words. Those characteristics were in vogue 50 years ago because many computers didn't support lowercase characters, and the set of non-alphanumeric characters supported tended to vary a lot between machines. Here's what the Jargon File had to say about EBCDIC, for example:
> EBCDIC: /eb´s@·dik/, /eb´see`dik/, /eb´k@·dik/, n. [abbreviation, Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code] An alleged character set used on IBM dinosaurs. It exists in at least six mutually incompatible versions, all featuring such delights as non-contiguous letter sequences and the absence of several ASCII punctuation characters fairly important for modern computer languages (exactly which characters are absent varies according to which version of EBCDIC you're looking at).