Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?

#141

Post by cdelsolar » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 10:38 PM UTC

_nato_ wrote: post #82

I use Erlang/OTP as my go-to language. The flack about its ugly syntax certainly puts Erlang in the unfashionable camp. But unjustly. I use it because I like single assignment of variables, pattern-matching, and I also think FP is pretty swell. Someone said recently that the Erlang community could be as small as one-thousand serious hackers. Now that's relatively small!

1000? That's insanely small! Especially for the amount of tools there are for it.. is it all developed by a small subset of these 1000? I've read there are about 18-19 million programmers in the world, which also seems like a pretty small number, but it seems like enough to have created everything we have that uses software.

Re: Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?

#142

Post by LeoPanthera » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 10:43 PM UTC

Fizzadar wrote: post #90

Bash. I'm obsessed - so much so that I'll solve more complex problems taking 3x time rather than falling back to Python. And then there's bash one-liners, they're the best!

I've written a bidirectional filesystem synchronization tool, and a content management system, in (nearly) pure bash.

I keep expecting the performance to be terrible but it's surprisingly efficient.

Re: Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?

#143

Post by sotojuan » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 10:57 PM UTC

_nato_ wrote: post #82

I use Erlang/OTP as my go-to language. The flack about its ugly syntax certainly puts Erlang in the unfashionable camp. But unjustly. I use it because I like single assignment of variables, pattern-matching, and I also think FP is pretty swell. Someone said recently that the Erlang community could be as small as one-thousand serious hackers. Now that's relatively small!

Erlang/OTP is becoming fashionable again thanks to Elixir :-).

Re: Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?

#144

Post by prawn » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 10:57 PM UTC

harel wrote: post #101

Although I mainly write code in Python, JavaScript and Go, I have a SaaS web application that was written in the early 2000s using ColdFusion (CFML) which I still support (started at v5 and now runs on v8). In the mid to late nineties (and early 00s) it was one of the best ways to write web applications (it was actually the first Application server as far as I know). But today is 2016 and ColdFusion is one of the lea…

I use almost entirely ColdFusion (well, Railo). Never studied computer science so don't know any better. Wouldn't know what to transition to if I wanted to use anything else.

Re: Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?

#145

Post by alblue » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 10:59 PM UTC

aikah wrote: post #121

some use PROLOG at work. If anybody know a serious modern replacement here, i'm listening. Yeah we could go with 50 different DSLs written in Java, but why reinvent the wheel ? That stuff works and it's powerful.

Prolog isn't an acronym in the same way as, say, BASIC or COBOL, and do it shouldn't be capitalised. It's a contraction of "programming in logic" (although the original came from the French name, which has the same contraction).

Re: Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?

#146

Post by purplebutterfly » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 10:59 PM UTC

Have worked with COBOL on a mainframe for a large bank in NYC for the past four years. A very stable and critical application, it's nice to work with a group of established and proven people who value a work life balance. A bit bummed that a lot of the mainframe is locked down or controlled by the mainframe systems folks run by the global tech team. Overall a positive experience with all the business domain exposure, but finding it increasingly hard to remain relevant and move to new opportunities...

Re: Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?

#147

Post by arcanus » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 11:00 PM UTC

marcell wrote: post #122

arcanus wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also dislike R. Strongly disagree with the argument that MATLAB is more clear than python, however. Have you tried numpy/scipy? Provides excellent performance and very powerful APIs. I've always found that a great deal of the MATLAB syntax does not gel with my expectations. "./" vs. "./" for instance, or using parenthesis to address array elements. I would much prefer a truely OO capable language, as well.

> "./" vs. "./" Is this a typo? It seems like two instances of the same thing

Ooops -- './' vs. '/.', e.g. right array vs. left array

Re: Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?

#148

Post by jghn » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 11:05 PM UTC

gnaritas wrote: post #128

Rockslide wrote: post #81

Smalltalk! I got in touch with it in university and I love it. I'm convinced it is the best OO language there is, and generally one of the best general purpose languages (and environments!) ever invented. I even had the luck to be able to use it on my last job (VisualWorks), but unfortunately I no longer have that job :(

It is the best OO language there is, it is after all the original OO language. Everything else is a poor copy.

Depends on one's perspective. You could also make an argument that Simula was the first.

I'll grant you that Kay coined the term (at least AFAIK)

Re: Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?

#149

Post by jghn » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 11:06 PM UTC

aikah wrote: post #121

some use PROLOG at work. If anybody know a serious modern replacement here, i'm listening. Yeah we could go with 50 different DSLs written in Java, but why reinvent the wheel ? That stuff works and it's powerful.

Why do you need a replacement?

Depending on what you're doing datalog might work for your needs, which has implementations/libraries in a multitude of languages

Re: Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?

#150

Post by mmarx » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 11:06 PM UTC

goerz wrote: post #119

I've been using Fortran 90/95 extensively over the last few years, for numerical simulation of quantum systems. I think there's a lot of misconceptions about Fortran (which is partly due to Fortran 77, with its punchcard format and spaghetti code). Fortran 90 is basically a different language, and is actually reasonably modern. I see it as significantly more suitable for numerical programming than C/C++. Fortran is c…

First-year students in our maths curriculum here are still taught Fortran 95.

> not having to deal with pointers

There are pointers in Fortran, though. It's the absence of things like pointer arithmetic that makes them much safer to use.