171–180 of 338 posts
I use a language originally called MUMPS, with the alternate name of M, which is the core language in Cache Object Script. I use it because it has features that are still not (really) included in more "modern" languages, because it is actively used in niche markets, and because I've used it for 34 years, so I have a lot of experience in it and tools written in it. It is incredibly terse, which allows for use in tight…
My dad uses and has used BASIC. He's not a teacher, nor a hobbyist. He writes bank software. In BASIC. For forty years. At the same company. UBS, Bank of China, and other names all run this massive million(s)-line BASIC codebase, that he almost singlehandedly wrote, on minicomputers[1] powered by OpenVMS. With it, according to my father, they process billion dollars worth of transactions and other facets of their bus…
> perhaps better saved for a blog post Please do write it, and submit it to HN! This is the sort of material nearly all of us would love to read.
I will have to talk to my father about this... and explain why folks on the internet must hear his stories.
In the interim, would anyone happen to have an example of a good secondhand account of a software project? A basis or, at the least, an inspiration for how to proceed.
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…
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 :(
I predominantly work in Perl 5, which probably isn't quite to the point of being something one can write off completely as out of the spotlight. And, I'm launching a new thing soon which, despite having looked at a number of alternatives, will likely also be in Perl. Familiarity and a big ecosystem that I'm already familiar with is a pretty big win. I happen to work in the systems management space, which was long dom…
As long as you get to use PHP 7 and one of the more modern frameworks modern PHP is actually quite pleasant to work with.
https://www.reddit.com/r/lolphp/comments/41fqib/it_is_so_sim...
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> perhaps better saved for a blog post Please do write it, and submit it to HN! This is the sort of material nearly all of us would love to read.
It'd certainly be interesting to relate a multi-decade software project from the outside :-) I will have to talk to my father about this... and explain why folks on the internet must hear his stories. In the interim, would anyone happen to have an example of a good secondhand account of a software project? A basis or, at the least, an inspiration for how to proceed.
There's The Mythical Man-Month: http://www.amazon.com/The-Mythical-Man-Month-Engineering-Ann...
Showstopper, the book about the development of Windows NT, is great: http://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-Micr...
Bash users represent! Seriously, Bash is fucking beautiful once you really dig into it. Pipes are unbelievably elegant.
There's lots of job openings out there for COBOL coders. Nobody wants to learn it, and those who know it are dying off.
A lot of people say this, but all the COBOL jobs I see advertised (not many) offer a very average salary. Demand can't be that high if COBOL jobs are paying less than the typical "frontend developer" jobs.