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Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?

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Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?

#251

Post by computerphage »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #123
aloukissas wrote: post #15

Most of my work is in C++, which is almost 35 years old. By far the best choice of language for cross-platform, client application development, especially C++11/C++14, which bring modern language features (e.g. lambdas, futures, etc) with all the original benefits of the language.

Hands down the best thing about C++ for me is that with modern C++ you can write relatively safe clean code while taking advantage of decades of robust libraries. Yeah, Rust is a big step forward in some respects, but it'll be almost a decade before we see it catch up to C++'s incredible ecosystem. C++ is almost the lingua franca of finance, for instance.

Rust can already take advantage of the C ecosystem quite easily. Rust/C++ usability is a major goal for 2017. I'm hoping that by year end you can have the best of both worlds. The advantages of Rust for new code and the mountain of code that exists for C and for C++.

Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?

#252

Post by vrisha »

campusman wrote: post #100

ColdFusion/CFML. All day, every day. Although a heavy dose of the newer hotness and the eventual migration of everything I work with off of it is in the works. Still enjoy working with it though. Very productive.

Seems only two of us here.

Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?

#253

Post by ssully »

Insanity wrote: post #212
stinkytaco wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that clear notetaking is amazing in guiding discussions. Being the one who sends out the meeting summary with next actions and clarifying remarks or being able to refer back to meeting notes gives me an amazing power in making decisions or resolving disputes. Just because I'm the one who's writing stuff down, I'm somehow given the authority to say "this is what we decided at the meeting".

Absolutely! Can I ask if you are taking these nodes the old fashioned way with pen and paper or are you using a program to do this? I myself have found out that during meetings I prefer to use a pen and paper but it is mostly just notes that I take for myself.

I am not who you were asking, but I exclusively use pen and paper during meetings. I try to keep my laptop closed and transcribe action items to a personal trello board after the meeting is done.

The trello part is more recent, but I have notebooks going back to my first internship in 2012(which I know isn't that long for most here). It's pretty interesting to see old notes I took and the problems I had at the time.

Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?

#254

Post by reikonomusha »

BeetleB wrote: post #227
reikonomusha wrote: post #209

Many folks have said it here but I'll say it again: Common Lisp. I have been using it professionally for 5+ years as a full-time employee at various companies. Some big-name ones, some smaller start-up ones. The mean Lisp team size has been around 4, but I did work on a project of 15 Lisp programmers. None of these projects were legacy code. Some were in places you wouldn't expect (embedded, multi-processor systems o…

>In every single case, we had no additional trouble hiring a Lisp or Lisp-capable programmer as compared to hiring for any other language, including Python Doesn't that imply an over-supply? I did my grad research on a highly specialized topic, involving plenty of math/physics. Then I worked in industry applying my skills for 4 years. Then I switched to programming - nothing related to my engineering degrees. This jo…

Does it indicate over-supply? Maybe, but it's probably a bit more complicated than that. There is a very large supply of self-proclaimed Python programmers. (There's no official accreditation of this, of course, so we can only go by self-proclamation.) But this is unlike, say, raw materials supply for building a bridge. A lot---and by "a lot", I mean enough to be noticed when hiring---of the "Python programmer supply" is under-skilled. So, in reality, and limited to my own experience, the supply of skilled, knowledgeable Python programmers is much less than that of the total supply, so I'm not sure I'd label it as "over-supply".

With that said, though, and especially with huge companies like Google using Python as one of their main languages, the supply of qualified Python programmers is no doubt larger than that of Lisp. But, it's a fallacy to believe that the supply of qualified programmers correlates inversely to the time spent searching for them. It's sometimes easier to find needles that standout in the haystack.

As for software jobs in the domain of math/physics/etc., they're out there, but just harder to seek out. The world hasn't run out of hard science problems to solve, and many companies would go to great lengths to hire brilliant individuals who have both scientific acumen and programming skills.

Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?

#255

Post by dmcginty »

paulrpotts wrote: post #121
dmcginty wrote: post #62

I really want to write something in 6502 assembly this year. I've read tutorials and played with it, but I've never used it to build a non-trivial program. I've also been wanting to build a NES emulator in common lisp, and this would be the perfect opportunity to pair the two projects.

Have you seen the game called Human Resource Machine? This is not actually a joke comment -- it teaches assembly language programming. Not 6502 specifically, but the fake architecture looks a lot like 6502. You work up through a set of more and more challenging assignments until you have to write a sort. I really enjoyed it and would consider it a great introduction to basically any assembly language.

Thanks for the recommendation; I just purchased it. As another commenter said, TIS-100 is also a great game about an assembly language for a fictional computer that I'd highly recommend. I had a lot of fun playing with MIPS assembly in college, and I'd really like to do it again.

Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?

#256

Post by lnk2w »

noonespecial wrote: post #7

Pascal/Delphi Before there was an internet of lightbulbs and smoke detectors, there was an internet of industrial process things. And they used windows 2000 and Delphi. They still do.

I learned to program with Delphi and this was 2.5 years ago, since then I've been actively working with.

My only problem is that I have to maintain legacy codebases without OOP code.

Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?

#259

Post by raboukhalil »

neoncontrails wrote: post #229
ptaipale wrote: post #6

- sh (I really don't use bash features in scripting) - awk - perl - sed, if that counts as language. It's funny that a course that I took in university almost 29 years ago, for learning the use of Unix scripting tools, is one of the most useful learning experiences in my daily work today - even if my job is not really a programmer. But very often I see colleagues (project managers, architects etc) struggle with proce…

Any suggestions for a bash scripting tutorial to help me better connect the dots? Over the years I've learned some nifty one-liners, but I'm not really familiar enough with the patterns and art of of command-line thinking to solve my own problems in bash. Most of the bash resources I've found online are just loosely organized collections of magic spells. I'd really like to get better at it though.

[Shameless plug] Not too long ago, I wrote a small book that tries to address those kinds of questions, i.e. how to use Bash to solve problems instead of 1-liners. You may find it useful: http://adventuresindatascience.com
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