Delphi and C
Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
361–370 of 502 posts
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think their biggest mistake was trying to follow Microsoft into .Net instead of taking over the native desktop development niche. A native Delphi 8 with some VB6 import tools would have done wonders for them.
Don't agree. Their biggest mistakes were focusing on enterprise life cycle tools, selling the developer tools unit, creating an half hearted port of Delphi to GNU/Linux based on WINE, letting all the key developers leave the company. All these together created the image that most of us should leave Delphi and C++ Builder while it was still affordable to do so.
They have had so many mistakes over the years, embarcadero with their predatory pricing has finally chased me away
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
Emacs lisp is just so immensely sticky... once you cross the initial "what's up with this crappy lisp?" threshold, and have a finger caught in its web, you suddenly just want to put your hands all in. And then find more hands to add to the pot. I expect it to stay around a good, decent while :)
It's such a nice UI paradigm married to a decent lisp (any lisp is better than no lisp :)). Once you get the actual hang of it you can't ever leave it. Just like real coffee vs. instant abominations.
Any recommendations for a good starter guide? I've done some lisp here and there, a bit of Clojure, and some other FP-style things (e.g. Elixir). I'm not scared by parens :). I'm just not sure where to start with elisp and getting into a good groove with it.
Edit: also a long-term Emacs convert, just haven't written any of the elisp myself.
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#364SQL. If I had to pick a language that I'll use my entire career that's the one. It has been overused and underused, but always relevant.
I'll agree with you there. SQL is the one language that I hate, yet use constantly, and will certainly out-live me.
I used to think I hated SQL until I decided I had had enough of it and I tried to do a project using a no-sql database. Suddenly everything became a lot harder and I was having to write massive amounts of code to do the things that could be done with a few lines of SQL. Even the simplest of tasks just sucked the life out of me.
I soon ported the project over to use Postgres and decided that actually SQL is awesome.
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#365Scheme. When I write code in my free time it's always Scheme. I use it for web programming, game programming, systems programming, command line scripts, my package manager is written in it, my init system is written in it, etc. etc. etc.
Any specific implementation?
"my package manager written in it..." strongly suggests GNU Guile.
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you do in Perl?
Not the OP, but in my company we use it for our ETL pipeline. I've grown to really enjoy it as a language.
I've used it here and there and don't think its near as bad as people say. Perl6 is a good design, but if the implementation doesn't get sped up, I don't see it taking off.
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#367Taking a deep look into Lazarus/FreePascal/Object Pascal this year (because I can still code Pascal & VCL code in sleep nowadays). Want to see if it's good enough to develop a simple macOS, Linux and Windows application at the same time.
Why FreePascal over Qt for cross platform gui applications? I had a contract doing C++/qt stuff 2015/2016. So I could conjure up my own reasons for and against. But I am curious about yours as I am largely ignorant of pascal.
You might like to look at Lazarus, the gui builder that comes with FreePascal. Everything is done in Pascal - no XML etc. It is good-looking and my own experiments with it shows that it is very productive.
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#368Common Lisp.
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you using a particular version? Pharo? Squeak? Commercial?
Is not a Windows app, is a server microservice so I have to discard my favorite Dolphin Smalltalk for the remarkable Pharo or Squeak. Since is a business thing that will run on some linux server, I think that we'll go for Pharo. To be honest at this point Gemstone is not discarded, but geez I wish would be easier to do devops with it. A good how-to from zero to hero on a basic gemstone dev setup and minimal productio…
Dolphin is a very nice Smalltalk. For business, local clients all use Windows and do not trust web apps for core applications. So Dolphin + ODBC is my latest go to for business apps.
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#370Visual Basic 6
Tons of legacy integration.