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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?

#95

Post by scandox »

haroldp wrote: post #37
bbarn wrote: post #22

"classic" asp. Still have some crappy legacy pdf generation code no one is willing to invest the time to rewrite into here. Fortunately that's all of an update a year or so.

I know that pain.

I get a call about once a year from somebody who I did a favour site for in 2001. Still running. Still breaking.

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

#96

Post by robteix »

lgessler wrote: post #9

MUMPS. Despite its strong resemblance to compiler IR and lack of a type system, it is the standard DB in Health IT in America.

OMG the memories! I did work in MUMPS while I was in college in the early 90s. I had completely forgotten about this. Thanks for that :)

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

#97

Post by pmontra »

What's old? Anyway, I'll be using:

Ruby, age 21. Web development, some text processing scripts. Design started on February 24, 1993 first release on December 21, 1995. [1]

Python, age 25, almost 26. Web development. Implementation started in December 1989. First release on February 1991. [2]

JavaScript, age 21. Web development. Designed and released in May 1995. [3] However if Ruby and Python are clearly the same languages they were 20+ years ago plus the natural evolutions, I don't know if the JavaScript we're using today has anything more that a resemblance with what it was back in 1995. After all we say we're using bash (Bourne Again SHell, it couldn't be more explicit) and not sh, speaking of which:

Bash, age 27. Scripting. Coding started on January 10, 1988 and released on June 8, 1989 [4] If we count the Bourne shell, that is from 1977 (age 39), coding started in 1976 [5]

Erlang, age 28. First prototypes running in 1988, work on BEAM started in 1992, in production as we know it in 1998 [6] Actually I'll be using Elixir for backend coding. Sometimes all what an Elixir module does is calling Erlang modules so it's handy to code that directly in Erlang. The Elixir compiler handles compiling and linking Erlang well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_(programming_language)#Hi...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Python

[3] https://www.w3.org/community/webed/wiki/A_Short_History_of_J...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bash_(Unix_shell)#History

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourne_shell

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlang_(programming_language)#...

Considering that PHP, Java, C++, Perl are also in their 20s (and Objective-C is 30+), should we really call them old languages or old should that be reserved to something dating back to the 70s or the 60s? (C, COBOL, Fortran).

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

#98

Post by mgkimsal »

tbirrell wrote: post #31

uses PHP and JS Those aren't old enough to count, I guess googles age of PHP Holy crap! PHP is almost 23 years old. Probably still not considered "old" though...

some of the biggest advancements in PHP recently have come from folks who were not born when PHP was initially created...

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

#99

Post by IslaDeEncanta »

throwaway7645 wrote: post #93
mfontani wrote: post #64

Perl 5, of course! It's an awesome language and both the language and the ecosystem is getting better and better all the time

What do you do in Perl?

I don't know about the original poster, but Perl is great for back end development, and there are wrappers for just about every GUI toolkit if you want to go that route.
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