I'm still using VB6 which was released in mid 1998 (19 years old in 2017)
Me too xD
Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
101–110 of 502 posts
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#102Pascal/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.
Delphi/Pascal ran the call center telephony system at a company I worked at, and it ran it well. It was very performant and stable, and ran things for around 14 years.
Spent a while writing and modifying Delphi apps there, I really enjoyed it. I'm actually surprised it isn't used more today, it was definitely "rapid development" at the time.
One thing it was great for was making small, dependency free executables. Similar to today's concept of "Microservices" we often wrote small executable services and applications for tasks and it was very straightforward and simple. You could whip something up in a couple hours that accomplished a lot. Push the .exe file somewhere, add it into the process and forget about it.
Not surprised people are still out there using this stuff.
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#103Basic. Specifically BASIS's BBx (Business Basic extended).
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#104Lots and lots of C. (I'm mostly an embedded C programmer these days). Some C++ for a bit of higher-level "business logic" that benefits from a class-based approach, but a fairly limited subset of "modern" C++.
C++ has this weird evolution curve where as you start using features things improve up to a point then go downhill, but then go uphill again with new modern features
If you limit yourself to using the STL with C++11 stuff but don't go crazy with inheritance and templating in your classes it can be nice
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#105I'll continue with JavaScript and C#... they are pretty old (and I'm not joking).
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#106[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#107Delphi (may quit), Perl, Tcl!
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#108I don't relish the opportunity, but batch files, since they are the lowest common denominator for scripting on Windows.
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#109Lots and lots of C. (I'm mostly an embedded C programmer these days). Some C++ for a bit of higher-level "business logic" that benefits from a class-based approach, but a fairly limited subset of "modern" C++.
Actual question from a software engineering newcomer: What would you consider "business logic" and where would said programs be running?
Well, I was using the term a little sarcastically since it is (I think) usually applied to multi-tier web service architectures.
In my case I have an embedded system with a touch screen display, running a bunch of tasks to drive peripherals. There is a task that handles communication with the touch screen (serial). Then there is a set of slow tasks that handles states and modes, for example the runtime representation of a modulator or an RF amplifier. This got extended because we are adding "remote control" support over RS-232 and USB and so this runtime representation has to support more of a multiple model-view-controller. This can be done with queues and a lot of functions but it was simpler to represent it as a tree of stateful values that can be updated via remote commands or via the touch screen and have "downstream" updates. So that's what I mean by the "business logic" -- higher-level than, say, a driver and task for talking to a digital potentiometer or a DAC.
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#110Emacs Lisp. I want to port all my remaining sh awk and perl stuff to it, and I'll havee some time to do that in the coming weeks. Also, m4. I use it together with awk and bmake for a couple websites. I plan to port awk scripts to sth. else though, I keep forgetting awk.
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 :)