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

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231–240 of 502 posts

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

#231
For the last 2.5 years I've been doing RPG - both the newer free form and older fixed. I can imagine I'll be doing it a lot more within the next year also. A lot of people give it hate, but it's a pretty simple language after you use it a lot.

It's possible I will start to write C++ also.

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

#233
post #51

I want to use Pascal. It was awesome to work on Turbo Pascal while I was a student in 90s.

http://freepascal.org/ is a thing.

Also, there is Lazarus which seems to be the FreePascal-alternative to Delphi. I took a look at it when inheriting a Delphi application at work, but it crashed on me a lot. Still, it's there.

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

#234

Old programming languages don't die, they just slowly fade away. The oldest thing I periodically touch is VBA for Excel

For some reason, VB is one of the few languages my brain refuses to learn. I can read it when it's not too badly written, but I am glad I don't need to write it.

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

#237
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love sql myself. I'm not sure why I love it so much and other people hate it. Sometimes I think that coming up with reasons is just after the fact justification (do I really like it because it has a solid mathematical foundation in the relational calculus, or does that just sound like a good reason to say I like it)? Pandas is an excellent contribution to data analysis, but I gotta tell you, I was absolutely deligh…

IF you start to think in a set orientation, SQL makes a lot more sense. If you try to think procedurally you will struggle with SQL.

Couldn't agree more - I often see this pattern in programmers - they try to think in cursors instead of sets and end up really fighting the instrument - not using it as intended.

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

#238

ITT: everyone realizes how old most widely deployed languages are.

As I read through this thread, I'm wondering what the "new" programming languages are and specifically, which are being used in production.

Languages generally take 10 years from someone starts working seriously on them until they are ready for wide adoption.

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

#239

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…

If you have become a truly skilled industrial programmer, you can very easily go back. There are a lots of interesting scientific programming jobs, but your typical Ph.D or post-doc is only half trained for them, at best.

There are fewer pure research positions, and unless you are very good there is a leverage problem there because every year dozens of new grads come looking for essentially that job. Something to bear in mind if your desire is primarily to work in matlab/python/R on things that look a bit like your thesis did.

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

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I read through this thread, I'm wondering what the "new" programming languages are and specifically, which are being used in production.

Swift, Rust, and Go are the current mainstream "new" programming languages.

Scala is only 12 years old. Go is 7 years old, for comparison.
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