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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?

#281

Post by chubot »

koolba wrote: post #113
shanemhansen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As always there's a relevant xkcd. https://xkcd.com/519/

The mouse over text is even truer.

And the ten minutes striking up a conversation with that strange kid in homeroom sometimes matters more than every other part of high school combined

Wow, that is pretty weird. That was true for me in college. I was at home after graduating in January 2002, at the bottom of the dot com bust. It was hard to find a job then.

I took this world music course in college, and I remember I talked to this guy who was also a computer science major, and he told me he was going to EA. Probably 6 months later, I e-mailed him out of the blue, and that got me the internship which led to my first job.

So instead of all the computer science stuff, I should have just relied on connections from the world music course and on my DOS batch file knowledge from age 13 :)

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

#282

Post by mrtimo »

danso wrote: post #122
shaftway wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that I'm at a company that I haven't had to use SQL. I don't know if I could even find a relational database here. But in a classic meme sense: "It isn't you I hate SQL, it's what I have to think about when I use you." I don't want to spend my time thinking about database indexes, query plans, or other complicated bits. I just want to get my data out. Sometimes I struggle, and I'd give anything for a plain inn…

I still teach SQL, via SQLite, as a first language to students, even though in practice I do 90% of my data analysis through the command line or Pandas. But SQL is very direct and clear as a language, and the overhead of SQLite is...well, light. Making an index is just one more line of code that for many datasets, you run once and never touch again. What do you find simpler in terms of data querying and management?

Fellow teacher here, what method (tools) do you use to teach SQL via SQLlite?

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

#283

Post by davexunit »

Scheme. 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.

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

#284

Post by sean_patel »

VBA (Visual Basic for Application).

Can't seem to ever lose it. Financial Institutions -- think Hedge Funds, Banks, Brokerages) -- are still drowning in bloated complex Microsoft Excel spreadsheets with 1000s of lines of hard-to-maintain-and-source-control VBA code.

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

#285

Post by emidln »

Emacs Lisp. In the past year, I finally switched from vim + a boatload of custom .vimrc stuff using tmux for running random repls to Spacemacs. For both contributing to Spacemacs as well as the few customizations I want, emacs lisp is a welcome departure from my usual vimL. At this point, I can't imagine not talking to my editing environment as part of my daily workflow.

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

#286

Post by jimbokun »

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…

I would guess, maybe, but if the companies hiring Lispers try to low-ball their pay and work experience too much, the Lispers will just move on to programming a different language somewhere else.

Yes, might take a little time to get your Github up to speed with samples in a different language and employers intelligent enough to see past "X years in Y language" requirements, but I think it will be an easier shift than numerical algorithms and physics to programming, I think.

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

#287

Post by procauxfiefs »

ianmcgowan wrote: post #150

I still get paid to program in Pick Basic ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick_operating_system ) which seems kind of unreal in 2017.

You're not alone. We're still use Pick Basic via Universe for legacy software. It's not working so bad, so.

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

#288

Post by dmux »

davexunit wrote: post #283

Scheme. 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?

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

#290

Post by cema »

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.

MUMPS is standard in places which deal with Intersystems, via Ensemble (integration system) and their Cache database. An intriguing stack of technologies: an old and 100% backward compatible programming language, an object-oriented (non-relational) database with direct access from the high-level language (M; they do not like it when you call it MUMPS), and quite a number of very good software engineers having worked on this system for 30+ years.
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