I want to use Pascal. It was awesome to work on Turbo Pascal while I was a student in 90s.
Check out http://nim-lang.org. It steals some of Pascal's good ideas.
Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
291–300 of 502 posts
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#292Smalltalk. It's the "secret weapon" for a backend service. Allows fast mutability and is unbeatable at productivity and exploration.
Are you using a particular version? Pharo? Squeak? Commercial?
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#293Visual Foxpro. The application originated in 1986 or so and the original language was dBase II, but moved to FoxBase in 1987, and FoxPro/Visual FoxPro over the next couple of decades.
I do as much in Python as I can justify, but I still have to work in VFP quite a bit. I personally have code from 1988 that's still running in this application.
Sigh...
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#294BCPL. Because I'm restoring a Xerox Alto and it uses BCPL. Hopefully I'll also get Smalltalk and Mesa working.
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#295You didn't really define "old" so I guess responses are going to be varied. Here is mine:
- Python (mentioning since it is over 20/25 years old, though used a lot currently by many, of course).
- C (evergreen, for some uses, IMO)
- sh / bash, with sed/awk and friends (the common Unix command-line power tools (filters and others))
(Talking about both of the two points above mainly on Unix / Linux, though both are quite useful on Windows too - sh / bash and friends via cygwin, UWin, Ch and similar tools, and now / after some time with the Windows Subsystem For Linux.)
- D (if it can be called an old one)
- Probably Pascal (via FreePascal), for small tools, for fun and personal dev use (e.g. utilities), on the side, to start with, maybe see if I can make something bigger and generally useful later (I have a somewhat long prior background in it - and in C). The compile times are fast, like D and Go, and executables are small, which are two of the reasons. Haven't checked runtime performance of it much yet, but likely will not be shabby, to say the least. And last but not least (reason), because it is like C with some niceties added, which makes the code more human-readable and maintable (though I have no trouble understanding well-written C, my own or others'.) Also, modern Pascals like Delphi's Object Pascal and Free Pascal are a far cry (much better) than the academic Pascal versions that were taught in universities years ago.
Edited to add (after seeing others mention it):
- SQL (had forgotten it because it is a bread-and-butter thing used in most of my projects, irrespective of other language used)
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I use DB Browser for SQLite as the GUI: http://sqlitebrowser.org/
Like the FireFox SQLite Manager plugin, it's cross-platform and free and fairly easy for anyone to install. DB Browser's interface is substantially cleaner than the Firefox plugin, though, and the devs are responsive on Github.
DB Browser is great, all things considered, but I've never found a GUI that didn't overcomplicate the kinds of simple interactions I want when teaching databases (i.e. 99% of what I teach are SELECT queries). It also makes a few concessions in order to appeal to the Excel crowd. For example, not committing writes to the database until you do a Cmd-S...which contradicts what I tell my students about how SQL gives you more responsibility through explicit and consistent behavior (e.g. when you delete a row, it's gone forever...so don't ever delete things unless you really need to). On the other hand, some of the concessions are nice, such as the ability to rename columns via the GUI, which is not part of the SQLite spec.
So I have contemplated teaching SQL from the command line. But I've had a hard time imagining how the steep learning curve could justify the potential advantages for the average novice.
Here's a page I wrote up for students on how to install SQLite browser: http://2015.padjo.org/tutorials/sql-admin/getting-started-wi...
For comparison, here's my instructions for FF's SQLite Manager Plugin: http://fall2014.padjo.org/tutorials/databases/getting-around...
(that page also includes how to work with Sequel Pro and MySQL; I soon realized that giving students two choices for learning SQL was a very bad idea and have since stuck to SQLite)
Here's a take-home midterm: http://2015.padjo.org/assignments/midterm-wsj-medicare-walkt...
I've found it better to provide pre-packaged databases for students and basically ignore the administrative part of SQL and databases -- e.g. importing of data, defining a schema, creating indexes, etc. -- until we've learned all we can about working with SELECT and JOIN: http://2016.padjo.org/tutorials/sqlite-data-starterpacks/
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#297Common Lisp and Haskell. I've been using Haskell since near the start, and Common Lisp since then as well. However, recently I've been trying out Clojure for some things.
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#298uses 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...
JS is actually 21 now. According to wiki, it was developed under codename "Mocha" and shipped with Netscape Navigator 2.0. [1] "May 23, 1995" Personally, I'm pretty sure the version of "JS" when it was first released and more modern JS share very little other than logic and symbology, I think that can be said for many programming languages. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript
I have a feeling that by "old" the topic creator actually meant less relevant than it once was. Both languages are still very relevant and therefore out of the running. PHP may be waning but it still powers a huge chunk of the internet, just think about all those wordpress blogs.
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#299Earlier 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.
Probably add D and Elixer to that list.
Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?
#300Perl. A language that is still ahead of its time. I have a system for building RPMs of CPAN modules and their dependencies automatically.
>I have a system for building RPMs of CPAN modules and their dependencies automatically.
I would be interested in this: is it open source?