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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?

#481

Post by dx034 »

maxxxxx wrote: post #470
dx034 wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found that SQL is actually an excellent language for people with no coding background. Especially in the BI field it's easy to teach people SQL so that they can perform their own (often quite powerful) queries. It's much easier than learning a proper programming language. A re-design might be nice for programmers, but would likely lock out most people with no programming backgrounds who work on databases.

Maybe simple queries like "Select where" are intuitive for non-programmers but once you start joining tables things get pretty ugly. Also, the syntax for UPDATE is totally different from INSERT although they do similar things. Why does UPDATE use key value pairs but INSERT uses list of column names followed by list of values? Since Javascript is the best programming language ever (so I hear :-) ) maybe using Javascri…

I absolutely agree that INSERT statements should use key value pairs. It would eliminate many errors where columns were switched accidentally.

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

#482

Post by mmjaa »

etiene wrote: post #264
krylon wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lua feels awkward to me when used as a standalone scripting language. When embedded into a C host applications, it is really nice, though. There is also a port of Lua 5.2 to Go, which has a slighty confusing API (to me, at least), but the documentation makes up for that.

I use Lua standalone and I gotta say I love it :)

Ditto. Its my favourite language. You can do all things with it.

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

#483

Post by 3n7r0pY »

Lord_DeathMatch wrote: post #458
3n7r0pY wrote: post #75

IBM's High-Level Assembler and JCL mostly. I develop mainframe software.

I recently had to put together a small program with JCL for work, and had real difficulty in finding documentation. Can you recommend anything?

Most of what I've learned has been from examples from co-workers, but I've also used the IBM knowledge center and the IBM "Redbooks".

I think the Redbook titled z/OS Basics has some JCL examples and exercises in it.

I also found this through a quick search: http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/zosbasics/com.ibm...

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

#484

Post by krallja »

tormeh wrote: post #240
krallja wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Yep! F# is also 12 years old.

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

#485

Post by dejv »

thijsvandien wrote: post #471
dejv wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Migrating db is on my list all 9 years I am working on project, but I still havent find a way to do it. Core of the problem is stupid idea that paradox tables are actually files, so there are tons of copying and moving files around instead of using paradox as db. Given the complexity of project and our budget it will have to stay.

You make me want see it and really not want to see it at the same time. :)

Don't let me started on custom file locking mechanism and ways to modify the file system on remote server.

To be honest I am not sure if the founding developer was crazy genius or just crazy.

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

#487

Post by krylon »

mmjaa wrote: post #482
etiene wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Lua standalone and I gotta say I love it :)

Ditto. Its my favourite language. You can do all things with it.

The language itself is very, very, very nice, don't get me wrong.

But the standard library is very small (deliberately), and while LuaRocks is fun, Perl, Ruby, and Python have a lot more libraries available. Plus, concurrency in Lua is ... nontrivial I loved concurrentlua, an attempt to implement Erlang-style message passing in Lua, with coroutines instead of processes. But it was kind of a pain to get it to work, and I think it was unmaintained.

When using Lua as a standalone language, this situation bothers me enough to stick with Perl or Python. However, when using it as an embedded scripting language, it is not a problem at all, because you will probably supply whatever library/API you want to be scriptable yourself. At that point you only care about the language itself and the API of its runtime, which is - IMHO! - where Lua really shines.

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

#488

Post by jetti »

JeremyMorgan wrote: post #102
noonespecial wrote: post #7

Pascal/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. Si…

> I'm actually surprised it isn't used more today,

I'm not at all. Embarcadero has made Delphi a language that is out of reach of the beginner as their Delphi has been rediculously priced. Until recently they didn't have a free Delphi entry level product, it was $199 and was crippled. Now they at least have a free version but the cost has prevented me several times from actually learning Delphi. Now there is FreePascal but Lazarus just seemed clunky and I don't think it has as many bells and whistles as Delphi has.

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

#489

Post by jetti »

yawaramin wrote: post #480
pjmlp wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence why I consider a big error to have created the CLR in first place. Now we kind of got .NET Native, but it still isn't 100% done.

Sometimes I fantasise about what would've happened if MS had decided, by some fluke, to push, say, OCaml as their big .Net initiative. Can you imagine MS Visual OCaml#? OCaml for Windows app development ... that would've turned some heads.

You mean instead of C#? Their pushing F# a bit now

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

#490

Post by LyalinDotCom »

jetti wrote: post #489
yawaramin wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I fantasise about what would've happened if MS had decided, by some fluke, to push, say, OCaml as their big .Net initiative. Can you imagine MS Visual OCaml#? OCaml for Windows app development ... that would've turned some heads.

You mean instead of C#? Their pushing F# a bit now

F# is a great project and we have a passionate community behind it, certainly a good thing to try if you're into functional programming
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