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Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

hillelwayne.com

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Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#81

Post by ORioN63 »

gtk40 wrote: post #78

I'm a younger millennial (born in early 90s) who got his start with BASIC. The first programming I did was on Q-BASIC on our aging desktop machine (386 with Windows 3.1) that we didn't use for much, especially with very limited Internet use. When I took programming in high school, we started with TI-BASIC on TI-83 calculators for about a month, as my programming teacher felt like this best replicated his experience l…

I started to learn programming, by writing programs in TI-BASIC on the TI-84 (compatible with the 83) calculator. I just got it, because it was required to have a graphic calculator for math class.

It was just enough of a push. Small programs and games were fine and I actually got really used to the keyboard (I can still type on it pretty quickly these days). For longer programs I def. remember wanting to program with more monitor real estate and not having to rely on GOTOs. That's how I started to learn Python, which I still use daily.

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#82

Post by DFHippie »

pjc50 wrote: post #7

There are a few things present in COBOL that I would like to see lifted into more modern languages. One is the use of the full stop as an expression terminator, as in English, instead of the semicolon. Another is the whole "picture" mechanism for number formats. More languages should also steal Verilog's use of _ as an optional digit separator. It's just arrived in C# 7.

To extend this list a bit, Rust and Ruby also allow _ as a separator.

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#83

Post by pjmlp »

davedx wrote: post #39
dleslie wrote: post #26

> The interesting question isn’t “Why did Smalltalk die”, it’s “Why did C++ survive”. I think it’s because C++ had better C interop so was easier to extend into legacy systems. Video Games. From around 1999 to recently, C++ was the language of game development. It only recently came under serious threat, from C#.

Also Visual C++ and Visual Studio. I worked on desktop software from around 2007-2010, not that long ago; all our software line was built in Visual C++ with MFC. It's hard to believe how fast things changed and desktop apps were replaced by web apps...

Not everywhere, I am now back at doing Web related UIs, but have managed to keep doing desktop stuff every now and then.

There are domains, like laboratory automation devices in life sciences where browsers are persona non grata in air gaped environments, plus they lack the necessary hardware integration.

So between daemon + browser and a proper desktop application, most customers still rather have a nice desktop application.

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#84

Post by BostonFern »

SzamarCsacsi wrote: post #55
linguae wrote: post #9

Another highly influential programming language not listed in the article is Self ( http://www.selflanguage.org ). Although I've taken two graduate-level courses in programming language theory, I didn't learn about Self until just a few years ago when I was bitten by the Smalltalk and Lisp bugs and started reading about the history of these languages and their environments. One of Self's most significant contribution…

Classes in JavaScript are just syntactic sugar around prototypes.

Ironically, what it really needs is explicit syntax for prototypes.

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#85

Post by dfan »

I took two software engineering courses at MIT around 1990 that used CLU as the implementation language (one was a general medium-scale software engineering course, one was on writing compilers). I found it to be a very pleasant language, although the main thing I had to compare it to was C (C++ was just getting off the ground). It's always nice to see it mentioned in lists like these.

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#87

Post by greencore »

dionys wrote: post #4

Interesting to see Pascal on the list - it was the language of choice in my high school and my first programming language, back in 2010. I haven't touched it since, but I do remember it was pretty easy for me to pickup the syntax, especially compared to languages I would learn later in uni, like say C.

In Lithuania and perhaps in similar countries Pascal is still main programming language in classrooms. Also no other language has beaten Pascal in number of released books so it will stay for very long time.

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#89

Post by QuesnayJr »

dionys wrote: post #4

Interesting to see Pascal on the list - it was the language of choice in my high school and my first programming language, back in 2010. I haven't touched it since, but I do remember it was pretty easy for me to pickup the syntax, especially compared to languages I would learn later in uni, like say C.

It took me years before I stopped accidentally typing ":=" in my C code.

Re: Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

#90

Post by phpnode »

QuesnayJr wrote: post #21
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also thinking of the community, as they moved out into other languages and carried some ideas with them that they maybe got exposed to in the E community.

Are there active languages influenced by E? I came across that erights site years ago, and I always meant to learn more about it.

the concept of promises as used in JavaScript comes from E
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