261–270 of 291 posts
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I switch quite often. Sometimes 3 languages a day: Delphi/Lazarus/FreePascal, C++ and Javascript so it now takes few minutes to adjust.
I try not to switch too often, just because I find it hard to remember the details. The one that always stumps me the most is comments -- I always stare for several seconds trying to remember how comments work in that language.
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.
Wait, Pascal was in use in 2010? I thought it was a dead language when I used it in high school in 1997-1998.
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It keeps going! 3 3 3 ⍴ ⍳10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 M ← 3 3 3 ⍴ ⍳10 M*M 1.00000E0 4.00000E0 2.70000E1 2.56000E2 3.12500E3 4.66560E4 8.23543E5 1.67772E7 3.87420E8 1.00000E10 1.00000E0 4.00000E0 2.70000E1 2.56000E2 3.12500E3 4.66560E4 8.23543E5 1.67772E7 3.87420E8 1.00000E10 1.00000E0 4.00000E0 2.70000E1 2.56000E2 3.12500E3 4.66560E4 8.23543E5 That's 3 nested 3x3 matrices, and we take th…
Isn't that a pointwise exponentiation (1^1, 2^2, 3^3, ...)?
For all the mentions of FORTRAN in the description of other languages, it's a real surprise that FORTRAN doesn't rate a mention of its own -- though there are corners of the world where it's still in use. It's notable not only for being the Lingua Franca of scientific computing through at least the '80s, but also for breaking ground in programming language technology, starting right at the beginning -- the Fortran I…
Same with COBOL.
No one is doing anything new in COBOL but there is so much old stuff that could only be replaced by a massive investment in rebuilding infrastructure. COBOL isn't dying anytime soon. At one point, like 10-15 years ago, I knew experienced well paid COBOL programmers being laid off and being replaced by kids fresh out of school. And then CS programs, if not outright stopped, at least greatly reduced teaching COBOL cour…
Startups and small companies can ignore anything that isn't new and shiny; companies processing billions of dollars/transaction know better.
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I don't think it did. Those of us who bothered to spend more than a glancing look at prototypes figured them out pretty easily. Including Classes in JavaScript feel like pandering: there really wasn't much to directly gain from them, but they threw them in there anyways because the TC knew it'd gain JavaScript some popularity.
Wha? That's a take . Here's mine: ES6 classes are wildly smart. They provide the benefits of prototypical inheritance--you can just reach into the thing and do what you want to do!--while making it way easier for many developers to read and parse in short order, while reducing the difficulty spike in moving to JavaScript (or, today, TypeScript). "Pandering". Right. I can write old-style object prototypes. It makes my…
Anyways, let's not act like ES6 classes aren't without their slew of issues, obscure syntax, and most importantly, problems when it comes to transpiling and backwards compatibility:
https://medium.com/@WebReflection/a-case-for-js-classes-with...
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I think Forth's influence is more subterranean. I.e. PostScript and coreboot, etc. Forth is there, but rarely in your face. As far as the underlying concepts, speaking as someone who has experimented recently with Joy (one of the concatenative languages you mention. although it wasn't directly influenced by Forth, I think, it's a case of convergent design), I think it's a shame it hasn't been more influential. The ti…
Joy is a great language! I also wish it had been more influential. Maybe you already knew this, but there are lots of great articles about Joy in nsl.com, and there is also Thun: http://joypy.osdn.io/ (which someone suggested me around here).
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Why did C++ survive the advent of Java? One reason: the mainstream JVM, HotSpot, is written in C++. As such, the production Java ecosystem is not self-hosting and relies on C++ to be sustained. (Writing a JVM in just Java is doable, and some research JVMs have done it, but that approach hasn’t yet been fully productionised.)
There are probably >100,000 c++ devs out there, and ~100 of them work on HotSpot. I don't think the HotSpot devs are significant in encouraging c++ usage