Was having a nostalgic chat with some coworkers recently about programming languages we've used in the past, especially some outside of those that we seem to more talk about, like Python, C, Ruby, Go, Java|Script, HTML, etc etc.
Here are a couple of languages that I have fond memories of that maybe don't fit the current "corporate dev mold":
TI-BASIC: As a kid, I dabbled a bit with QBASIC on our first family computer, but I didn't do anything of substance until I got my first graphing calculator in middle school, the TI-80. I wrote some (real bad) tiny text adventures, and then a bunch more fun little things once I upgraded to a TI-89 - it was vastly more powerful AND had a data link so I could code fun little scripts FROM A PC and transfer them to the calculator
VBA: Feels like a lot of people have VBA horror stories, all of which are valid, but we should all acknowledge the amount of true, real-world business value wrapped up in VBA. Best part, VBA was #nocode before #nocode was cool. Classic VBA dev flow:
How do I do this??"
Lemme just record this Excel macro and see what VBA it spits out.
So, my question to everyone else:
Top comments (46)
Elm.
Developing for the browser platform is so difficult because it's all so dynamic and unpredictable. Elm is SO strongly and statically typed that it is literally impossible to get a runtime exception in elm.
It makes development SO fast, because I know that as long as my code compiles, it will probably behave exactly as I expect it will in every major browser.
I am probably going to stir up a give of bees, but can you really trust any technology, that level of trust is dangerous.
I mean it's not like I don't test code before I ship it, if that's what you're asking, but what I mean is that when I do run it I don't end up spending a lot of time debugging.
I had the same thoughts about typescript I can relate. Anyways, I'm feeling a bit unwell and maybe have a negative attitude today, excuse me.
Oh, I'm sorry! Get to feeling better!
I'd have to say Scheme. Back in the mid 1990s, I learned functional programming in Scheme in a course on Programming Language Concepts. In the same course, we had a project to implement an interpreter for Scheme. The project was fun. I haven't used it since, but is a nice memory of the Scheme language.
I did the same for my Programming Language Concepts course back in 2013 - scheme is alive and well in this area :)
I did all my Hacktoberfest PRs in Racket, Scheme's latest incarnation
last year too
Long Live Scheme
Prolog it is extremely powerful and under rated. Every time I see people wanting to do functional programming or programming base on states it reminds me of Prolog. Why is so powerful? because someone had this brilliant idea to take the mathematics language into a programming language. These allowed them to implement proven logic. Very often with most of the languages you need to adapt an idea to the specific language with prolog you can construct mathematics concepts allowing you construct solid programs.
However, I should address that not all kind of mathematics adapt to prolog. It is super useful for constructing collections and working with them based on mathematical induction.
When I was on college I created a program in prolog capable of finding the optimal path between any pair of subway stations in a system with almost 200 subway stations. Obviously the problem was restricted to being the optimal according to the number of hops between stations. I was able to do it in just one line of code I was amazed by the elegance of the language. Even my professor didn't believe that the language was capable of doing that but my program passed all tests. The intention of the professor was to demonstrate that prolog is not a good fit every time lol but I sabotaged the lesson.
I somewhat miss older versions of Delphi. I think that today it is impossible to develop application with native gui, no dependencies, small exe size and fast at the same time. Python is great and you can do a lot in it but it fails a little with gui and deployment.
Haha that flashback 👍🤩
Yes agree, it was pretty neat to be able to develop a native GUI so easily but I always had the feeling that the auto-generated code was waaaaay too verbose, so I don't miss it much in that sense 😉
These times programming was lot faster even on slower computers :)
Well, if you miss the "old delphi feeling" you should try Lazarus/FreePascal, allows you to make almost the same things like Delphi: lazarus-ide.org/
Wow I had completely forgotten about Delphi. I never used it, but I can still see those old Borland book + floppies bundles!
Lua and Elixir both come to mind, though it’s debatable whether they’re ‘less common’ or not (both are not mainstream, but have significant usage in particular areas). Lua because of how lightweight and fast it is (and the fact that it’s one of the first languages I truly ‘learned’ instead of just using), and Elixir largely because of Mix and how it makes so many things that many languages require an IDE or complicated external tooling to work with first class parts of the basic development tooling.
Agreed, especially on Lua!
+1 for Elixir !
"Less common" is really subjective.
I'd say F# as my favorite functional-first functional programming language, and D programming language as a "better C++ than C++".
If those are too mainstream, then I'd say EZAsm for 68000 - but that's so long ago I only have vague happy memories.
Agree 1000%
Shit, that sounds great. I need to learn D.
D overview to get you started. There are 3 compilers available, GCC (gcd), LLVM (ldc, the one I usually use), and from the creators of the language DMD. They're available for most platforms.
SML - Standard Meta Language
I wouldn’t say this as near and dear to my heart but I definitely loved while I was trying it out. It made me understand programs, the code I write better. Irrespective of our language proficiencies, each one of us has to explore SML to understand the fundamentals of programming language thoroughly.
Moreover, it is fun to write code in a language that doesn't have many in-built/helper functions that the modern languages/frameworks have. You gotta really grind it out to make things happen.
Haskell, which I just used for an mdr implementation, it was really interresting.
lilypond I used a great deal now, for all my work needing western musical notation.
I have been using chuck for a while, I loved it, but a few flaws in it (performance, holes in the types system, no generics or function pointers) lead me to write gwion I use in a few shows and intend to write most if not all my contemporary music with, without a doubt the nearest to my heart 😄
LOLCODE :-)
It's the only "esoteric programming language" that I've ever studied in earnest (the only one that was within my grasp really, haha).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esoteric_pro...
Had a lot of fun with low level assembler programming on my C64 and Amiga. The use of assembly is a lot less nowadays. I sometimes use some at work on low cost ARM devices, but that is also quite limited, mostly only some kernel glue logic.
XSLT
A very powerful, fast and at the same time underestimated language that I use in my projects.
I started with Word VBA automating my office tasks, in the end, I created three full documents which were administrative process and two models to Oficials Documents from a blank. With Modules and forms.
All my font of knowledges was Docs of Word VBA, Stackoverflow and some e-books.
In the end, I earned a new language to speak, when I was working in office like administrative assistent.
Word VBA is my first language programming that leaded me to python and in acctualy Data Science.
That's awesome that it lead you elsewhere!
VBA gets a bad rap sometimes, but man it was eye-opening to see how much great stuff you could do, especially when you're in an Office-heavy atmosphere.
VBA is the thing I feel like I should know but never toyed with. My math programs only ever required VB, the same class as Comp Sci people could take. In theory, I guess that meant transferable skills, but I haven't run into anything I've needed Excel to do that there wasn't a smarter addon than whatever I'd make (Solver, Jira integration).
pascal programming, it was my first programming language taught in school
Does Rust still count?
Actually Rust is quite popular now but I think it can be counted because it's still relatively new. It's pretty great for building safe application without sacrificing memory control. If there are more complete libraries, its use would increase greatly.