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What are your favorite less-common programming languages?

Andy George (he/him) on October 09, 2020

Was having a nostalgic chat with some coworkers recently about programming languages we've used in the past, especially some outside of those that ...
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webbureaucrat

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.

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Adam Crockett 🌀

I am probably going to stir up a give of bees, but can you really trust any technology, that level of trust is dangerous.

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webbureaucrat

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.

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Adam Crockett 🌀

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.

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webbureaucrat

Oh, I'm sorry! Get to feeling better!

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Vincent A. Cicirello

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.

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Neil

I did the same for my Programming Language Concepts course back in 2013 - scheme is alive and well in this area :)

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zafar hussain

I did all my Hacktoberfest PRs in Racket, Scheme's latest incarnation
last year too

Long Live Scheme

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scroung720 • Edited

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.

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Adam Mnemonic

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.

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David Dal Busco

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 😉

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Adam Mnemonic

These times programming was lot faster even on slower computers :)

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magikfingerz • Edited

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/

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Andy George (he/him)

Wow I had completely forgotten about Delphi. I never used it, but I can still see those old Borland book + floppies bundles!

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Austin S. Hemmelgarn

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.

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Andy George (he/him)

Agreed, especially on Lua!

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Jean Michel Functional Programming

+1 for Elixir !

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Eljay-Adobe

"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.

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Andy George (he/him) • Edited

"Less common" is really subjective.

Agree 1000%

D programming language as a "better C++ than C++".

Shit, that sounds great. I need to learn D.

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Eljay-Adobe

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.

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Rahul

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.

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Jérémie Astor

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 😄

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leob • Edited

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...

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Patrick Schmitz

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.

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Vlastimil Pospichal

XSLT

A very powerful, fast and at the same time underestimated language that I use in my projects.

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Limarceu

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.

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Andy George (he/him)

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.

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ItsASine (Kayla)

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).

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Lakshan perera

pascal programming, it was my first programming language taught in school

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Winston Puckett

Does Rust still count?

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Pontakorn Paesaeng

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.

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Adam Crockett 🌀

Lua!!

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MantasSidabras

Shell. Old, but gold. Everything I automate ends up as a shell script, even though it sometimes calls node or python to get certain data.

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Ash G • Edited
  • Fortran - Its still being used at lot of companies.
  • Cobol - Its old I know, but its being used to program mainframe computers.
  • Haskell
  • VB6
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Andy George (he/him)

VB6 makes me shudder a little haha.

Always wanted to learn Fortran/Cobol - like you said, it's amazing how prevalent they still are out there in the real world.

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Danny Kim

I had an opportunity to learn Racket a few years ago, and had a very pleasing experience with the language. Racket is user-friendly while not losing its Lisp elegance.

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Jérôme Krell

I see great potential in NIM and ZIG but also Dart which is not that "common"

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Andy George (he/him)

I heard @jdoss loves HCL.

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Joe Doss

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scroung720

I didn't know this. This is awesome thank your for sharing I am going to play with it when I have the opportunity.

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sigzero

Tcl.

It's different enough that it makes it fun to program in. The surrounding community is one the best as well.

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Pranav Baburaj

V is a really cool language and I like it

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Daniel Martínez Sarta

From a Ruby background I started to learn Elixir and it's amazing.

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Paddy3118

Awk. Learnt decades ago, I still have need to program in that pattern-action style in other languages such as Python.

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Santiago Montoya A.

NASM (Netwide Assembler) I remember It was so much clear than its most-popular alternatives due to the instruction set order.

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Niels Swimburger.NET 🍔

PowerShell!