This post was originally posted on LinkedIn.
For some people, old programming languages are ugly, obsolete, old-fashioned and useless. For me, ...
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Simula?!?
Wow, I believed I was the only one knowing that...
☺️ I’m addicted to programming…so I do a lot of research on old programming 😉
great article!
"David West's book Object Thinking" is an amazing book @history_dev
Awesome read :)
Thanks Anja 😄
This is a great article, read a lot about Smalltalk in David West's book Object Thinking which I believe is a must read. I'm really pleased to discover you can still run it, will give it a go!
Also Algol is interesting because supposedly it was inspired by Plankalkül, created by Konrad Zuse and regarded as the first high-level programming language.
Thanks @history_dev Smalltalk is pretty cool, you're going to like it -;)
And yes...I think it was inspired by Plankalkül....I tried to learn it but couldn't find a compiler...or tutorial...and it also looks too weird -:P
Smalltalk is very declarative and not so procedural.
The example you put on the article is not very fair to the language
My fault 😔 Haven’t dig too deep on Smalltalk…but at least it compiles and works 🤓
Interesting interpretation of "old" - as I didn't recognise that style of Fortran code. Some quick checking confirms that recursion didn't get added until after both of the two versions I was formally taught at university - Fortran IV in 1980 and Fortran 77 in 1986.
Incidentally that gives you an idea of the academic delays in those days. I seem to recall the lecturer in 1986 being very pleased to say we were learning the "new" Fortran.
To get a sense of how limited Fortran IV was see here - FORTRAN 66
In my memory any difference between "IV" and "77" is overshadowed by the fact that I had to use punched cards for the former and then had the luxury of using a "glass teletype" for the latter.
Indeed, 1986 was a strange year - as at that same time I was doing other units that had me using VAX Pascal in one and using a Macintosh-based emulation of a PDP-8 to do assembler programming. Neither of these were a "learning" experience as I'd already been hobby programming a Z80 in hex and using Turbo Pascal on CP/M.
Yup…you’re right…what I found was a newer compiler and a not so old Fortran book…
ASM is something I want to learn…but last time I didn’t get past trough Hello World LOL
I have the same though as for half of the existing populars (go, java, rust...). I don't see the usecase to choose any of em' instead of c++.
[tl;dr]
Funfact, in the Nordic region (Sweden, Norway) used Cobol and Fortran for their tax and retirement fund handling. The people who designed the system, they still work for the government (age over 75); nobody dare to touch the system because:
But in fact they do burn literal millions to just maintain (every year they try to train hunders of youngsters; adding java based services; reginal servers; data centrals and so on).
The codebase so large, so slow, so slow to compile it is unbelivable (we talking about days). On a more modern approach they probably would be able to drop their expenses by 90% (do not need hunderds of devs, do not need half building amount of servers...), but this will not change any time soon... except, if the old folks finally retire :D
It’s not about use cases…it’s about being aware of them…knowing a little bit of how they work…I don’t use any of them for work…but I still enjoy learning them and using them once in a while…without them…we wouldn’t have any of the new and shiny ones 😉
Interestingly enough I had to take a required class on FORTRAN in 2017 for my physics degree. People are always blown away when I tell them it's the first language I learned lol
I haven't touched it since that class but I always mean to go back and mess around with it for a personal project at some point. Thanks for the blog post!
Happy that you like it -:) FORTRAN is one of my favorite languages...but amazes me that they taught it you on 2017....anyways...if you're looking for more...I can recommend this book manning.com/books/modern-fortran It's really nice -:D
dude fortran is dead no one uses it now we use C,C++,Java,Python,JS,TS,Ruby,etc
Such a statement is unfounded. Fortran is a niche language. Its usage is proportional to the size of the community it supports. Fortran is designed for scientists and engineers who specifically need high-performance computing. That community is small, but it does not mean that they do not exist. It's a tiny community, but it is running the world as of today without anyone noticing it. If you checked the weather today, that was the work of Fortran. Just one example.
Couldn’t had explained it better…thanks -:D
It’s not a matter of who use it or who doesn’t…learning about the past is important to learn about the future -;)
try to understand dude C is okay but fortran is no use for now
Trying saying that to this guy manning.com/books/modern-fortran He’s uses Fortran everyday -:) But hey…we all have our own points of view -;)
Thanks for sharing! Decades ago I started with Quick Basic 🙂 Funny it has
letkeyword to define variablesGlad you like it -:) Quick Basic is a classic -;)
This article has nudged me to go back and look at one of my old favorites: APL (A Programming Language), now A+ I believe. It's handling of multi-dimensional arrays could not be beaten back in the day. Many Thanks.
I tried APL…but it needs a special keyboard unless there are emulators which I haven’t found…will check out A+ -:) APL interests me although its syntax is so weird
I want to design a better language so I study older languages. Thanks for the article. I have recently study modern Fortran. I wander why Intel and Nvidia make C and Fortran compilers but no other compilers.
Love this article and that you are sharing some code examples!
Would love to see some Prolog for the next article 🤓
Thanks Jan 😀 And…Prolog is on my next article already 🤓 dev.to/blag/5-old-programming-lang...
I know...guess I'm trying to push everybody to learn old languages -:P Thanks for your comment -:D
That’s awesome, please continue! :-)
Sure I will -:D I have more languages to share -;)
Love the code examples
Thanks -:D Glad you liked them -:)