Posted on 05/23/2017 2:03:47 PM PDT by Kid Shelleen
For the last 30 years, C has been my programming language of choice. As you probably know, C was invented in the early 1970s by Dennis M. Ritchie for the first UNIX kernel and ran on a DEC PDP-11 computer. I am probably a bit old-fashioned. Yes, C is outdated, but I’m simply addicted to it, like plenty of other embedded system programmers. For me, C is a low level but portable language that’s adequate for all my professional and personal projects --SNIP-- And after you’re finished with this review of 1970s-era computing technology, give one or two a try!
(Excerpt) Read more at circuitcellar.com ...
So, when it came time to write .Net/C#, they hired Anders to write it, and it's the most beautiful thing ever. Anders said "I did with that what I always wished I could go back and do with Delphi."
Sorry Java guys :-) maybe once your language was headed for being best.
Binary is for kittens. Now, adding new hardware to the backplane of a wirewrap board, that takes cojones.
Python is one of the few scripting languages that scale really well for both big and small projects. I’ve worked on big team projects with 100,000+ lines of Python. “2+2” is also a valid Python program.
Wusses. Try coding with all 0s.
Well, since we are talking about the PDP series, besides the BASIC language (and OBASIC), I used to program in a language called FOCAL (FOrmula CALculator). No lower case. The OS on our PDP-8/M was ETOS, and we booted from the front panel. Core memory, DEC Tape. Paper Tape. 150 baud acoustic modems. Lear-Siegler ADM3A consoles. Good times.
Wow. I hope you were paid by the hour as calculated by the ratio of comment characters to executable bytes... :-)
Oh, and the PDP8M was a 12 bit central processor, and Octal was used in the assembly language (PAL) The text editor was TECO.
1st computer language: Fortran 77 on keypunch.
2nd computer language: IBM 360 Assembler on OS360 JCL on Keypunch.
3rd computer language: C , leaned from 1st Edition K&R book, along with Bourne’s “The Unix System” (Russian Doll book) and the Bell Labs Unix v6 (building blocks) Programmers Manual v1. Vi was the greatest thing since sliced bread (as opposed to keypunch!)
Yes, I’m a fossil, and I really haven’t programmed since 1988. Today I do networks and virtualization, with an occassional Bash shell or PowerShell script thrown in.
Interestingly enough, Cisco routers use Python!
Mark
I will put in a word for a truly forgotten language, which was 'Promal' on the old C64 computer. It was "the first Python" - it even used indentation the same way as Python.
I programmed a lot of radio telescopes with C - most fun out of bed I ever had (who'm I kidding? I'm an engineer - I don't have fun in bed!)
You betcha!
Mark
Oh, I see, you had the fancy modern metal one. Mine was stone and wood.
I remember when...
...I did assembly...last night. Working a large distributed database project and we had to stop and create a new 64-bit OS.
Absolutely right! What other language has PEEK and POKE as commands?
A buddy of mine in college was a physics grad student, and programmed in APL. He told me that if an APL program didn't work, and it was 3 lines or longer, it would be less trouble to start over than to try debugging it.
And yes, there was a dedicated keyboard he used!
Mark
It’s been decades since I saw that! Thanks so much for posting it. It’s every bit as funny today as it was back when I first read it!
Mark
TRS-80 BASIC had PEEK and POKE...
Various types of assembly, LISP, FORTRAN IV & 77, PASCAL, others, all mentioned. But not mentioned...
I did a few computer science master's degree projects in COMAL, a weird mix of BASIC and PASCAL for the Commodore 64.
I did some FORTH programming for a plug-n-play driver for a Sun OS graphics card. It was an unusual stack-based programming language.
And I did quite a bit of programming in PL/M back in the day mixed with Intel assembly, for early Intel 8086/8088 class processors that I did custom computer designs with. And before that, custom assembler for Intel 3000 series bit-slice processors that slightly pre-dated me.
Wusses. Try coding with all 0s.
How about a Signetics 25120 WOM - Write Only Memory
Mark
HELL, nah! How do you think we ended up with 0bama?
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