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Vintage Programming Languages
Circuit Cellar ^ | 05/23/2017 | staff

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 Yes, C is outdated, but I’m simply addicted to it, like plenty of other embedded system programmers.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 ...


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To: Kid Shelleen
Delphi was the best fully oop out there (object pascal - written by Anders Heljsberg) but Borland consistently formed very very bad marketing teams (and management teams in general) so they couldn't beat Microsoft's marketing/maphia machine supporting junky scripty not-object-oriented VB.

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.

121 posted on 05/23/2017 6:02:43 PM PDT by tinyowl (A is A)
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To: Still Thinking
"Assembler is for pussies. Code in raw binary! ;)"

Binary is for kittens. Now, adding new hardware to the backplane of a wirewrap board, that takes cojones.

122 posted on 05/23/2017 6:04:22 PM PDT by norwaypinesavage (The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones.)
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To: ImJustAnotherOkie

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.


123 posted on 05/23/2017 6:06:36 PM PDT by Gideon7
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To: Still Thinking
"Assembler is for pussies. Code in raw binary! ;)"

Wusses. Try coding with all 0s.

124 posted on 05/23/2017 6:06:56 PM PDT by dfwgator
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To: Kid Shelleen

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.


125 posted on 05/23/2017 6:08:35 PM PDT by Dr. Sivana (There is no salvation in politics.)
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To: CapnJack

Wow. I hope you were paid by the hour as calculated by the ratio of comment characters to executable bytes... :-)


126 posted on 05/23/2017 6:10:14 PM PDT by SonAboveAnItch
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To: Dr. Sivana

Oh, and the PDP8M was a 12 bit central processor, and Octal was used in the assembly language (PAL) The text editor was TECO.


127 posted on 05/23/2017 6:11:55 PM PDT by Dr. Sivana (There is no salvation in politics.)
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To: Kid Shelleen
Who remembers this book?


128 posted on 05/23/2017 6:11:55 PM PDT by dfwgator
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To: Kid Shelleen

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


129 posted on 05/23/2017 7:05:11 PM PDT by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
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To: fuzzylogic
When I retire I hope to have time to master Walter Bright's 'D' programming language, which I believe is the best of the bunch. I did love the C++ STL, though - truly a software engineer's playground.

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!)

130 posted on 05/23/2017 7:11:06 PM PDT by The Duke ( Azealia Banks)
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To: infool7
ok but do you still have your wirewrap tool?

You betcha!

Mark

131 posted on 05/23/2017 7:13:18 PM PDT by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Oh, I see, you had the fancy modern metal one. Mine was stone and wood.


132 posted on 05/23/2017 7:16:45 PM PDT by CodeToad (If it weren't for physics and law enforcement, I'd be unstoppable!)
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To: Kid Shelleen

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.


133 posted on 05/23/2017 7:19:50 PM PDT by CodeToad (If it weren't for physics and law enforcement, I'd be unstoppable!)
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To: Claud
Assembly language is the only way to go. :)

Absolutely right! What other language has PEEK and POKE as commands?

134 posted on 05/23/2017 7:27:01 PM PDT by usconservative (When The Ballot Box No Longer Counts, The Ammunition Box Does. (What's In Your Ammo Box?))
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To: TexasRepublic
I read somewhere that APL was difficult to write and impossible to maintain. It is so cryptic that it does a while to unravel what the original programmer was thinking. And then those weird keyboards....

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

135 posted on 05/23/2017 7:30:50 PM PDT by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
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To: Chode

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


136 posted on 05/23/2017 7:40:04 PM PDT by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
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To: usconservative

TRS-80 BASIC had PEEK and POKE...


137 posted on 05/23/2017 7:43:49 PM PDT by kosciusko51
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To: Kid Shelleen
I'll throw in some programming languages I used in yesteryear, some of which I haven't seen mentioned at all yet...

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.

138 posted on 05/23/2017 8:18:10 PM PDT by MCH
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To: dfwgator; Still Thinking
"Assembler is for pussies. Code in raw binary! ;)"

Wusses. Try coding with all 0s.

How about a Signetics 25120 WOM - Write Only Memory

The Data Sheet

The Story

Mark

139 posted on 05/23/2017 9:01:56 PM PDT by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
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To: dfwgator
Wusses. Try coding with all 0s.

HELL, nah! How do you think we ended up with 0bama?

140 posted on 05/23/2017 9:19:14 PM PDT by Still Thinking (Freedom is NOT a loophole!)
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