60-bit words, 6-bit character set, and a whopping 120K of iron core memory. It was the fastest computer of its era.
Good times.
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 Yes, C is outdated, but I’m simply addicted to it, like plenty of other embedded system programmers.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 ...
In fact, I don't actually program in straight "C" any more. The Arduino language isn't really "C", and on Windows or Linux I'm really writing C++. But the transition from C to C++ was sort of gradual for me.
Z80 Assembly Language in high school.
FORTRAN in college with punch cards.
HP 2114
My procession was:
FORTRAN IV
BASIC (HP2000)
RPG (horrible)
Pascal (loved it)
BASIC (again - real-time control version)
C
C++
VBA
These days it’s just VBA for me.
Z80 binary embedded in ZX80 BASIC, running in a total of 1KB RAM (video memory included).
60-bit words, 6-bit character set, and a whopping 120K of iron core memory. It was the fastest computer of its era.
Good times.
Turbo Pascal.
I made a living for several year programming in Databus on Datapoint hardware. Most recently, fumbled around with Python and TCL. Being able to cut code is one thing that keeps a 60+ techie gainfully employed. A lot of people I work with these days don’t seem to see the value.
When the first microprocessors hit the marketplace, we had to hand encode the 0’s and 1’s in machine language. Difficult, but those were exciting times for nerds like myself, trying to figure out how to incorporate them into a product.
YEah, sez who? Programming in it daily. Embedded Linux and hardcore software-defined radio.
I wrote a lot of C. Made me a programmer. The others before were junk.
ALGOL
My evolution
- I only do assembly language, I’ll rewrite as many times as needed to get the most performance possible, I’ve no use for C.
- OK, getting tired of learning new processor instruction sets, C is pretty good.
- OK, getting tired of learning new OS API’s in C, I want cross platform portability, Java is pretty good.
- OK, safety critical certification with real time behavior isn’t good in Java, go back to C.
- Hmmm, there’s a Functional Safety Specification for Java, I’d much rather use that but it has no certified implementation :( ....keeping an eye on it :)
...but it’s a loooooooong way from insisting on assembly :)
Then I was fired. I was young but I learned fast and never made that mistake again. :o)
Fortran, Cobol, Basic, Mac HyperCard, here
COBOL, Assembly, FORTRAN III, IV, ALGOL, RPG, APL, Basic, PL/I, LINC, SQL, PASCAL, C, C++, C#, VB, VB.NET, HTML, ASP,
PERL, JAVA, PHP, JavaScript, and DELPHI. Mostly C#, with a mix of C++ today.
That’s pretty advanced stuff - I did a rudimentary inventory/sales tag program for a women’s clothing shop my wife was part owner of in BASIC on a Radio Shack 32K computer with a floppy disc drive and a dot-matrix printer - I accept no blame for the fact that the shop went belly-up years ago......
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