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 Yes, C is outdated, but I’m simply addicted to it, like plenty of other embedded system programmers.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 ...
C rules. C makes sure you know what you are doing and makes for fast, compact and portable code when done right.
And then there was APL. I missed APL so much that I wrote an interpret and execute runtime for it with C.
POKE 8192
Heck, I still have a 555 cordboard.
Want it?
(30 years of “C” here)
Just for fun, put out a contracting job order listing “Visual FORTRAN” as one of the required skills.
Then count up all the resumes from H1B contracting
shops that claim 8+ years experience in it.
My progression:
School (1970’s):
FORTRAN
Basic
PL-1
Work:
Mainframe assembler for 25 years
128 bit firmware assembler for HW T&D
C
a little bit of Lisp
C++
perl
Java
Javascript
PHP
Today I was coding a c routine for an implementation of Generation Data Groups on a Linux platform. I just completed a c module to provide discretionary file locking on Linux.
“FORTRAN dinosaur here...”
FORTRAN, Assembler and RPG here. Man, that was a million years ago.
OK, that’s funny right there! And more than a little sad.
FORTRAN dinosaur here...
Same. Only computer language I was ever fluent in.
Haven’t used it for decades.
I stayed up all night punching cards for a class assignment.
What was the deal with the dual round CRT displays? Something on the left was displayed different than on the right? Code / data?
My career started with a PDP-11/24 and Fortran. I gradually moved on to C, C++ and C#. But I just retired so who cares.
Has an associated rdbms columnar based. Its based on vector algebra - I think they were on to something. Actually developing a solution - crazy. checkout this video about all this stuff from 1974 - check out the attire. Origins of APL Jacobson looks like a cranky guy then.
Is Steve Ciarcia still the editor of Circuit Cellar?
He used to say his favorite programming language was solder.
Yep, I recognize that console. I was at the University of Colorado when they became the U.S. distributor for Pascal; so I became one of the language's early users (and advocates) in this country. It was a refreshing change from abusing Fortran for non-numerical applications. We had a CDC 6400 and NCAR up on Table Mesa had a 6600. They were the biggest machines in town. The Bureau of Standards had a CDC 3800, which they let us (students at Boulder High School) use for the course in Fortran.
Ditto!
Ah, Datapoint. In my humble opinion, that Texas company invented the personal computer. Not Commodore. Not Apple. Not IBM. Datapoint. Back in 1969. There's a fascinating book on it.
I’ve got that book in my bookshelf at home. I also have a Mensch Micro, which is a development board containing the final evolution of the 6502, from Western Design Center.
I work for an insurance company as a systems architect, I work mainly in mainframe assembler, Java, and C#. I work with both the ancient, and new.
But did you write Compass?
Oh yeah. CDC assembly language was weird stuff. The arithmetic had +0 and -0 as two different values due one’s complement integer representation. The 60 bit floating point format was weird too.
I later moved up to programming Cray supercomputers in CFT (Cray Fortran) and assembly. Seymour Cray had learned his lesson from his designing the Cybers, so his Crays had a 64 bit words, 8 bit ASCII, and IEEE 754 arithmetic.
Much nicer :-)
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