The Multilingual Programmer

  • jay-h - Friday, February 24, 2017 8:25 AM

    Then there's Forth, the programming equivalent of a fast, dangerous motorcycle.

    C++ is like a chainsaw that you can use to cut off your own head.

  • BASIC (Commodore PET & VIC20, Sinclair ZX81)
    6502 machine code.
    dBASE/Clipper
    PICK (you have to be thick to love the PICK)
    Informix Smartware/Smartware II macro language
    Various HP3000 languages and tools
    Microsoft VBA (Excel, Word, Access)
    T-SQL and whatever the MySQL dialect is called.
    ASP
    VB.NET, C#.NET
    C++ (hobby only)
    Java
    ECMA Script
    JavaScript
    Python
    SAS

    It is telling that the variety of languages listed by individuals suggest that there is considerably more developer experience than perhaps would be given credit to a database site.

  • Its still early Friday morning and I can see that there's already 4 pages of responses. What languages one's learned is always a fun topic.

    Like you Steve, I learned APL. In fact APL was my first programming language. My degree is in Mathematics. One of my math professors said that, "All Mathematicians should learn APL. It is the programming language for Mathematicians." So ok, that's what I learned. Because I was still in school at the time, all of that learning was done using math. In fact, that prof was the instructor for the APL class, so most of the homework assignments were math based anyway. APL is great at doing math. The sheer power of APL is astounding. However, that notwithstanding, I have only seen 2 job prospects for APL programmers since leaving college. It clearly hasn't enjoyed any great attention. (BTW, thanks for the TryAPL link.)

    From there I went on to FORTRAN, C, C++, assembler, Lisp, Scheme, VB (VB4 through to VB6), VB.NET, C# and of course SQL.

    I enjoyed Lisp and Scheme, so this year I want to learn F#.

    Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.

  • .....IBM 360
    FORTRAN (Hollerith cards)
    COBOL
    IBM 360 Assembler (Hollerith cards) 
    Pascal, SNOBOL (and several other languages I can't think of, from a survey course)
    .....Atari 800
    Basic 
    Forth
    Lisp
    .....HP 3000, HP UX, VAX
    Turboimage DB
    Powerhouse 4GL
    Powerplay / Cognos
    .....IBM
    T-SQL / SSIS / SSAS
    C#
    Visual Basic
    ASP.Net
    Oracle DB
    Perl
    Misc other stuff.

  • I actually got started in 7th grade at home in BASIC on a TI-994A, and school on an Apple IIe in 8th grade, and BASIC on IBMs in high school.

    In college it was:
    Pascal
    Modula 2
    1 class on Motorola 68000 assembly language :blink:
    1 class on C
    SQL on Sybase
    Bourne shell scripting

    in my professional career:
    FoxPro (including SQL)
    Delphi
    SQL on Interbase
    BAT/CMD scripting in DOS
    VB 6
    PL/SQL on Oracle
    VB.Net
    T-SQL on SQL Server
    PowerShell

  • BASIC
    pascal
    fortran
    cobol
    MS Access VBA
    delphi
    T-SQL
    vb.net
    asp.net
    C#
    javascript

  • BASIC
    C++
    HTML/CSS
    PHP
    JavaScript
    Bash
    SPSS
    T-SQL
    MS VBA
    Ruby (mostly just tinkering around)
    Visual C# (ASP.NET)
    PL/PGSQL
    Python
    Java (required for one course)

  • Let's see starting in high school in '83:

    - BASIC (couple of versions)
    - 8080/8086 Assembler (can't recall exactly)
    - Turbo Pascal
    - Paradox
    - Cobol
    - JCL
    - more BASIC
    - database platform called NOMAD
    - FORTRAN
    - SQL
    - PL/SQL
    - IDXL (proprietary language)
    - C, C++
    - Java
    - PowerBuilder
    - Quattro Pro scripting
    - VB
    - T-SQL
    - C#

    There are a couple of other proprietary languages in there that I can't recall and several other scripting languages.

  • cobol for vms / dbms
    datatrieve for vms for when I got too tired of typing in cobol
    dcl to launch cobol and datatrieve jobs

  • I started by taking Fortran and Basic back in the 80's when I was getting my Bachelors in Business.  In the mid 90's I decided to go into IT so I went to a technical school and took Assembler, C, C++, Visual Basic, PASCAL, and DBASE.  I started writing programs in Informix and did that for 14 years along with a little VB, some PERL, and some printer language I cant remember.  Now I'm a DBA and work in SQL and VB mostly.

    I wholeheartedly agree though.  It's hard to fully understand being a DBA unless you have some experience in programming. 
    JB

    1. FORTRAN
    2. BASIC
    3. Pascal
    4. Forth (a little for one specific project)
    5. Prolog (very little, quickly became too much trouble for what was trying to be done, or I just didn't understand it well enough)
    6. dBase
    7. FoxPro
    8. C/C++
    9. VB/ASP
    10. T-SQL
    11. VB.NET
    12. C#.NET
    13. ASP.NET

    Anything that I left out was just for fun, not serious.

  • I did some BASIC is high school and remember thinking I'd never work with computers as a "real" job.  During college I fell into doing some dBase III+ programming (gotta pay those bills).  Then followed into a progression of FoxPro, then Access and finally SQL Server 7.

    T-SQL is my bread and butter and I'm fairly proficient with MDX.  I know enough C# / VB.net to read it and mangle it into SSIS do handle functionality that tool can't handle.  Just starting to get into PowerShell and DAX.

  • Lets see how much I can remember.
    In college
    Watfive (sp?) - a form of FORTRAN
    BASIC (not in class)
    COBOL
    FORTRAN
    Assembly Language (on a couple of different machines)
    PL\1
    First job
    Assembly Language on Apple II -> Commodore 64
    Propriety Object Oriented Language (developed by the company I worked for)

    HTML
    Cold Fusion
    SQL
    (still learning) - C#.NET, ASP and whatever else might be useful.

  • I came across and learnt (whether well enough to evaluate as a language or well enough to atually use for real) a lot of languages over the years. Here is a list of most of them (but not all - there are quite a few I've forgotten everything about, even their names) in roughly the order in which I met them. I'm now probably unable to write most of the languages on this list because I've forgtten too much, but I have discovered that I can pick some languages up rather quickly although I thought I'd completely lost them.

    Fortran II
    FaLan (Orion II MacroAssembler supporting OFMP)
    IBM 1620 Assembler
    Algol 60
    System 4 Assembler
    IBM 360 Assembler (keeping that and system 4 apart was the difficult part of writing either - different names for the same instructions).
    Fortran IV
    Coral 66
    Mini-Coral
    Marconi Myriad Assembler
    Deuce Alphcode
    ----- the next group of languages is ones that I learnt because I was required to carry out a survey of available languages and suggest how they might or might not fit in with EngElec/NRL objectives; mostly I didn't do any real programming with them at the time (the ones I did do real work with either then or later are marked *). This was in the good old days when computer guys working all over the place were brothers,so I got lots of help from our commercial competitors' (eg IBM) people and they got help from us. Things appear to have changed now, sadly.
    Agol 58
    Atlas Autocode
    COBOL
    SIMULA
    Jovial
    KAlgol *
    WAlgol
    PL1
    CPL
    BCPL
    SNOBOL
    Lisp *
    APL
    BASIC
    CORAL *
    EULER
    MAD
    MAD/I
    P
    PL360
    PPL (Polymorphic, not Python)
    RPG
    ------- back now to languages that I learnt because I had to use them (or invented and got implemented because I needed them)
    PLAN (1900 series assembly language)
    ASS3 (CTL Modular 1 assembly language)
    NAL (I invented NAL as a replacement for ASS3)
    S3 (an Algol 68 dialect used by ICL)
    SHUFL_IP (originally a definition of what the SHUFFL configuration definition app for ICL 7904/7905/7906 series processors would handle as input)
    ALPHA (Codd's 1st order relational logic based relational calculus, which IBM killed, having let the politicians defeat the scientists so that we became stuck with SQL - a nice language, worth learning to help understad relational agebra, but never actually implemented)
    Pascal
    Assorted Intel and Motorola assemblers (ongoing for decades, as the order codes kept on changing)
    Intercal (THE language in which to write absurd-looking code delivering absurdly bad performance; or perhaps slightly better-looking code with even worse performance)
    SCL (various)
    C
    Prolog
    Parlog
    2900 Series order code / mini-assembler
    Modula
    ML (several versions)
    HTML
    CCS
    CSP
    PSAlgol
    Smalltalk
    OCCAM
    SCCS
    ACCS
    SQL(IBM's substitute for the data handling part of ALPHA)
    PL/SQL (yes, Oracle, I am indeed guilty of having collaborated with those guys)
    QUEL (Ingres - the closest thing that has yet happened to an implementation of ALPHA) and POSTQUEL (Postgres)
    C++
    SASL
    KRC
    MIRANDA
    Java
    HOPE (Edinburgh U. functional language, the predecessor of HOPE+)
    HOPE+ (my definition of an improved version of HOPE that would allow us to use it to write an OS - compiler implemented by Imperial College London and the language is now called HOPE, the original HOPE being superceded by this version).
    pi-calculus
    Haskell (you'll find my name amongst many others on the first release of the Haskell report, but in my opinion I didn't deserve to have it there).
    Erlang
    Dylan
    JavaScript
    JScript
    VBS (the language I most hated - a close challenge to Intercal)
    Brainfuck

    Tom

  • TomThomson - Monday, February 27, 2017 5:26 PM

    Here's a list of languages that I remember working with (wither evaluating and reporting on them, or really using them).  It's by no means complete - in my early days employed in computing a large part of my job was to survey and report on what programming languages existed, and I looked at and reported on far more than I can remember.  And later on I was messing about with so many languages that I couldn't keep track.

    Fortran II
    FaLan (Orion II MacroAssemblem supporting OFMP)
    IBM 1620 Assembler
    Algol 60
    System 4 Assembler
    IBM 360 Assembler
    Fortran IV
    ----- the next group of languages is ones that I learnt because I was required to carry out a survey of available languages and suggest how they might or might not fit in with EngElec/NRL objectives; mostly I didn't do any real programming with them at the time (the ones I did do real work with either then or later are marked *). This was in the good old days when computer guys working all over the place were brothers,so I got lots of help from our commercial competitors' (eg IBM) people and they got help from us. Things have changed now, sadly.
    Agol 58
    SIMULA
    Jovial
    KAlgol *
    WAlgol
    PL1
    CPL
    BCPL
    SNOBOL
    Lisp *
    APL
    BASIC
    CORAL *
    EULER
    MAD
    MAD/I
    PL360
    PPL
    RPG
    ------- back now to languages that I learnt because I had to use them (or invented and got implemented because I needed them)
    PLAN (1900 series assembly language)
    ASS3 (CTL Modular 1 assembly language)
    NAL (I invented NAL as a replacement for ASS3)
    S3 (an Algol 68 dialect used by ICL)
    SHUFL_IP (originally a definition of what my SHUFFL configuration definition app for ICL 7904/7905/7906 series processors could handle as input)
    C
    I can't remember the name of Codd's 1st order relational logic calculus (which IBM killed, having let the politicians defeat the scientists so that we are stuck with SQL)
    Pascal
    SCL (various)
    Prolog
    Parlog
    Modula
    C++
    ML (several versions)
    CCS
    CSP
    SCCS
    ACCS
    PL/SQL (yes, Oracle, I am indeed guilty of having worked with those guys)
    SASL
    KRC
    C++
    MIRANDA
    HOPE (Edinburgh U. functional language, the predecessor of HOPE+)
    HOPE+ (my definition of an improved version of HOPE that would allow us to use it to write an OS - compiler implemented by Imperial College London and the language is now called HOPE, the original HOPE being superceded by this version)
    Haskell (you'll find my name on the first edition of the Haskell report, but in my opinion I didn't deserve to have it there).
    Dylan
    Java
    Javascript

    You dislike C++ so much you named it twice!!! :w00t:

    Gaz

    -- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

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