On Sat, 2010-10-02 at 18:41 +0100, Kevin Wright wrote: > C64? Wow, advanced! > I remember working with the Vic-20 and even the Commodore PET, back at > school.
I think we had better stop this variant on the Monty Python Yorkshireman sketch somewhere around here. I remember at school that our computer was an IBM 704 located some 25 miles away and that we sent in punch card decks which were returned 2 days later -- if we were lucky. The programming language was, of course, Fortran. Oh and assembly language which at least was a step up from machine code. Fortran 2008 is a surprisingly interesting language. The standards cycle for Fortran is about 5 years (which puts Java to shame ;-) and there are guarantees of being able to compile correctly nigh on all previous versions of Fortran. This is a non-trivial problem but also essential to the running of the world. A large number of significant codes still have Fortran 4 code from many, many moons ago. > Basic was largely unavoidable at the time, but by the time I'd worked > my way up to the C46 (and even the C128) I'd also gotten around to > typing in my own C-compiler (from the back of a magazine, I kid you > not! Parental help was required and I'll spare you stories of > typing-error problems...) which had to be painstakingly loaded from > tape every time I started the computer. Ahh, the days of editing programs by sending in a sequence stream editing commands on a paper tape to the operators. The joys, the pain. (I told you we should stop this variant on the Yorkshireman sketch, else we will descend to reminiscences of entering programs by toggling switches -- which I had to do regularly even on a PDP11 and various Data General, Prime and Interdata machines :-( > Even then, boilerplate was annoying, perhaps the lack of *any* > sensible text-editing features was a driving force here. I'd started > working with LOGO (still at primary school here) > > Later, around age 11-12 I was upgrading schools - and also upgrading > languages. Scheme had already been established for a few years, C++ > was fairly well known and Common Lisp was no longer wet behind the > ears. I played with them all. Forgive me, but so what? > Java came later, I was studying Elec.Eng, but friends studying > Comp.Sci. still came to me for help. As this often involved offers of > free beer I rarely turned down such a request, so found myself > learning the language that was then being popularly taught. Aha, the bragging ;-) > After Uni, I was working as a programmer, using Pascal. Horrible > language, I try my hardest to forget about it. Then a career in Java, > working my way up the seniority ladder and doing some architecture > work. > > > Then most recently, the next big thing was Scala. I finally got back > the beloved functions that had been missing from my professional life > and are fondly remembered from as far back as primary school. Having > already been won over to the benefits of the JVM, garbage collection, > etc. this seemed like a perfect match. > > > Clojure arrived after that. But, hey, I like static typing :) > I also study Haskell, but purely for my own amusement. Every programmer should study all the languages mentioned, and many others including Go, D, Erlang, Prolog. No matter which language you use day-to-day your programming is improved by knowing at a "can work in this language" level many different language with different computational models. -- Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:[email protected] 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: [email protected] London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder
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