What programming languages you know and why ?

[aerius]

Taught myself BASIC on the good old Apple II. Learned Pascal and C++ in university, then forgot everything a couple years after I graduated since I wasn't using any of it. I can't program myself out a paper bag these days.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Taught myself BASIC on the good old Apple II. Learned Pascal and C++ in university, then forgot everything a couple years after I graduated since I wasn't using any of it. I can't program myself out a paper bag these days.

I have to admit that my situation is similar. I taught myself BASIC and Pascal back in the day (1980s and early 1990s). Some shell scripting in Linux / Solaris, mostly with BASH. A bit of FORTRAN for scientific purposes in the 1990s. Later took programming courses in Java. VBScript in order to automate things in Windows, but nothing very advanced.

I am probably a prime example of not mastering the basics very well, since I never took programming seriously enough. Now I'm too old for that shit; it's a well known fact that you can't learn to program very well when you're 30+. Sure, you can still learn something, but probably not beyond the run-of-the-mill level and there's a million guys in India who can do that stuff cheaper.

[muse]

Just BASIC and Pascal. I noodled around with BASIC in school then did a bit of Pascal in an introductory level course during University. I think I did a simple program on my TI-85 calculator but I'm not really sure if I wrote it or copied it so I'm not counting it, my recollections of that time are a little hazy in places.

[phongn]

That isn't so much a language problem, as the massive onslaught of bullshit bloated design patterns that overpaid 'enterprise architects' (aka awful programmers promoted until they can't break the code directly any more) come up with. The worst is the massive towering garbage pile that is the Apache open source Java enterprise, a sprawling mass of interconnected projects that seemingly exist only to wrap, obfuscate and rewrap each other. Because apparently having a call stack depth of less than 100 is a sign that your software is 'insufficiently structured'. The same people have fucked up C# just as badly, just with slightly shorter method names.

At first I thought the Apache Commons-Java stuff was a godsend. And then the dependency hell started appearing - sometimes there are these bizarre requirements. Worse are the eight million implementations of the same thing and then someone makes an abstraction layer and then it's only half-used!

[Dave]

C++ -- I'm currently taking a CS class on data structures. Who made an AVL tree with iterators? This guy. Man, that was hard.

You mean threaded AVL trees? Good, now bit-pack them for memory usage approaching information-theoretic optimality and make them fully concurrent with lockless read and write. Then you will have my favourite CPU-side simple data structure (GPUs are a different kettle of fish).

Hey man, this is Data Structures I'm in, not C++ for Ninjas. I leave the extremely optimized data structures for actual computer scientists or EEs who want to cram more functionality into smaller microchips. I'm just a wannabe.

[Beowulf]

10 PRINT I LOVE BASIC
20 GOTO 10

As designated representative of the Military Industrial Complex (tm) you are only allowed to program in, endorse or advocate Ada. With an exception for FORTRAN, for nuclear weapon simulation only.

He got a waiver.

As for me:
Basic, Perl, RPL, C, C++, C#, Java, Powershell, FORTRAN, SQL, IDL.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I know:

- Clipper: A language used to access dBASE III databases. I once learned it to implement a supply tracking program for my high school's JROTC program.
- BASIC for the Commodore 64.
- QBASIC: I have a whole library of QBASIC programs, developed for my own amusement. Some of them are fiendishly complex.
- Handel-C: An attempt to use C to produce FPGA hardware code. Learned it for a senior project at university. Mostly dead.
- VHDL: Used in work in the past.
- Tcl/Tk: University projects.
- SQL: See above.
- At least five different flavors of assembly. Six, if you count an assembler I wrote in university. I used one in work.
- C++: Used in work.
- C: Used in past work.
- Matlab: Used in university and past work.
- Visual Basic 6: Can die in a fire.
- Java: Used in past work.
- C#: Used in past work.

[Dooey Jo]

If SQL counts, shouldn't stuff like XSLT count as well?

[phongn]

If SQL counts, shouldn't stuff like XSLT count as well?

XSLT is Turing-complete, so it should probably count. SQL is generally considered a fourth-generation programming language (and procedural variants have a fair bit of power).

[Chardok]

Does LOGO count?

[phongn]

Does LOGO count?

Yes.

[aerius]

I am probably a prime example of not mastering the basics very well, since I never took programming seriously enough. Now I'm too old for that shit; it's a well known fact that you can't learn to program very well when you're 30+. Sure, you can still learn something, but probably not beyond the run-of-the-mill level and there's a million guys in India who can do that stuff cheaper.

It was the same thing with me, I learned just enough to pass the classes and get started in industry so once I stopped using the stuff I forgot it all. I never got to the point where I could program in my sleep and do the work without even thinking about it, without that level of familiarity everything is quickly forgotten once I stop using it.

Since that time I've never bothered to go back and refresh my skills, but all my friends still think I'm a computer expert because I have a Computer Science degree. One person asked me to do a Linux install on his computer, I told him I haven't touched Linux since the last century and can't remember a single command. My skills end at doing a Windows install, anything harder than that and I'll be looking up manuals as I go and making a mess of everything.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Does LOGO count?

Yes.

I forgot about Logo. They taught that in school, although I never understood what was supposed to be so great about, but back then it was all the rage. I already knew some Basic at the time, so I suppose Logo was better than your run-of-the-mill spaghetti Basic with line numbers and all, but in retrospect Pascal would have been more useful. Perhaps I would have then learned to program properly... Remember this was in the 1980s, so object-oriented languages were not really an option yet.

guru (n) : A computer user who has read the manual

You could extend that to almost any technical stuff that requires only use instead of actual design. It appears that most people simply can't be bothered to RTFM.

Since that time I've never bothered to go back and refresh my skills, but all my friends still think I'm a computer expert because I have a Computer Science degree. One person asked me to do a Linux install on his computer, I told him I haven't touched Linux since the last century and can't remember a single command.

You don't actually have to know any BASH commands in order to install Ubuntu or any of the modern "user friendly" Linux distributions. I still use the command line in Unix/Linux and even in Windows (WPS is pretty good), but only because that's what I have been using since 1996 when I did my first Linux installation with Slackware and of course MS-DOS, SunOS and DCL (VMS) before that.

[His Divine Shadow]

I hope that stuff about 30+ isn't true because I still want to learn a new programming language, hopefully really well, and I am 29.

[Marcus Aurelius]

I hope that stuff about 30+ isn't true because I still want to learn a new programming language, hopefully really well, and I am 29.

You already know how to program fairly well, right? From what I have heard from other "real" programmers support what D. XIII has said in this thread; you can learn new languages of the same basic philosophy fairly easily if you have the basics mastered. That said, I know people who learned to program in the 1980s or earlier and never really got comfortable with object oriented programming, although they naturally had to learn it at some point, if they had not moved on to management positions.

[His Divine Shadow]

I wouldn't say I have mastered ASP and VBscript, which is what I primarily work in. I've acquired skills as my work has required them of me so I probably have large gaps, being self-taught in stuff I need, rather than the whole thing.

[phongn]

I hope that stuff about 30+ isn't true because I still want to learn a new programming language, hopefully really well, and I am 29.

Your mind starts becoming less agile and plastic at 30+ and relies more on experience.

[His Divine Shadow]

BTW, does HTML count, because thats one thing I feel I got the basics down in. I do all my coding in HTML rather than using "wysivyg" style programs.

[phongn]

BTW, does HTML count, because thats one thing I feel I got the basics down in. I do all my coding in HTML rather than using "wysivyg" style programs.

No.

[His Divine Shadow]

Figured as much.

[Falarica]

I'm a second year comp sci student:

First Year:
Python
Java - Horrible HORRIBLE language

Second Year:
C
Lisp/Scheme
Haskell

Teaching myself C++ and C# as well.

Are there any other languages I should have a look at?

[phongn]

Are there any other languages I should have a look at?

Prolog, Postscript, Smalltalk, Javascript?

[Colonel Olrik]

10 PRINT I LOVE BASIC
20 GOTO 10

As designated representative of the Military Industrial Complex (tm) you are only allowed to program in, endorse or advocate Ada. With an exception for FORTRAN, for nuclear weapon simulation only.

I know it's a joke, but Fortran is used extensively in aerospace military applications. There are tons of codified knowledge from 30 and 40 years ago and more recent that is still quite useful. It will take a LONG, LONG time for this libraries to go away. Maybe another 20 years. In the meantime, while my job description is not programming (thank the Gods) I deal with Fortran routinely.

Does MATLAB programming count? I used it at university and extensively at work.

Sure, to the same extent that Excel macro programming does.

Now this is ridiculous. I dare you to implement a realistic end-to-end simulation of a missile motor using Excel macros. But I'll go on with my life while waiting.

[ShadowOfMadness]

C# (Mono or MS's implementations) - Nice high level compiled language that suits my needs and does 64-bit (Yes, 64-bit is actually a requirement for some of the stuff I've done so I'm not going to bother with a 32-bit language like D for anything. :>). I can also do ASP.NET with it which is sometimes a necessary evil.

I hate IIS. It could be my experience with Windows Sys Admins tho. Half of them have no clue WTF they are doing in my small sample set of 4.

Java (I prefer Mono so I haven't touched in forever)

C++ - Learned it for passing AP tests, honestly. I have no real use for it since I can implement anything faster in C# and for the stuff I do professionally my time is cheaper than throwing more hardware at the problem (e.g. I'm not building massively scaling applications that run off entire clusters and an extra 1% efficiency saves $239429492042390).

PHP - Useful enough (despite the hate) it is a decent multi-purpose scripting language. Its main flaw is it has function creep on a massive scale. I keep hoping for 6 they'll strip out everything other than PDO for database access. I'm not sure why the old procedural functions should be tolerated beyond backwards compatibility (in which case you could just have a compile flag to turn them on :/)

Perl - Decent enough but aging and its replacement is Python. Its next 'version' has been coming for ages. :/

Python - Perl's failure to evolve has made Python its effective replacement. 'nough said. I hate Python's insistence the Python way is 'better' than everyone else's way but tolerate its existence since it is good for quick and dirty administrative scripting.

So ya, I pretty much use C#, PHP, and Python if you can't tell. The rest I have no use for professionally or personally. :/