Programming Languages

Programming Languages boutell has used:

Timeline Graph

1980

1981

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

FORTRAN 77

BASIC

LOGO

VAX BASIC

AppleSoft BASIC

Forth

TI-BASIC

AppleScript

Scheme

x86 Assembly

C++

QBasic

68k Assembly

csh

bash

Perl

Javascript

PostScript

6502 Assembly

Java

PHP

Python

Objective-C

FORTRAN 77

1980

My first exposure to real programming, before BASIC. I came in on printing terminals and thankfully missed punch cards. I'd read the Fortran textbook gathering dust on mom and dad's bookshelf, so I was good to go.

BASIC

1981–1992

I cut my teeth on the TRS-80 Model III. No graphics to speak of, so I spent a lot of time writing text adventures with D&D combat rules, multiplayer variations on HAMURABI, things of this nature.

LOGO

1983–

Picked it up in middle school, taught it in high school. More recently my daughter enjoyed dabbling in it but has moved on to Scratch.

VAX BASIC

1985–1988

There is no security restriction that can not be creatively bypassed to create a group chat program.

AppleSoft BASIC

1985–1988

I never did fully grok what was happening with the hires color display and the way pixels chose to color themselves. I gather Woz did this to save a few (hundred) bucks, so it's okay.

Forth

1986

The only decently fast, multithreaded language on the Sanyo MBC-550. Alas, I wasn't quite ready, but it prepared me for PostScript.

TI-BASIC

1987

Drink three liters of jolt, down a jumbo bag of cool ranch chips, code yet another game on Gabe's TI-99/4A, wait for one of us to get too slaphappy on caffeine and start munging the keyboard until it reboots, game unsaved.

AppleScript

1987

I wrote a virus in AppleScript, just to show it could be done, then sensibly destroyed it, which is why I'm not the villain of any incredibly unrealistic early-nineties hacker movies.

Scheme

1988

Ah, "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs," that great hazing ritual of yore! Hey, it enabled me to appreciate pinkhairedcyn's tattoo. And terrorize my coworkers with nested parentheses.

x86 Assembly

1988

I wrote a replacement INT14h driver for the serial port. Anything to get your BBS to stop dropping characters...

1988–

I have written monstrous amounts of WIN32 C code, Linux C code, portable ANSI C code. But not lately. I also wrote about eight chapters of a free text on ANSI C programming which is still floating around and enjoyed a burst of popularity as a C primer for PalmOS developers, though it never mentioned PalmOS. I'm most frequently blamed for the gd library, which of course is written in C although most people know it due to its inclusion in PHP.

C++

1988–1999

I gather templates actually work now. That's nice. I've moved on.

QBasic

1989–1992

(QuickBASIC, mostly) Educational software development with the University of Delaware instructional technology folks. And lots of BBS nonsense.

68k Assembly

1990

"Tom's program is very slow, but I can't figure out why, so I am giving him full credit for the assignment." I was storing two integers in each register via bit shifts to avoid the trouble of screwing around with memory.

csh

1992

"Considered harmful." I got better.

bash

1993–

As little as possible. But it comes in handy to know how to while and if your way through the outcomes of a few things. Pretty soon I lose patience with it and write a PHP script.

Perl

1994–2005

I wrote "CGI Programming in C and Perl," which was a PHP 4 book, but not bad overall. I also wrote PerlMUD, which would probably be in wider use if I hadn't had the unmitigated gall to charge a whopping $25 (later $10) for registration (even though you had the source already with your initial download). Geez, did I make any money off that? Only... oh, nearly $2,000, hey not bad. I liked Perl for quick and dirty stuff. I never really liked Perl as a higher-level language. Perl's wacky combination of assembler-like looseness ("want your parameters? UNPACK THEM YOURSELF") and APL obtuseness ("pick the right punctuation mark or DIE") never sat well with me. PHP is a great relief from the latter. And I gather Perl 6 is moving away from that as well, but probably stuck in the mud of being too much like Ruby and Python to bother with.

Javascript

1994–

This morning I used the phrase "bare-metal JavaScript" in email and then burst out laughing. jQuery makes things good. I've written a nice multiple select element progressive enhancer which is included in Apostrophe.

PostScript

1994

Wrote print drivers for receipts in Boutell.Com's order processing system. I shaved a fine yak in those days. (And credible alternatives were few, to be fair)

6502 Assembly

1995–2008

I came to this very late, wanting to write a retro Atari 2600 game (technically the 6507, but it's the same instruction set, minus useful interrupts and with harsh memory limits). I built an Atari emulator in 1995 and discarded it because it seemed implausible that it would ever be fast enough; whoops, Moore's law wasn't dead yet. In the early aughts I put in some time toward a couple of games and made some functioning demos, but never muscled through to produce a cartridge game. Meanwhile the fad has (again) passed. Probably time to face up to it and sell my Starpath Supercharger.

Java

1995–1998

Oh, client-side Java, how you broke our hearts. Those very long, very public lists of bugs that Sun just... sat on... from browser version to browser version. Those APIs that called to you, then dashed you on the rocks of platform incompatibility. It wasn't an impossible problem. You just didn't want to pay for an adequate staff of competent Mac and Windows GUI developers. You also let Microsoft hoover up all the good JIT compiler guys, with the end result that the fastest Java implementation ever belonged to your arch-nemesis. I'm still ticked about this.

PHP

2003–

Ah, PHP. Wrap the C standard library calls in a loosely typed, ill disciplined pile of goo in the tradition of Perl, add Java's familiar OOP syntax rather than Perl's obtuse one, and you've got... something I rather like, honestly. I spend most of my work hours coding PHP sites with the Symfony framework. I even write command line tools in PHP these days. I can't hold PHP and Perl syntax in my head at the same time due to the maddening similarities.

Python

2004–2005

A mass-tagging tool for LiveJournal posts. And, interestingly, embedded scripts for manipulating Windows Group Policy. But we wound up replacing the latter with VBScript. Yeah yeah familiar tools on the platform yeah yeah

Objective-C

2009–

I have two iPhone apps to my credit: "Sync and Speak," which reads RSS feeds aloud, and "Geek: Game of Champions," a game that I've ported to many systems to learn more about them. Both suffer from the fact that I wasn't working with a designer when I created them, but I picked up the desired skillset along the way. I hate the lack of garbage collection on the iPhone, but very much like the tolerant way message passing works.