Programming Languages

Programming Languages joemcmahon has used:

Timeline Graph

1977

1978

1979

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

PL/I

SNOBOL

FORTRAN 66

MACRO-11

AppleSoft BASIC

Perl

REXX

HyperTalk

Java

XSLT

AppleScript

Javascript

Objective-C

PL/I

1977–1978

The required first language for CS students at WVU when I was there. Abandoned it for assembler as soon as it was possible to do so.

SNOBOL

1977–1987

Discovered it by accident in college, and fell in love with it immediately. Most powerful language available on the IBM 360/370 machine; actually implemented some data migration software in it that needed to do complex name mapping from the IBM standards to Unitree Unix-like pathnames so that data could be migrated off the legacy IBM system in SPITBOL. First step down the path to Perl.

FORTRAN 66

1978–1981

Taught a class in this in college, barely staying ahead of the class as I taught them. Wrote a proof-of-concept system for NASA using a Ratfor compiler written in FORTRAN G. Highlight of that was reimplementing partitioned datasets using FORTRAN keyed datasets.

MACRO-11

1978

Operation systems class at WVU.

AppleSoft BASIC

1982–1985

Played around with this a lot; dropped it after I finally got my hands on a Mac.

Perl

1987–

When the Cray Y-MP was delivered at NASA, the sales engineer suggested that instead of having to learn C, ack, sed, and shell, I should just learn Perl. It's been my primary language ever since then. First use was support code for the Convex Unitree system at NASA; switched over to Web programming, and then branched out into QA automation. Now working at blekko.com ... doing something I can't talk about yet. But still Perl!

REXX

1988–1992

Used this with the VM messaging system to set up a system for VM users to automatically fetch their datasets from the MVS mainframe, even if they were offline in HSM.

HyperTalk

1989–1990

Did a Mac virus documentation stack in it that Apple UK picked up to distribute - never did hear if they actually got it out to anyone. First taste of object-oriented programming, and a great development platform. Would love to see something like it come to the iPad.

Java

1999–2010

Geo-selection applet for a NASA earth-science search engine. Used on and off up to the current day (last used it fiddling with Hudson plugins).

XSLT

2004

Had some XML that needed tweaking, and this was the simplest way to do it.

AppleScript

2005–

Wrote a script to generate a ChucK program to play the Clock of the Long Now chimes. Still use it for automation on OS X.

Javascript

2007–

Did a couple of Dashcode widgets in this.

Objective-C

2009–

Started in earnest at iPhone Dev Camp in 2009; still playing around with iPhone apps (including one for work).