Programming Languages

Programming Languages vangale has used:

Timeline Graph

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2024

VAX BASIC

AppleSoft BASIC

Pascal

6502 Assembly

BASIC (TRS-80 Model I)

PL/I

x86 Assembly

MACRO-11

COBOL

Perl

Python

VAX BASIC

1976–1979

Also PDP-11 BASIC (RSTS-E not VMS). My first language. Tried to program a role playing game but quickly hit the limits of 32k RAM and hated waiting 15 minutes for the paper tape to read.

AppleSoft BASIC

1979

Learned this on my Apple ][ but hated it which is why I moved to UCSD Pascal.

Pascal

1980–1984

UCSD Pascal on Apple ][, VAX Pascal, IBM Pascal for PC-DOS. Have never written another line of Pascal after learning C.

6502 Assembly

1980

Tried to use this to write a lisp interpreter on my Apple ][ based on descriptions in Winston's "Artificial Intelligence". Not knowing lisp was a major roadblock and, suprisingly, the project was an utter failure.

BASIC (TRS-80 Model I)

1980

Wrote a limited accounting system from a local contractor on his TRS-80.

PL/I

1981

Yay for big iron at WVU. Mostly programmed this with punch cards.

x86 Assembly

1981–1989

First used this on the original IBM PC with two floppy disks. Learned it from reading the BIOS source code in the IBM manuals. There weren't any good text editors in these days so I wrote one completely in 8088 assembler. Used edlin to bootstrap it to the point where it could read files, save, insert, and delete. Finished up with 100k+ lines source code, 16k binary size. Did some more in late 80's with multi-tasking code on top of MS-DOS but haven't done any other assemblers since.

MACRO-11

1984

Learned this for class, after which C made a lot more sense.

1985–

Also learned from reading 1st Ed. K&R. Was rocky early on due to poor quality of compilers for MS-DOS but have used this most of my career. Only language I love more is Python.

COBOL

1985

Worked on a COBOL project for 7 months. Managed to find a new assignment after the project manager asked me to stop using dynamic memory allocation because "it was too tricky" (this was a non-standard feature in Wang VS COBOL).

Perl

1987–1999

Don't remember the exact year but it was when Perl 2.0 was first sent across Usenet on comp.lang.sources. Was blown away by how much easier it made system level programming. Later after having to use it full time for a job was blown away by how hard it was to maintain. Have tried to avoid it since.

Python

1996–

First used 1.3 embedded into a C program so I wouldn't have to use InstallShield. Used along with C 2000-2005 but now it's my primary language.