Does anyone miss programming in old languages?
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I recently got pulled in to help out on a 30+ years old mainframe project written in COBOL. It was a bit of shock to realise how much I remembered, since it had been 30+ years since I last worked with COBOL! I occasionally miss my old FORTRAN days (most recently Fortran 77 rather than FORTRAN IV) but I never have yearned to do COBOL (or even PL/1) again. Nostalgic thoughts?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
I remember them, but I don't exactly miss them enough to download a compiler and start writing Cobol or Fortran code. Almost, but not quite, now we have Mathf and C# so who needs the older languages? Well, unless you are called on to do a code conversion or repair old code. I learned with Basic and Pascal. But I will never refer a beginner to those languages these days.
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Turbo Pascal was my first thought as well!
Same here
- Leonardo
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There are the languages I really liked working in at the time: Ada, VAX FORTRAN, VAX/VMS DCL (scripting), LISP, and Intel assembly language using a flat memory model. At the time I developed sufficient fluency in each of these that I could solve any programming problem you like in them, given enough time. Interestingly, I don't feel any nostalgia to go back to programming in any of them. The amenities available now in most languages are so superior it's incredible. I know that Ada, FORTRAN, and LISP all have contemporary versions with modern facilities, but those all seem to have a "me too!" flavor to them. Today my language of choice is C# unless there's substantial bit/byte-fiddling to be done, and then it's C++.
Software Zen:
delete this;I loved the VAX/VMS system. I used Pascal, some C, DCL, FMS, and others. I had a 2 shelf set of manuals from DEC, which if you followed the rules everything would just work. I even developed a primitive pre-object system where I would pass a structure for specific data entry forms to several routines; saved a lot of coding.
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FoxPro for DOS (pre-MS). I wrote a sales lead tracking application (think early CRM) that ran unchanged for well over a decade. It even survived Y2K. ;P
I used FoxPro for DOS at my workplace to create some pretty complicated applications. Once, during an upgrade to our payroll system used for almost 20,000 employees, I wrote an application to compare the master file output from the old version with the new version, looking for differences which would signal compatibility issues. This app helped to eliminate a lot of confusion and busy work by our HR and payroll folks to ferret out those problems. My star shone a little brighter for a while...sigh.
FoxPro fan
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I recently got pulled in to help out on a 30+ years old mainframe project written in COBOL. It was a bit of shock to realise how much I remembered, since it had been 30+ years since I last worked with COBOL! I occasionally miss my old FORTRAN days (most recently Fortran 77 rather than FORTRAN IV) but I never have yearned to do COBOL (or even PL/1) again. Nostalgic thoughts?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
I programmed in a new language called C# almost twenty years ago when it first came out. I don't miss it though. I still use it nearly every day.
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I Sometimes miss the Univac 1100 Assembler that I spent so many years working on. But most modern languages are so much better in many ways.
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Fortran 77, I took a Basic class (my first programming class) before this and darn near swore off programming, as the spaghettification factor was overwhelming. A math instructor talking me into taking Fortran class and I loved it. Motorola HC11 assembler is another one, my first assembler language. At the time Motorola had what I thought was really good documentation regarding the chips' operation and the instruction set, coded a lot of assembler back then.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment "Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst "I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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I loved the VAX/VMS system. I used Pascal, some C, DCL, FMS, and others. I had a 2 shelf set of manuals from DEC, which if you followed the rules everything would just work. I even developed a primitive pre-object system where I would pass a structure for specific data entry forms to several routines; saved a lot of coding.
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I learned programming in college by writing programs in Algol-60 on a Univac 1108. My, how time flies!
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I recently got pulled in to help out on a 30+ years old mainframe project written in COBOL. It was a bit of shock to realise how much I remembered, since it had been 30+ years since I last worked with COBOL! I occasionally miss my old FORTRAN days (most recently Fortran 77 rather than FORTRAN IV) but I never have yearned to do COBOL (or even PL/1) again. Nostalgic thoughts?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
I have a warm spot in my heart for Ada. Think more teams should consider Ada2012 for their next project at least if it's realtime embedded development.
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I recently got pulled in to help out on a 30+ years old mainframe project written in COBOL. It was a bit of shock to realise how much I remembered, since it had been 30+ years since I last worked with COBOL! I occasionally miss my old FORTRAN days (most recently Fortran 77 rather than FORTRAN IV) but I never have yearned to do COBOL (or even PL/1) again. Nostalgic thoughts?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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I recently got pulled in to help out on a 30+ years old mainframe project written in COBOL. It was a bit of shock to realise how much I remembered, since it had been 30+ years since I last worked with COBOL! I occasionally miss my old FORTRAN days (most recently Fortran 77 rather than FORTRAN IV) but I never have yearned to do COBOL (or even PL/1) again. Nostalgic thoughts?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
I have a warm spot in my heart for Ada. Think more teams should consider Ada2012 for their next project at least if it's realtime embedded development.
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Yes, but remember how long it took to write out the coding sheets, get the cards punched, submit them for compilation, only to find you made a simple spelling mistake, or the punch girl mis-read your hieroglyphics.
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I recently got pulled in to help out on a 30+ years old mainframe project written in COBOL. It was a bit of shock to realise how much I remembered, since it had been 30+ years since I last worked with COBOL! I occasionally miss my old FORTRAN days (most recently Fortran 77 rather than FORTRAN IV) but I never have yearned to do COBOL (or even PL/1) again. Nostalgic thoughts?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.