Do you have a language you're kind of ashamed that you like(d)?
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I loved Visual FoxPro. Fast, easy to use, great community. MS killed it to force VFP developers to move to SQL Server. Good business move for MS. A shame for everyone else.
I liked the language of FoxPro 2.6 for DOS. Unfortunately it died a lot with "corruption detected" on a network where Clipper 87 marched like a Roman legion.
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Some sort of glue language that maybe everyone loves to hate, but felt right at home for you? Are you a closet Access/VBA junkie? Do you secretly love Perl? For me it would definitely be VB6. As much as I hate to admit it, for Windows UI code that glued my DLLs together, I feel like it was fantastic, even if the language itself was clunky and kind of limited unless you were willing to hack down to win32 from it quite a bit. Still, pretty neat what you could do with it if you were willing to get dirty. I learned a lot of win32 with it.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
I guess I’d have to say Basic. First learned in high school in late 70’s. After that learned more DEC Basic in college and first job that I had that paid enough for me to move out of my parents house was also using DEC Basic. Used Turbo Basic, Quick Basic, MS Basic, VB For DOS (that was interesting), VBA in Access, VB5 (briefly), VB6, and VB.Net. Now I’m using C# and I really am enjoying it.
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There was very little you couldn't do in VB6 I to learnt a lot of Win32 stuff and was introduced to the wonderful world of Com servers and ActiveX. Exciting times.
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
In the 90's, VB was the best language for desktop applications. Folks who used C++ complained about the effort it took to build GUIs, whereas the VB developers were banging out fully functional applications in the time C++ developers were completing 1 or 2 screens. There was an amazing array of inexpensive third party controls, and there was a group (cannot remember the name) that published a large group of free controls, which I used heavily. Using the Windows API was a PITA, but there were a lot of folks publishing solutions on the MS Usenet groups. I created DLLs that encapsulated the API calls, making them very easy to use, and still have those projects 25 years later. A DLL for reading/writing INI files worked with C# projects some years back. Killing VB6 was among the dumbest moves MS made, one in a huge list of dumb moves. I briefly dabbled in VB.NET, then switched to C# as I guessed that VB.NET existed mostly to placate the very large, very unhappy VB6 developer base. People like to whine about how verbose VB and COBOL are. When debugging someone else's undocumented code, verbose is a benefit, not a drawback. I taught one guy how to program in COBOL, even though I've never written a line nor compiled any. I read existing code, figure out the syntax, and taught him what to do. I couldn't do that in Javascript.
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Some sort of glue language that maybe everyone loves to hate, but felt right at home for you? Are you a closet Access/VBA junkie? Do you secretly love Perl? For me it would definitely be VB6. As much as I hate to admit it, for Windows UI code that glued my DLLs together, I feel like it was fantastic, even if the language itself was clunky and kind of limited unless you were willing to hack down to win32 from it quite a bit. Still, pretty neat what you could do with it if you were willing to get dirty. I learned a lot of win32 with it.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
I'll join you on that one. You could go from proof of concept to prototype to MVP in no time. We pushed the limits and pushed Access as well. Access got to be an issue because it required more and more hardware to handle the size and web stuff; switched to Postgres using VB6 :) I still have purview over a VB6 base, though coding is left to someone else. It still plays nicely though its days are numbered since it's easier to maintain web-based for inter/intranet applications. I have to admit I still miss the printing interface. It was so easy to generate business documents and it didn't require one to be a point and pixel artist, lol.
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Some sort of glue language that maybe everyone loves to hate, but felt right at home for you? Are you a closet Access/VBA junkie? Do you secretly love Perl? For me it would definitely be VB6. As much as I hate to admit it, for Windows UI code that glued my DLLs together, I feel like it was fantastic, even if the language itself was clunky and kind of limited unless you were willing to hack down to win32 from it quite a bit. Still, pretty neat what you could do with it if you were willing to get dirty. I learned a lot of win32 with it.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
Visual Basic 6 was very fun back when I began my software development career. I even did a little DirectX work with it. I'm not really ashamed of it because of the power it had in the end. One of these weekends I'll see if I can reinstall it and play with it again for old times sake.
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Some sort of glue language that maybe everyone loves to hate, but felt right at home for you? Are you a closet Access/VBA junkie? Do you secretly love Perl? For me it would definitely be VB6. As much as I hate to admit it, for Windows UI code that glued my DLLs together, I feel like it was fantastic, even if the language itself was clunky and kind of limited unless you were willing to hack down to win32 from it quite a bit. Still, pretty neat what you could do with it if you were willing to get dirty. I learned a lot of win32 with it.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
Never. As long as it solves the problem it's ok for me. :-D
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Some sort of glue language that maybe everyone loves to hate, but felt right at home for you? Are you a closet Access/VBA junkie? Do you secretly love Perl? For me it would definitely be VB6. As much as I hate to admit it, for Windows UI code that glued my DLLs together, I feel like it was fantastic, even if the language itself was clunky and kind of limited unless you were willing to hack down to win32 from it quite a bit. Still, pretty neat what you could do with it if you were willing to get dirty. I learned a lot of win32 with it.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
A long time ago at a company that no longer exists... Lotus created an office suite successor to their wildly popular MS-DOS-based Lotus 123 spreadsheet called Symphony. A customer had a group of 123 spreadsheets that they used to manage engineering processes, parts flows, and the like. Since these were separate files, they loaded sheets in a sequence, computed values, then manually entered those values in successor sheets. As you can imagine, this was very error-prone. I created a menu system and an overlay[^] manager in Symphony macros. I don't remember too many details, other than it seemed very elegant at the time. Macro code lived in the sheet and you could mix formula cells in your macros, which would then 'execute' the value of the formula. Great fun, if a horrific abuse of a macro language.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
Some sort of glue language that maybe everyone loves to hate, but felt right at home for you? Are you a closet Access/VBA junkie? Do you secretly love Perl? For me it would definitely be VB6. As much as I hate to admit it, for Windows UI code that glued my DLLs together, I feel like it was fantastic, even if the language itself was clunky and kind of limited unless you were willing to hack down to win32 from it quite a bit. Still, pretty neat what you could do with it if you were willing to get dirty. I learned a lot of win32 with it.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
ig-Pay atin-lay :) Sorry. Never ashamed. Each language gave new insights - some better than others, others provided examples of what not to do.
Time is the differentiation of eternity devised by man to measure the passage of human events. - Manly P. Hall Mark Just another cog in the wheel
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Some sort of glue language that maybe everyone loves to hate, but felt right at home for you? Are you a closet Access/VBA junkie? Do you secretly love Perl? For me it would definitely be VB6. As much as I hate to admit it, for Windows UI code that glued my DLLs together, I feel like it was fantastic, even if the language itself was clunky and kind of limited unless you were willing to hack down to win32 from it quite a bit. Still, pretty neat what you could do with it if you were willing to get dirty. I learned a lot of win32 with it.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
Nope. Every language I've used was useful for the purpose I used it. Intel x86 Assembly Motorola 6502 Assembly IBM BAL (Assembly) IBM JCL APL Forth C C++ with and without MFC (I wrote SetiDriver in C++ with MFC) C# DOS/CMD Scripting VB6 VBA VB.Net Java CLU Prolog (dabbled but never used heavily) Windows Scripting Host via VBScript PowerShell Clipper Access Basic T-SQL Pascal DEC DCL DEC Basic SuperNova (pure OO language that I hated - not ashamed but hated) There are a few more that I've forgotten.
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Delphi 6. I used it for 2 different jobs. One job was Delphi only from 2004 to 2013. When that job played out (gov't contract not renewed) I reluctantly listed Delphi on my resume. Within the same month my old job ended I was hired as contract to hire at my current job specifically because of Delphi 6 on my resume. I have since transitioned to Java. I do love the colon equals operator for assignment, no if (a = b) instead of if (a == b) mistakes there. I started my career in a similar way, got first job because I knew dBase III+, soon move to Microsoft C 5.1. Yes, that was a long time ago.
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated. I’m begging you for the benefit of everyone, don’t be STUPID.
I used Delphi at my previous job, 2001-2012. The team lead had written a lot of projects in Turbo Pascal. They converted nicely to Delphi. Unfortunatly the bad habbits that were needed in DOS came along free for the ride. The biggest was string handling. Trying to move from Delphi 7/Delphi 2006 to Delphi XE was a killer because the default definition of 'string' being an AnsiString changed to a UnicodeString breaking a lot of our libraries as they treated the strings as arrays. They other issue was that the code was written as giant loop that ran in the idle time of Windows. This had the side effect of showing our application using 100% of the CPU time. I do miss the Borland days though.
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Some sort of glue language that maybe everyone loves to hate, but felt right at home for you? Are you a closet Access/VBA junkie? Do you secretly love Perl? For me it would definitely be VB6. As much as I hate to admit it, for Windows UI code that glued my DLLs together, I feel like it was fantastic, even if the language itself was clunky and kind of limited unless you were willing to hack down to win32 from it quite a bit. Still, pretty neat what you could do with it if you were willing to get dirty. I learned a lot of win32 with it.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
Turbo Pascal (then Delphi) But I have no shame saying it. Those were fantastic languages!
Christian Lavigne
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“a lot” is maybe to much said, like for instance you had no registers but you had no functions to work with either, to establish the execution order you had to mark each line with a number. You could then jump as required from place to place with the go to command. There are a ton more features that make a programming language, I’m only describing the things I knew how to use.
I remember that kind of BASIC (Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, if I recall correctly). Mostly I'm grateful that I was introduced to both assembly and Basic within a couple of weeks of each other -- I very quickly understood why the largest line number was 32767, for example. (Unless it was 65535, but I don't think so....) I don't remember using lots of "go to"s. I remember that being discouraged even then. But, hey, this was in the 1980s. The other advantage of starting back then was that I could follow the concepts, if not every detail, from transistor to gate to register to processor to assembly to compiler. Much harder to follow the details of what's going on in today's processors. And I'm grateful I rarely care -- modern compilers are wonderful tools. I haven't dug into the generated assembly code in a long time.
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Having been brought up with Fortran IV, I was ecstatic when I learned Clipper in ths MS-DOS world. Windows made me change to VB6 which I used for many years for numerous projects but there is a time when all good things must go. I switched to VB .Net and now to C# but I am still nostalgic about Clipper and VB6
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Some sort of glue language that maybe everyone loves to hate, but felt right at home for you? Are you a closet Access/VBA junkie? Do you secretly love Perl? For me it would definitely be VB6. As much as I hate to admit it, for Windows UI code that glued my DLLs together, I feel like it was fantastic, even if the language itself was clunky and kind of limited unless you were willing to hack down to win32 from it quite a bit. Still, pretty neat what you could do with it if you were willing to get dirty. I learned a lot of win32 with it.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
Proud dev using MS Access / VBA. Until they get used outside their expected domain - then you have to tell the users to find a grown up solution. I still use that hated Hungarian notation naming style when I get to. Is HTML considered a language here? Unproud - ok, I still use HTML tables to do page organization / layout.
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Having been brought up with Fortran IV, I was ecstatic when I learned Clipper in ths MS-DOS world. Windows made me change to VB6 which I used for many years for numerous projects but there is a time when all good things must go. I switched to VB .Net and now to C# but I am still nostalgic about Clipper and VB6
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I don't think I'm ashamed to say I learnt Latin at school.
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jschell wrote:
(the sort of comments that should not normally appear in code.)
Hey, if it doesn't bother you that it's necessary to do that with Perl, far be it from me to judge. Every time I even read Perl I feel like I need a shower. :laugh:
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
honey the codewitch wrote:
if it doesn't bother you that it's necessary to do that with Perl
I know C#, Java, C++/C. And have delved into many others like assembler, Pascal, Fortran, Basic. I have looked at even more than that. When I choose Perl it is because it is going to be better for the job. I could do it in some of the others but it would take longer. Especially when I present it as a solution that others will need to use I consider the tradeoffs very carefully.
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Some sort of glue language that maybe everyone loves to hate, but felt right at home for you? Are you a closet Access/VBA junkie? Do you secretly love Perl? For me it would definitely be VB6. As much as I hate to admit it, for Windows UI code that glued my DLLs together, I feel like it was fantastic, even if the language itself was clunky and kind of limited unless you were willing to hack down to win32 from it quite a bit. Still, pretty neat what you could do with it if you were willing to get dirty. I learned a lot of win32 with it.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
REXX
Cheers, Mike Fidler "I intend to live forever - so far, so good." Steven Wright "I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met." Also Steven Wright "I'm addicted to placebos. I could quit, but it wouldn't matter." Steven Wright yet again.
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Some sort of glue language that maybe everyone loves to hate, but felt right at home for you? Are you a closet Access/VBA junkie? Do you secretly love Perl? For me it would definitely be VB6. As much as I hate to admit it, for Windows UI code that glued my DLLs together, I feel like it was fantastic, even if the language itself was clunky and kind of limited unless you were willing to hack down to win32 from it quite a bit. Still, pretty neat what you could do with it if you were willing to get dirty. I learned a lot of win32 with it.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
The beauty of a cobol program, designed to replace assembler, all the memory usage statements at the top followed by the procedural code. PERFORM 4000-Do-Something VARYING fd-counter FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL fd-counter = 10 Don't forget to include your flow chart of the program! Yeah, I kind of liked working cobol.
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Some sort of glue language that maybe everyone loves to hate, but felt right at home for you? Are you a closet Access/VBA junkie? Do you secretly love Perl? For me it would definitely be VB6. As much as I hate to admit it, for Windows UI code that glued my DLLs together, I feel like it was fantastic, even if the language itself was clunky and kind of limited unless you were willing to hack down to win32 from it quite a bit. Still, pretty neat what you could do with it if you were willing to get dirty. I learned a lot of win32 with it.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
Believe it or not... C# I was a hardcore x86 assembly junky, and C when that wouldn't cut it. I hated everything there was to interpreted languages, loved everything about clean, tight code. And then C# comes along with its 134MB (at the time) of .NET Framework you have to have installed, it's interpreted bytecode, it's "assemblies" which aren't really DLLs... And, I wanted to hate it. But I've been using it for a long time now. And... it's really well designed. It's useful. It's scalable. I'm ashamed to admit that I actually like it.
