What Was Your First Programming Language?

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Comment by Kevin Talbot on December 11, 2009 at 1:29pm

My first language was Fortran. On punch cards. I know this shows my age! We used the punch cards to run batch jobs in the "computer center" at my college on the mainframe computer. Also learned BASIC as well back then, but also on punch cards.

Eventually I got an Apple II as my first computer and really got into learning Apple BASIC and then Pascal which I really liked. I found Pascal to be a really good, well structured language.

Also used to do a lot of coding with the dBASE II database language on IBM PCs and then the complied version with the "Clipper" compiler. This was the mid to late 80's. Clipper/dBASE II was a very nice language for manipulating large databases with tens of thousands of records quite easily. State of the art for that day.

We've come a long way from Fortran and punch cards to the object oriented/visual programming languages of today. I have _no_ longing for those "good old days".

Comment by Kevin Luttrell on December 9, 2009 at 9:53am

As rebellious punk rock sophomores in high school, my friend Drew and I took a computer class in "basic" and "pascal". I think we learned how to make a line move on the green screen, or something like that. Cutting edge stuff and we had big plans to design the next Pac Man game. But my fist programming language isn't the story.

In class I sat next to Marya, a popular cheerleader who was way out of my league. Drew sat next to Nikki, Marya's cheerleader friend --also way out of our league. As the semester was winding down Marya asked me to her Junior prom and Nikki asked Drew. We thought it was a joke but we went anyway and had a great time. I've lost contact with Drew but keep in touch with with Marya and Nikki through Facebook, over 20 years later. Ironically, Marya is now a webmaster, I'm writing Actionscript and Nikki is a photographer. All because of that first computer language class.

Comment by Konstantin A Lukin on August 10, 2009 at 12:23pm

Back in college, we started out with Lisp, then
Modula-3. Modula-3 was already object-oriented, so was a good pre-requisite for Java, which I got into around 1995. We started working for our physics professor, called it
ProjectJava :-) Won 1st place in Long Island Software Awards in 1997, shook hands with CEO of Computer Associates and got a nice prize. Here is a list of links to some of that work:
Interference of Sinusoidal Waveforms
Lines: A Game of Strategy
Bragg's Law and Diffraction

Comment by Roger Garrett on August 9, 2009 at 7:59pm

BASIC and FORTRAN in college. Then assembly code for the DEC PDP-12. Yes, there was a PDP-12. It was a combination of their PDP-8 and their LINK computer. You could actually switch between CPUs in mid-program. Some 6800 Assembly (wrote a compiler for that in FORTRAN). Then on to assembly code for the UNIVAC AN/UYK-7, a military computer used on submarines. So I guess I predate Sam, with his AN/UYK-20. A bit of Ada, back when the military was really pushing that as the "next big thing". A little bit of LISP. Some Forth. Then C within an RSX-11M operating system. Then tons of PC application programming in C and then C++ with MFC. A bit of SQL and Perl and Java and C# and HTML (OK, not really a programming language :). And most recently SPIN for the Parallax Propeller microprocessor.

Comment by Daniel Leuck on August 9, 2009 at 6:15pm

I read about Translation Party on TechCrunch last week and almost died laughing the first time I tried a sentence. For anyone wondering why you can't just use Babel Fish to translate your website:

The soft launch did not go well. -> Hopefully, the software is not running.
We write software with no bugs. -> Why we wrote our software bug?

Comment by Mika Leuck on August 9, 2009 at 5:55pm

Don't worry. I'll get him later, when he least suspects it. Japanese are very patient.

Comment by Ken Berkun on August 9, 2009 at 5:55pm

You guys should enjoy this site: http://translationparty.com/

Uses google to translate back and forth Japanese/English with results as you would expect.

Ken

Comment by GB Hajim on August 9, 2009 at 5:52pm

LOL! Mika, you can hit him. Don't let him feel superior for a moment. English has got to be the most kludgy language on the face of the Earth. American Standard English cannot even be called an upgrade from the original programming. Localized versions of English 2.0 run into even more problems (ie Localized version for Hawaii being used to give a tourist user directions = complete system crash). English has been known to infect other languages in the most inelegant ways (ie french - Le weekend, Le hamburger) and lacks any built in debugging which leads to other languages easily invading the system and yielding versions with even more limited operating potentials and more prone to systemic failures (ie Spanglish)

Comment by Daniel Leuck on August 9, 2009 at 5:28pm

GB Hajim: After that I dabbled in C+ and that really was the last language I used with any kind of regularity - 20 years ago! I wish I had learned Japanese or Chinese instead.

Japanese has a lot of the same problems as C++. You can recompile it for gaijin, but performance is spotty. Its given me memory leaks, system crashes, and caused many people in Japan to question my social competence and intelligence. Example of Japanese language rule that literally hurts the gaijin brain: You use the hiki counting system for all small animals except rabbits :-) [Runs and hides behind couch. Don't hurt me Mika!]

Comment by GB Hajim on August 9, 2009 at 2:56pm

We had a hardass computer teacher who made us learn machine and assembly language first. It was cool being able to manipulate the PDP11 at that level, but way too time consuming. Then I went onto learn Basic, Fortran, Pascal, and C. After that I dabbled in C+ and that really was the last language I used with any kind of regularity - 20 years ago! I wish I had learned Japanese or Chinese instead.

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