What Was Your First Programming Language?

[Brad Barton]

I went down to Radio Shack when I was in middle school in the mid 70's and bought myself a manual for the TRS-80 so I could learn BASIC. I never did have a TRS-80 because I couldn't afford one. Wrote a few programs, but never got to run any, lol.

My folks bought me an Apple ][+ in late 70's's/early 80's so I guess my first actual programming was in Apple BASIC. The manual was pretty good though, so I was able to figure out how to poke shape tables into memory for graphics programming. Really enjoyed myself on that little machine.

Later there was some FORTRAN 77 in college, and that's about the time I got my first 41C. Programmed on that for a while. Then graduated to RPL with the 48 and 50. Still like the keystroke programming for quick and dirty stuff, but RPL is a lot more powerful. Took some C courses later on, but never really liked the language, so I can't think of a single significant application that I've written with it.

Wrote some small TurboBasic programs for use on the 200LX. Did some programming for Palm devices for some tools to use at work, and started with objective-C to write an app for the iPhone, but ran out of steam when we changed directions. I often get mildly aggravated having to re-write apps when we change platforms, but it keeps things interesting.

Overall I feel like my programming knowledge, particularly with formal languages, is fairly wide, but very shallow. I guess I only learn anything new when I have a specific problem to solve.