The worst programming language ever

[Massimo Gnerucci]

(11-25-2021 02:46 PM)John Smitherman Wrote:  My vote for the worst is COBOL.

Thou shall not vote!

[toml_12953]

(11-25-2021 02:46 PM)John Smitherman Wrote:  My vote for the worst is COBOL.

What? You don't like English? COBOL was my first language professionally. It's very easy to maintain. Many large corporations still have millions of lines of COBOL code running perfectly every day.

[DGM]

I also started in COBOL (toml_12953 and I are almost the same age, according to his bio). As Master Po from the old Kung Fu series might say, COBOL is not the worst programming language, Grace Hopper (see what I did there?). The worst language is the one in which the programs are hardest to maintain.

Where I worked, I was maintaining code full of GOTO statements and labels for data and code which were named for the programmer, his wife, his friends and enemies, and there was little or no documentation. COBOL allowed (and encouraged) long descriptive names (they called it self-documenting). When we wrote new code, there were several steps to the process. Step one was documentation: what the program was for, what data it used, inputs and outputs and report design. That was after the program was requested and approved, and all the documentation had to be approved as well.

In 1982, there was an input program I had to write and I noticed that one input was a date. The program could only accept inputs in a range between one year before and six months after the date in a header record for the file. We used two-digit years in the code, and that bothered me. So with my boss's permission, I made my input program Y2K compatible. We ended up not using it up to 2000, but only because we bought a new system with prewritten input programs, in the late 1990s.

[Xorand]

In 1994, I was contacted by someone to write some new code under contract as a side gig. It was in the general field I had already been working in. For ease of development, I chose Visual Basic (at the time, version 4.0). The initial system was running on Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and 386/486 based hardware.

In 1998, the software was a full-fledged product for the company, so they hired me to continue development in-house. The software moved forward to VB5, then VB6 over time. The product continued to grow. I never leveraged much of any of the rudimentary OOP constructs available in the language. Others that came along to work on it eventually broke some areas down into classes, broke some code out into DLLs, etc.

In 2009, I was still working on and supporting the product. The small company I was working for got bought out by a larger concern and merged all the key players (me being the first and original development team employee) into our largest competitor. The competitor picked up our product and started pushing it for existing customer upgrades and new system installations.

In 2015, my colleagues and I undertook a rewrite of the entire system in a more modern programming language (C#.NET). A few customers are now running that system, but the majority are still running the VB6 version. I still support, and add new features to, the VB6-based system to this day.

[BruceH]

(11-22-2021 09:29 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  

(11-22-2021 08:41 PM)KeithB Wrote:  I could not view it because I do not have a YouTube Account.

You don't need a YT account (which is actually a google account) to view this, or most other videos there. In fact, don't sign-in when you go there, unless you want to help google make $ advertising to you...

With that kind of attitude ... you'll definitely be interested in FreeTube :-)

[rprosperi]

(11-30-2021 11:21 PM)BruceH Wrote:  

(11-22-2021 09:29 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  You don't need a YT account (which is actually a google account) to view this, or most other videos there. In fact, don't sign-in when you go there, unless you want to help google make $ advertising to you...

With that kind of attitude ... you'll definitely be interested in FreeTube :-)

News to me, thanks Bruce!

Anything that slows to voracious vacuum that is google, needs to be checked-out!

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(11-30-2021 11:21 PM)BruceH Wrote:  ... you'll definitely be interested in FreeTube

I was curious and installed it on my Mac (not because I'm scared of using YouTube but because FreeTube claims to be able to download the videos in a variety of formats) thereby overriding quite a few security concerns my computer had about it. Unfortunately it consistently crashes within the first second of playing any video.

Regards
Max

[Marc van Lemmen]

(11-25-2021 07:54 PM)toml_12953 Wrote:  

(11-25-2021 02:46 PM)John Smitherman Wrote:  My vote for the worst is COBOL.

What? You don't like English? COBOL was my first language professionally. It's very easy to maintain. Many large corporations still have millions of lines of COBOL code running perfectly every day.

Cobol was also my first language professionally (Cobol74 +/- 30 years) and I've always found it an easy language. In my opinion not the worst programming language ever.

[mfleming]

(11-25-2021 07:54 PM)toml_12953 Wrote:  

(11-25-2021 02:46 PM)John Smitherman Wrote:  My vote for the worst is COBOL.

What? You don't like English? COBOL was my first language professionally. It's very easy to maintain. Many large corporations still have millions of lines of COBOL code running perfectly every day.

If you want to knock a highly verbose language (as opposed to a highly succinct language like APL, which I adore) nothing beats ATLAS. See its Wikipedia entry here. The language is meant to reflect the specification style found in a mil-spec Test Requirements Document or TRD (pronounced "turd" by all those involved). Early in my career I spent many months in front of an HP1000 terminal pounding out lines and lines of code like

Code:


010200  APPLY, AC SIGNAL, VOLTAGE-PP 7.5V, FREQ 3 KHZ, CNX HI=P1-1 $

010300  VERIFY, (VOLTAGE-AV INTO 'VAVG'), AC SIGNAL, VOLTAGE-PP RANGE 64V TO 1V, SAMPLE-WIDTH 10MSEC, 
          SYNC-VOLTAGE 2 MAX 5, SYNC-NEG-SLOPE, MAX-TIME 0.5, GO-TO-STEP 400 IF GO, LL 0.5 UL 50, 
          CNX HI=P2-4 LO=P2-5, SYNC HI=P2-8 LO=P2-5 $

Like parens in Lisp, ATLAS was comma comma comma. Mind numbing. Absolutely mind numbing.

[BruceH]

(12-01-2021 04:30 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  Hello!

(11-30-2021 11:21 PM)BruceH Wrote:  ... you'll definitely be interested in FreeTube

I was curious and installed it on my Mac (not because I'm scared of using YouTube but because FreeTube claims to be able to download the videos in a variety of formats) thereby overriding quite a few security concerns my computer had about it. Unfortunately it consistently crashes within the first second of playing any video.

I realise this doesn't help but I've not had any crashes playing videos on my Mac Mini.

[DGM]

Another programming language I used in my job, along with COBOL, was called UPG. It was NCR’s version of IBM RPG, a Report Program Generator, with the U standing for Universal I think. We called it the Universal Paper Generator because it tended to generate a lot of blank pages when you made a mistake. It was based on certain characters in certain columns of punch cards and was a very quick-and-dirty way to make reports from databases.

I don’t know where UPG and RPG rank in the “worst” category, but requiring things in certain columns might give it some impetus in that direction. Also, dropping and scattering your deck of unnumbered punch cards was something we all had to put up with.

[KeithB]

(12-02-2021 12:37 PM)DGM Wrote:  Also, dropping and scattering your deck of unnumbered punch cards was something we all had to put up with.

A little late for the advice, but at the CalTech computer center, they would always put a diagonal swipe with a marker along the top of the deck to assist when you drop all the cards.

[BruceH]

(12-02-2021 02:20 PM)KeithB Wrote:  

(12-02-2021 12:37 PM)DGM Wrote:  Also, dropping and scattering your deck of unnumbered punch cards was something we all had to put up with.

A little late for the advice, but at the CalTech computer center, they would always put a diagonal swipe with a marker along the top of the deck to assist when you drop all the cards.

I heard a story of a programmer who worked at a place where the nightshift operators had hit upon a wheeze whereby they would occasionally "accidentally" drop the cards of a long-running job, so it couldn't be submitted and they could go home early.

This was very irritating to the programmer because he lost a day due to no run and he had to re-assemble the deck. The solution turned out to be simple: provide two copies of the deck - dropping one is an accident, dropping two is ... :-)

[floppy]

My view: what is perhaps the most interesting and less interesting? what language has or had the highest "erotic" factor?

RPN: I like. This is like using latinum in the modern time (I met already an astrophysician who was writing his PHD in latinum; that was interesting; so the "latinum" touch is still a factor moving people on eartrh). Several use cases identified.

BASIC: never interested (only few tries few weeks/month ago on an HP71)

FORTH: I am interested and will act on an HP71. Use cases in sight.

PASCAL: interesting but quite quick overpassed by C. Only few exercise at engineering school.

TURBO BASIC: Borlan one with similarity to Pascal. Was interesting in using recursive functions for calculating sound waves reflections in water in a laboratory for defense research. Stayed at a single project.

FORTRAN: A must since I was developping CAD applications few years ago and modifying a preprocessor of a finite element simulator in an university (single project). Not bad. Moving to other languages was not painfull (FORTRAN was not a deep love story for me).

C: linked to FORTRAN programs was a good modern exercise. Never came to an industrial use.

Python: very interesting due to the large libraries and GUI which can be made with it (my interest was in PyGtk, TKinter and MATPLOTLIB and math and panda etc.). Productive use case found.

PROLOG: interesting for dynamic database implementation. As knowledge system: one application defined in a privat project. More to come especially in knowledge representation.

HASKELL: to come (I have to buy a book first; no use case identified)

C++ & JAVA: used during some programming training. Never used in a productive environment.

Sorry for the community: BASIC had my lowest interest.
Others are interesting and it depend of the targetted use case.
I will just take it where I think it suit at best.

Remark: I am not programming at work. Just a side private activity since several years.