What Was Your First Programming Language?

[Dave Frederickson]

Inspired by "did anyone ever program in RPG?".

What was your first programming language?

Mine was BASIC running on a PDP-8I and TSS-8. It was a newly offered class in high school and lab time was limited so I was granted unsupervised weekend access. Kinda special at the time.

Dave

[Didier Lachieze]

RPN on the HP-25

[Garth Wilson]

In different categories:
Fortran IV in college in 1978
TI-58c calculator in Dec 1981
6502 assembly language in 1982

[bshoring]

RPN on the HP-41CV 1981
Basic on the HP-71B 1984

Bob

[Paul Berger (Canada)]

WATFIV FORTRAN 1978 in college we where a small campus and did not have our own computer, so our programs where submitted as RJE jobs to an IBM mainframe and we got back the results the next morning. We started with mark sense cards, which is very cumbersome, but discovered that the business department had a couple keypunch machines so we started punching cards instead.

[BobVA]

- HP-55 RPN, as extracted from the sales brochures. As a high-school student I couldn't afford the calculator, but it was fun to play with on paper! And I had a nice stack of stuff to try when I got an HP-25 a few years later.

- First "real" programming was Z80 machine code on a friend's TRS-80 Model I. Thanks to the RPN exposure it was pretty easy to pick up.

Bob

[W.B.Grant]

FORTRAN on a CDC mainframe in uni. in 1975.
I was fortunate enough to have an IBM 039 card punch to work on.

[jebem]

On handheld calculators: HP-67 in 1977.

On general purpose computers: DATASAAB D16 Assembly and COBOL74 in 1979.

On scientific computers: WANG 2200 PCS-II BASIC in 1981.

On micro-computers: 8080 Assembly in 1978 and Z80 Assembly in 1984.

On micro-controllers: Intel MCS-51 8031 Assembly and PL/M in 1986.

[Marcus von Cube]

Wang BASIC (I don't now the model or version) in 1975 at a friend's evening school was my very first exposure to programming.

A TI SR-56 was my first programmable calculator, later followed by a TI-59.

In university (1978 ff) we used the WATFIV FORTRAN compiler on an IBM /360. Input was on punched cards, output on paper the next day.

My first personal computer was a TRS-80 clone (EACA Video Genie) on which I started with Level II BASIC (Microsoft) and went on with Z80 assembly language.

Today most of my work is done in ABAP-OO on a Netweaver 7.4 BW system.

[Dave Frederickson]

That brings up a secondary question. What do we call the language of our calculators? RPN is the notation and "keystroke" is the method, but what's the language?

Dave

[parse]

well, basic on Apple II : I was 16 years old and my dad was a teacher, so (in 1982) I used to trained myself with other teachers every saturdays at school. I remember the error BEEP that my father's colleagues generate during programming...
One year later, and because (again) of my dad teaching work, I bought a junior computer made by elektor and started learning 6502 assembly language. One month later, I knew more than dad on that. Then I forgot learning maths... strange, isn't it ? More focused on computers than on what motivated the use of computers. I think that in my early years, I was most interested in "driving" computers as machines able to do my wills than tools supporting my aims... Now I love HP41's... and maths ! But I'm convinced that maths should be teached differently for different brains...

[TASP]

{please don't laugh}

{seriously}


My first was SNOBOL and it ran on an IBM 370.


{OK, now, I mean it, NO laughing}


and, yes, I used a key punch to punch cards.


{ok, please, I know it's hysterical, but you're hurting my feelings}


and somewhere in the house, I still have the cards.

[Dave Frederickson]

(07-03-2015 09:10 PM)TASP Wrote:  My first was SNOBOL and it ran on an IBM 370.

Another tangent. Obscure programming languages.

Being from Southern California I'm partial to VALGOL, but I find Whitespace interesting, too. Methods of writing unmaintainable code is quite fun to read.

Dave

[Don Shepherd]

(07-03-2015 09:27 PM)Dave Frederickson Wrote:  

(07-03-2015 09:10 PM)TASP Wrote:  My first was SNOBOL and it ran on an IBM 370.

Another tangent. Obscure programming languages.

Being from Southern California I'm partial to VALGOL, but I find Whitespace interesting, too. Methods of writing unmaintainable code is quite fun to read.

Dave

When I first heard of the programming language Haskell, I thought it had to be a joke based on the Eddie Haskell character (who you just loved to hate) of Leave It To Beaver fame. But it turns out it has nothing to do with him.

[Paul Berger (Canada)]

(07-03-2015 09:27 PM)Dave Frederickson Wrote:  

(07-03-2015 09:10 PM)TASP Wrote:  My first was SNOBOL and it ran on an IBM 370.

Another tangent. Obscure programming languages.

Being from Southern California I'm partial to VALGOL, but I find Whitespace interesting, too. Methods of writing unmaintainable code is quite fun to read.

Dave

For obscure how about APL, I do have a complete APL system for PC and dabbled with it a little. It can be used to write some wonderfully obscure code, in fact there used to be a regular obfuscated code competition to write the most complex single line of APL code. For those not familiar with Ken Iverson's baby it uses a set of single character symbols instead of key words and it is possible to cram a great deal of code into a single line.

During the approximately 4 years before my escape from professional programming, I was granted to opportunity to maintain code that was written by others, and I believe the quote attributed to Napoleon at the top of the recommended reading above to be most often the cause of the awful code I had dumped on me. I have little formal programming training but I do know awful code when I see it, and my short experience with professional programming strengthened the notion that skill does not necessarily follow education.

[Dave Frederickson]

(07-03-2015 11:56 PM)Paul Berger (Canada) Wrote:  For obscure how about APL ...

Ah, A Programming Language. In high school we used to sneak over to the community college where they taught APL and play Hamurabi on the Selectric terminals.

(07-03-2015 10:15 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  When I first heard of the programming language Haskell, I thought it had to be a joke based on the Eddie Haskell character (who you just loved to hate) of Leave It To Beaver fame.

Then came Eddie Haskell 2.0. You're probably are more familiar with it by it's codename, The Fonz.

[Herman]

Talking about obscure. My first "language" was machine code for a computer called Bi-Tran Six. Don't remember anything about it now 45 years later.
Second was FORTRAN over teletype machine from high school to University.
Third was machine language for 1802 microcomputer.

[BobVA]

(07-03-2015 10:15 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  When I first heard of the programming language Haskell, I thought it had to be a joke based on the Eddie Haskell character (who you just loved to hate) of Leave It To Beaver fame. But it turns out it has nothing to do with him.

I was expecting the compiler to generate messages like: "May I say your source code is looking particularly optimized today? Any compiler would certainly be fortunate to have a programmer gifted as as you writing for it."

I'm pretty sure I saw a chess program written in one line of APL. It was the ultimate quick hack language and still has features I miss (like effortless scalar / vector math).

[rprosperi]

(07-03-2015 05:51 PM)Dave Frederickson Wrote:  What was your first programming language?

Mine was BASIC running on a PDP-8I and TSS-8. It was a newly offered class in high school and lab time was limited so I was granted unsupervised weekend access. Kinda special at the time.

Dave

Focal (very similar to Basic) on a PDP-8 in 1974 in High School.

(07-03-2015 08:38 PM)Dave Frederickson Wrote:  That brings up a secondary question. What do we call the language of our calculators? RPN is the notation and "keystroke" is the method, but what's the language?

Dave

For the 41, the term FOCAL was coined (Forty One CAlculator Language) and used by many, but not all, fans.

In 28/48/49/50, the language was called RPL with several famous stories of what it stands for, though Bill Wickes did admit Reverse Polish Lisp was the real version. Of course there are UserRPL and SystemRPL variants.

No idea what the "language" in the 38/39/40 series was called, if anything. Anyone know?

And of course Prime has HP PPL.

[Katie Wasserman]

(07-04-2015 03:08 AM)BobVA Wrote:  I'm pretty sure I saw a chess program written in one line of APL. It was the ultimate quick hack language and still has features I miss (like effortless scalar / vector math).

It's quite amazing what can be done in one line of APL, in college I used to love doing this. I remember playing and trying to modify a Star Trek game in APL that was just a few lines. Chess in one line, why not! Of course this was a write-only language, totally impossible to read, even your own code. the next day.

In the part of the real world where I work, a firm called Security APL (then Checkfree APL, now Fiserv) is the leading high volume portfolio accounting software. As the name implies it was written in APL way back when and it's still is in APL as far as I know. (They only sell it as a service with remote access, so I haven't gotten to look under the covers in a while.) Frankly it's a horribly archaic system but for a long time it was much faster than anything else so it gained market share and became the defacto standard and it still rules for high volume accounting.

Here's a weird discussion about APL's use: http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftwa...ost=160150