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stranger
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OP
stranger
Joined: Aug 2008
Posts: 6 |
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Joined: Feb 2008
Posts: 1,067
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Feb 2008
Posts: 1,067 |
I'm old enough to remember COBOL. I even learned some of it in the dim dark past Along with RPG and FORTRAN, though I don't remember any now.
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526 |
I made a point, when I was still a student, of writing exactly one program in COBOL. It was not painless. I also wrote a few programs in other now-defunct languages. There was a great short story in an old edition of some generic computer magazine ("Datamation", perhaps?). The story was called "Privacy and the Gray Haired Programmer." Anyway, it was about this old guy who was being forced into retirement by younger bosses who considered him obsolete. He goes back to his office and issues a single query of the computer that corrupts the entire database. Nobody can fix it, but him. A few weeks later, his notice has been revoked and his boss has gotten Das Boot. He didn't put in the bugs. He simply found them and noted them. Whenever the issue of his forced retirement would arise, he'd make another query.
I'd sure love to find that story. Wish I could remember where I read it.
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Joined: Jul 2005
Posts: 1,773
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jul 2005
Posts: 1,773 |
Hell, I am so old I remember writing a simple program in Basic
dalehileman
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jan 2002
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My first programs were in BASIC on a pdp8/e (marketed as EDUSYSTEM 25). Nowadays I still write some of my programs in VB and VBA (Visual Basic and Visual Basic for Applications). The development of BASIC was a seminal event in computing. It served a very different role than COBOL or FORTRAN.
FORTRAN = Formula Translation = computer language for solving problems in engineering and science.
COBOL = COmmon Business Oriented Language = computer language for solving business oriented problems (banking, finance, etc.)
BASIC = Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code = language conceived as a very simple way to get people computing who did not have advanced degrees in math or engineering.
Each of these is a "General Purpose Programming Language." In theory, a program written in any of them could be rewritten using the other languages. In practice, each of them has certain kinds of things that they are adapted to. Early versions of FORTRAN had very primitive ways of handling text data, but often came with extensive libraries for doing statistics and scientific computation. BASIC was passably good at many things and was easy to use. Since early versions were interpreted (instead of compiled), it was easy to get into a development rhythm, but the code executed much more slowly. COBOL was an inherently good security mechanism as most hackers would not spend two seconds trying to figure it out - and would not brag about it, if they did.
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Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,290
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,290 |
pdp8/e
This was the second computer I used in '73 or so in the math department at a local community college. Shortly before, I had gone to the Lawrence Hall of Science to use their (first model) HP 3000. I mainly used BASIC on both of them. BASIC was developed at Dartmouth in the mid-60s. FORTRAN was developed in the mid-50s by IBM. COBOL, also from IBM, was from the late '50s. One language also from '59 or so that is still in serious use around the world is LISP. Though most of my coding these days is in Java, I still prefer Common Lisp (the ANSI standard): a beautiful, elegant, and well-designed language. All other programming languages have been trying to get where Lisp was 40 years ago.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
One language also from '59 or so that is still in serious use around the world is LISP... All other programming languages have been trying to get where Lisp was 40 years ago. or 50 years -- time flies like a programming language. - joe ('58 was a good year) friday
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526 |
pdp8/e
I still prefer Common Lisp (the ANSI standard): a beautiful, elegant, and well-designed language. I've written a few programs in LISP, the most complicated being a theorem-prover (for an AI course), but I've never used it on the job. (Other than some trivial stuff in emacs, which I no longer use.)
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Joined: Nov 2007
Posts: 390
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Nov 2007
Posts: 390 |
I don't know much about any of these but I did enjoy reading the geek artillery barrages in the comments on that article.
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Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 155
member
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member
Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 155 |
I've been wondering, does the learning of a computer programming language feel like it is intensively using the brain region(s) intensively used in learning linguistics? We learn a great deal about spoken and written language before even considering studying a computer programming language, so determining from personal experience, without scientific experimentation or observation, whether linguistics aptitude and computer programming aptitude coincide at their neurological basis or bases may be difficult or impossible.
There may some day be multi-color images of brain activity during every conceivable type of learning, and the likes of me won't need to ask questions like the one I just asked.
I might could phrase the above better—and I may try—but I don't know that I could change it much for better or worse. Let's see; there are programmers about; which one should I lay this on. Actually, anyone who finds anything in what I've said to address may do so, with no need of my permission.
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