Learning a new progamming language...

[oreissig]

I dispute those languages are the currrent lingua franca of programming unless you are talking about *NIX based computing.

that's right, but when you consider the prevalence of unix-based systems in the whole world of computing, that's basically a logical conclusion to make. Of course there are still isolated niches like IBM Mainframes and they do important business and they do a whole lot of business transactions, by far the largest part of serious computation takes place on somehow unix-like systems

[porter]

Nope and I dispute those languages are the currrent lingua franca of programming unless you are talking about *NIX based computing.

I would point out that C is used on very many *non* UNIX/POSIX systems. It is used in embedded systems with no OS at all, all versions of windows including Windows CE etc, BeOS, OS/2, DOS, Amiga/OS, PalmOS, macintosh classic and can be used on many IBM systems including OS/400 etc.

It's rather like C is the Cheddar in Monty Python's Cheese Shop sketch.

[porter]

Java is more prevalent on mobile, probably 95% of all phones especially since the last major C++ phone platform (Nokia) went away and even in embedded Java has displaced C, and C will never regain the popularity it had there.

I wasn't aware that the iPhone and iPad used Java. It's counted as optional for Lion.

[oreissig]

if you count cheap featurephones with JavaME, then almost all phones ship with java. when you consider how many of these featurephones actually run some form of application, JavaME is alive and kicking just like TurboPascal...
iOS and WP7 don't involve Java, but Android and the old Blackberry-OS are thoroughly based on it, so it's a mixed bag...important yes, 95% no

[Oskar45]

I mean do you really want to write GUI apps or a data base engine in brainf**k?

No, but playing with Unlambda is great fun still [I've written interpreters in ML, Haskell and Hope, as well]

Anyway, I trust everyone on here is fluent in C/C++ [the current lingua franca of programming?]

Nope and I dispute those languages are the currrent lingua franca of programming unless you are talking about *NIX based computing

I beg to differ. AFAIK, most open source code available today is written in C/C++ [q.v. SourceForge]. With a decent ANSI C compiler you can get it running on quite a few platforms, not just on *NIX based boxes. I gave up programming Windows in the early '80. z/Arch assembler source is rather rare today - I don't think too many care about it anyhow. And Java is junk.

PS: As you are obviously not really friendly with regards to Unix, I sure hope you have the UNIX Barf Bag at hand, now do you?

[PymbleSoftware]

I mean do you really want to write GUI apps or a data base engine in brainf**k?

No, but playing with Unlambda is great fun still [I've written interpreters in ML, Haskell and Hope, as well]

Anyway, I trust everyone on here is fluent in C/C++ [the current lingua franca of programming?]

Nope and I dispute those languages are the currrent lingua franca of programming unless you are talking about *NIX based computing

I beg to differ. AFAIK, most open source code available today is written in C/C++ [q.v. SourceForge]. With a decent ANSI C compiler you can get it running on quite a few platforms, not just on *NIX based boxes. I gave up programming Windows in the early '80. z/Arch assembler source is rather rare today - I don't think too many care about it anyhow. And Java is junk.

Oskar, you don't have to defend that position - the first page, 3rd post of this topic, there link to current rankings of languages used by some survey. I suggest you gave up Windows Programming in the early 90s when Windows3.1 came out, 1980s was DOS and was the first widespread available release... and yes, Java is junk. "Your code is bad, it crashes the JVM..." "Oh really, I have to code in such a way that I have protect the infrastructure from itself..?? oh wow.. what a step forward". If crashing JVMs is not a problem explain products like Azul systems ZingJVM (also junk, IMHO).

R.

[Oskar45]

Oskar, you don't have to defend that position - the first page, 3rd post of this topic, there link to current rankings of languages used by some survey. I suggest you gave up Windows Programming in the early 90s when Windows3.1 came out
R.

Thanks, Pymble. But, no, I'd started Windows Programming with 3.0 [although at that time Windows had already existed for a couple of years on the fringe of the DOS world]...

[porter]

But, no, I'd started Windows Programming with 3.0 [although at that time Windows had already existed for a couple of years on the fringe of the DOS world]...

I started Windows 1.0 programming in 1987 with Microsoft C 3.0.

Now we're back to those tiled windows with Metro.

[PymbleSoftware]

I was still doing work on TSX-11, VMS, DOS, Concurrent DOS, MP/M-86 (*) and XEMIX in that era, No idead even Windows existed until early 1990s whenI I was building 386 and 486s PCs at a small shop.

R.

* and a few other things I don't clearly recall. There was all kinds of (often weird) DOS clones which were multi-user over thick ethernet and stuff.. Its all so long ago now and everything has changed so much. Other things like NeXT were completely absent and university still had a DECsystem-10 with teletypes...

[skywriter]

But, no, I'd started Windows Programming with 3.0 [although at that time Windows had already existed for a couple of years on the fringe of the DOS world]...

I started Windows 1.0 programming in 1987 with Microsoft C 3.0.

Now we're back to those tiled windows with Metro.

ugh, i'll never code for windows. i'll hire someone else to do it. someone with windows "principle windows flunky" experience.

[silicium]

Does anybody know APL? I heard once about it from a retired mechanical engineering business owner who used it before the age of graphics CAD.

[guardian452]

I mean do you really want to write GUI apps or a data base engine in brainf**k?

No, but playing with Unlambda is great fun still [I've written interpreters in ML, Haskell and Hope, as well]

I use xmonad on my openbsd laptop (P1mmx 233mhz toshiba). It is a lovely experience. xmonad is written in haskell (and must be configured in haskell, which is the only exposure I've had before/since to the language...)

At the time tiling managers were becoming popular and DWM was all the rage in my circles. But I could never get over the incredibly arrogant attitude of the DWM community enough to use it. From their main page "keeps its userbase small and elitist. No novices asking stupid questions." As a novice user I quickly ran away to xmonad

PS: As you are obviously not really friendly with regards to Unix, I sure hope you have the UNIX Barf Bag at hand, now do you?

I have mine, top left desk drawer!

[hamei]

Does anybody know APL? I heard once about it from a retired mechanical engineering business owner who used it before the age of graphics CAD.

Funny you should mention that ... I had APL/2 for a while, played with it a little. APL will do graphical CAD, there was a guy who was creating spiral bevel surfaces with APL, must have been about 1990 ? And there is an Irix version of APL also, came from Morgan-Stanley I believe. I have it somewhere if you can't find it. Interesting system. Does it still hold the record for "most undecipherable code ever" ?

[Adrenaline]

I started with QBasic at 9, moved up to Visual Basic a few years later and kinda got stuck in that rut for longer than I wanted. It wasn't until I was 13-14 I started picking up C and diving through the Doom source code and picked up C++ in High School through free time/high school classes. Got into PHP and MySQL at 17, got really advanced in it in my free time to the point where I got a professional PHP/Oracle job based on a CMS I built from scratch at 21.

Since then it's been mainly C# (WinForms/WPF/WCF/ASP.NET/MonoTouch/WP7) and MS SQL Server, with an occasional PHP script here or there. But I have been diving into IronPython the last week or two.

Been debating on whether or not to get back into C++ since a bunch of jobs I have been looking through are C#/C++, which I found kind of interesting. To be honest I've gotten very used to C# handling as much as it does.

[Oskar45]

Does anybody know APL? I heard once about it from a retired mechanical engineering business owner who used it before the age of graphics CAD.

Funny you should mention that ... I had APL/2 for a while, played with it a little. APL will do graphical CAD, there was a guy who was creating spiral bevel surfaces with APL, must have been about 1990 ? And there is an Irix version of APL also, came from Morgan-Stanley I believe. I have it somewhere if you can't find it. Interesting system. Does it still hold the record for "most undecipherable code ever" ?

Irix binaries for Morgan-Stanley's A+ are available at http://www.aplusdev.org/Download/index.html; the source [compiles nicely] can be downloaded as well.

In the late 1970s I worked for both of the then most important APL providers, I. P. Sharp Sharp APL and STSC APL*PLUS, and at my next working place IBM's APL2 - not APL/2 - was used until the mid-1990s when C was taking over slowly.

BTW, I still have the IBM PC APL2 version running on my HP 200LX - not the fastest thing around, but possibly the smallest APL machine there is

Regarding "most undecipherable code ever" - of course, I'm biased, but I'd much more difficulties with J, though...