Our first encounters with programming languages and computers

MHirsch

HZPiano 10 print "something is wrong"

20 goto 10

basic??? 😃 my first foreign language! 😃

HZPiano

MHirsch

CyberGene

MacMacMac

🤔

Well, in order of appearance, my foreign languages were:

Dutch (after something primal like da-da-da)
English
German and French
BASIC
6510 machine code
6502 machine code
Z80 machine code
Some AI/Expert System language that I forgot the name of
C
C++

I may well have forgotten one or two and certainly have forgotten query- and scripting languages.

What has always fascinated me is, when considered at a deep enough level, the similarities between all languages in how the structuring and communicating of concepts, ideas, processes takes place.

Am I still on topic? Hmmm… not really oops 😲.

Cheers and happy communicating,

PS MacMacMac , I did first learn BASIC from a book that described it all through the use of such a teletype machine, before I had an actual home computer of my own. But never touched a teletype (did mainframe terminals, though).

CyberGene

BASIC was also my first programming language when I was 9 years old in 1988. It was the default environment of a Pravetz-82 computer, basically a Bulgarian Apple ][ copy with a 6502 CPU.

MacMacMac

Me, too. It was BASIC on an HP mini-computer system at college in 1972.
I did a kinetics simulation in BASIC as a class project.
A friend of mine did a football game simulator.

Both were done on the old, slow ASR-33 Teletype machines. Like this one:

Rhodes74

MacMacMac Both were done on the old, slow ASR-33 Teletype machines. Like this one:

Ha, teletype, what a comfort!
I had to punch hollerith cards with fortran code before access to the modern stuff was granted.
And no, i am not that old – it was in the mid-eighties.

The processor was a storey-filling bunch of mainframes: A giant CYBER 76 with two smaller siblings.
Talking languages, basic was totally frowned upon – real coders spoke assembler, algol68 and pascal.

-Rhodes74

MacMacMac

HZPiano Dutch (after something primal like da-da-da)
English
German and French
BASIC
6510 machine code
6502 machine code
Z80 machine code
Some AI/Expert System language that I forgot the name of
C
C++

As long as we're going overboard:

English
French
BASIC
8080 assembly
Z80 assembly
Fortran ... just a wee bit
6800 assembly
Prolog ... just a wee bit
sh/ksh/bash
PHP
C
C++ ... just a wee bit
SQL

Now that I'm old and retired I speak only these:

English

I expect that in a few years I'll add some new languages:

drool
snore
burp

QuasiUnaFantasia

My first BASIC programming experience was on an early Casio GP Celviano prototype: the PB-100. My version had the enormous 2 kB memory enlargement. The sky truly was the limit.

I still have it. 😀

SouthPark

QuasiUnaFantasia Does it still work? The LCD can pack up after a while ….. as in the material goes off. Or the lcd elements get glitchy. Will be awesome if still works like new.

MHirsch

At school, we had those:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronika_BK

I had such a great fun reprogramming the functional keys 😃

HZPiano

MacMacMac Prolog

Hey! That's the one I forgot the name of!

Cheers and a happy memory lane,

SouthPark

Sharp pc-1211 was probably the first 'computer' I used. And maybe the second was something like ZX80, and ZX81. Like many - basic was the first language - then later, the usual eg. assembly language, fortran, pascal, C, C++. I learned some TCL syntax to help program 'IRC' 'bots' for doing some fun stuff on 'irc channels' hehe. That was good. The graphical programming stuff - eg Labview - can be handy sometimes. A fairly long time ago, I set up a well-known brute force soduku solving process in Labview, - for fun. Works great, and still got it hanging around here somewhere hehe. And some other spin-off languages - eg. python (etc) too. Very handy.

First language - basic. Wonderful.

Frédéric L

Successively:

BASIC (ZX81)
Z80 assembly
8086 assembly
FORTH
Turbo-Pascal
C/C++
SQL
FORTRAN (not found of it... One could have surprised me to transpile into C and discover what I have written meant)
Perl
Postscript
Java
JavaScript (only because it is the only script language handled natively by navigators... but I plan to try transpiler like js_of_ocaml)
Python
Haskell (I have not perseverated... a 100% pure functionnal language which makes some easy tasks complicated)
OCaml (I am quite found of this language, high-level but efficient)

There is also a bit of Visual Basic (Excel macros), and a well knowlegde of language M (PowerQuery). Also some php, but only because it is handy with a Web server.

Frédéric L

Rhodes74 Talking languages, basic was totally frowned upon

Sure, a language where we don’t have custom types, especially “struct”, where procedures were not called by their name but by their line number… and worse, not structured (happy usage of GOTO)… what could we do seriously with it ?

In ALGOL 68 one could write “MODE LIST = REF NODE;MODE NODE = STRUCT (INT h, LIST t);” and defines a linked list.

I find amazing that in the 80’, home computers where shipped with a BASIC which was more than 10 years late.

MacMacMac

Rhodes74 I had to punch hollerith cards with fortran code before access to the modern stuff was granted.

Oh yeah? Well I had to connect to the computer over a 110 baud modem. The kind where you had to place the phone handset on top of the modem. And that only after I carried the Teletype uphill in the snow for ten miles on my way to the data center.

So there! 😜

QuasiUnaFantasia

SouthPark I haven't turned it on for years, so I couldn't say.

Rhodes74

MacMacMac

So touching, some people are just too bad. To send you out into the first april snow…

-Rhodes74

bSharpCyclist

Basic in Junior high school was my first exposure to programming. I have programmed in so many languages since. Today with the power of GPT, I program in English, my new favorite programming language.

HZPiano

And…

This is the first computer I ever touched and boy oh boy, that encounter had serious consequences for much of my life so far. I never owned one, it was an acquaintance's study machine.

It is a Tandy TRS-80 clone with built-in keyboard and cassette recorder (which would store your programs and data -- the poor man's floppy drive). A monochrome monitor or a TV set could be used as it's screen.

Had they existed at the time, I reckon you could have bought an ES920, FP-90, or Numa X GT for its price.

Cheers and happy perspective,

Johnstaf

I didn't start programming until my 20s. My first was Basic, but I didn't do a lot with it before jumping into C++.

In college I learnt Lisp. As an undergrad my college sent me to Stanford to do a course in algorithmic composition, and Lisp was used there as well. I also studied what was then known as AI with Lisp, as I was interested in David Cope's work in AI and music. I met him when I was a postgrad, but I dropped out and haven't programmed since.

SouthPark

Johnstaf Nice ….. I like the tower at Stanny. Fantastic view up there …. the lookout. I gave a talk at Ginzton lab there once ….. many moons/suns ago. I remember indian type totem poles as well.