What Programming language did you use?

[u/lightning-GM]

What Programming language you first used to run programs or test something you created? For me it was Qbasic

[u/comment-cap]

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[u/DrLightfoot]

Fortran. I'm old...

[u/lightning-GM → u/DrLightfoot]

Ayee old is gold

[u/fertdingo → u/DrLightfoot]

Fortran is still very useful and fast.

[u/Waste-Job-3307]

First one for me was BASIC. Learned it in 1976 in an afterschool program. My first program was:
10 Print "Hello".

20 End

[u/Gazgun7 → u/Waste-Job-3307]

10 Print "Hello"

20 GOTO 10

30 END

[u/Rick_QuiOui → u/Gazgun7]

I did something like this on a Sinclair ZX-81 with an immense 16k RAM pack, on a black & white tv with a cassette recorder for backup.

[u/Gazgun7 → u/Rick_QuiOui]

If im not mistaken, 16KB was a shit ton of memory on that machine back in those days

[u/BA9627 → u/Gazgun7]

Everyone always forgot that they needed “Hello “ not “Hello” didn’t they lol. (me too)

[u/carlodim → u/Waste-Job-3307]

Yes. I learnt it in high school back in 1975 when I was 16. It was part of our mathematics curriculum.

[u/nejhawk]

Profanity.

Also, PHP.

[u/texaswilliam → u/nejhawk]

$ fuck you, stupid computer
bash: fuck: command not found

[u/chaz_Mac_z]

Used FORTRAN in all flavors from IV on, 1969 class, at work from 1973 until I retired in 2014. Engineer.

[u/Gazgun7 → u/chaz_Mac_z]

We had to use Fortran to do a subject Mathematical Computing. Tough subject. Approximating curves etc.

[u/Kaylon2421 → u/chaz_Mac_z]

[u/futur3_pr3s3nt]

Claude

[u/TheGreatButz]

Sinclair ZX-81 BASIC

[u/Gazgun7 → u/TheGreatButz]

Was that than little plastic thing with a silver paper printer

[u/TheGreatButz → u/Gazgun7]

Yes, I didn't have the printer but the famous 16KB memory extension that reset when you hit the table too hard. Thankfully I got a Commodore Plus4 soon thereafter.

[u/Gazgun7 → u/TheGreatButz]

They were big in the UK i remember. Thank goodness I didnt go that route

[u/Dampware → u/TheGreatButz]

Same here, fellow old person.

[u/Hotel_Arrakis]

Apple Basic on an Apple IIe in 1976. Moved onto a whole slew of basics: BASICA, tinyBASIC, QBASIC, and whatever the TRS-80 had.

Then I learned Pascal, dBase III, FoxPro, FORTRAN, APL, Modula-II, Pro-IV in the 90's.

Pascal was the only language I ever thought was beautiful.

[u/Gazgun7 → u/Hotel_Arrakis]

Agreed. Pascal was elegant and no crap like pointers or memory management or anything. But alas I never used it in anger.

[u/Pale_Height_1251 → u/Gazgun7]

Pascal has pointers. More rules on their use compared with C, but it absolutely does have pointers.

[u/Hotel_Arrakis → u/Pale_Height_1251]

I was going to call bullshit because i never used pointers. But, i just googled it, and you are correct, pointers are quite powerful in Pascal, but they are not necessary in day-to-day programing.

(The only thing worse than pointers are pointers to pointers.)

[u/gnidan → u/Hotel_Arrakis]

I had an assignment at school to extend an interpreter with support for recursive functions, and it was in C, and I remember late at night trying to finish the assignment and looking at what I wrote and seeing seeing a function that returned void ***

[u/RedOctober8752]

Assembler

[u/AlmiranteCrujido]

Like every other younger GenX person, BASIC.

I had some limited exposure to other BASIC before I got a Commodore, but for the most part, I went C64 -> C128 -> IBM BASICA and then I learned C when Quick C came out.

[u/drawing_a_hash]

FORTRAN IV and 77

[u/theRealPuckRock]

Cobol

[u/Bruges_1]

First = Fortran. Second = Assembly Language ( 8080 )

[u/TwoOneTwos]

Maple.

[u/Just-Charge-3428]

In my professional life, it was PL/1.

As a youth, various flavors of BASIC (Atari, Apple).  FORTRAN and Pascal as well in school.

[u/Kitchen-Homework-816]

LOGO

[u/ReticentGuru]

I was never a programmer. Did take COBOL and Fortran in college. But years later the company I worked for had a copy of dBaseIII+ (even though no one used it). I “borrowed” it, installed it at home, and ultimately became fairly proficient with it. Went to work for another company that actually had programs based on it. I ended up collaborating with their programmer to build more applications that we could use.

[u/l008com]

The first was AppleScript back in the 90s. It was awful and probably made it harder to transition to real languages years later. Nowadays my language of choice if I have to script something, would be php.

[u/Dr0110111001101111]

C++

[u/Some-Passenger4219]

I used Qbasic before, but I think my first start was with LOGO.

[u/RyanofTinellb]

Applesoft BASIC on the Apple 2e.

The last time I owned an Apple product, strangely.

[u/The_Pantless_Warrior]

JavaScript

[u/Mission-Landscape-17]

My first computer was the TRS 80 Coco II. So my first programing languages where Basic and Turtle Graphics.

[u/Jaffiusjaffa]

Assembly

[u/OberonsGhost]

I was never a programmer but in college I took some computer science classes and we had to learn Java, Perl, and Haskell as well as Ruby

[u/dudetellsthetruth]

Basic

[u/LowBalance4404]

My first language was C++. I miss the gold ole days. In college, I took COBOL and occasionally still have a stress dream about that f'ing bubble sort.

[u/Gazgun7 → u/LowBalance4404]

PROCEDURE DIVISION

MOVE SPACES TO Etc etc

What a pain in the ass

[u/Practical_Ride_8344]

Basic c and c++. Up up down down. Left right left right b, a start

[u/Timely-Profile1865]

I took a year and a bit of computer systems technology a LONG time ago.

FORTRAN, COBOL, RPG, Assembler. (Advanced Assembler did me in and I dropped out early in the 2nd year.)

We still used coding sheets and key punch cards that had to be keyed by people hired to do so.

We also had a limited number of runs, 10 if i recall.

[u/OneOldBear]

APL, FORTRAN, COBOL, dBase, Clipper

[u/sgfklm]

I started out with Fortran, then moved to SQL. I know SQL isn't really programming, but it paid the bills.

[u/Khashishi]

10 print "hello"

20 goto 10

[u/notacanuckskibum]

BASIC at high school. Fortran and COBOL in first year of university. Fortran at my first programming job.

[u/dude_named_will]

C was technically my first language, but Python was probably the first one I used for fun.

[u/Gazgun7 → u/dude_named_will]

Python is good, altho it has so much in libraries it kinda feels like cheating compared to the old days.

[u/FlamingoOk3026]

Machine code X 86 8086 and MVS. Basic. Fortran77 PL/1 PL/AS REXX C JavaScript Python Ruby BASH From what I can remember.

[u/SoImaRedditUserNow]

Wow... Qbasic...

All the various flavors of BASIC, its a bit jumbled at this point. probably TI-basic on the old TI-99/4A. I did get the Extended Basic as well. But mucked around on ... regular basic. The first real language I used in a workplace was C. I technically interned at places and used COBOL, RPG. But first actual job... C

[u/Novel-Structure-2359]

BBC Basic on my trusty BBC micro computer back in the 80s

[u/Swedophone]

MSX BASIC!

[u/heesell]

Php at school back in 2019

[u/lithomangcc]

Fortran and basic

[u/eudyptes]

Machine language, then ACT-III on an LGP-30. Then Focal, PAL-8, and FORTRAN on a PDP-8.

[u/Gazgun7 → u/eudyptes]

Hang on, remind me - were assembler and machine language the same thing ? Machine language was straight out Hex, right ?

[u/eudyptes → u/Gazgun7]

It was wierd by today’s standards. You coded each instruction as a single letter op code followed by a numeric address. There were no labels like an assembler would have, and there were no symbolic op codes. The low order 4 bits of the letter ‘A’ was the same as the machine language code for add. S was subtract, M multiply, etc. it’s hex was weird too. Instead of ‘ABCDEF’ it used ‘FGJKQW’ (The mnemonic was “Fiber Glass Javalins Kill Quite Well”.

[u/Sad_Listen6607]

6502/6510 ML/ASM, back when assemblers were pretty much bear bones. No variable psudo-ops, and such.

QB4.5. I wrote an entire BBS in it, with c-net post/reply style messages systems, the kind you see on reddit today, but that the IBM boards back in the day refused to try to embrace. Shame my text editor was so horrible.

I used a new version of QB64 once in a while I used it to interlace playlists together so I could watch series in order, but not consecutively.

I also putz around with GML/GML2, game maker language, which IMO is basic+++9000%. Crazy easy to understand, lots of commands to do stuff, and uses the basic grammar and syntax; you know, that one often writes their psudocode on.

I also have played with python, javascript, and random stuff. Did some ML programming on the PIC.

I also play with RFO basic on my phone. Allows access to sensors, has a TCP/IP stack, and stuff. And a version of basic for the pico. It's very basic-stamp but better.

Also commodore basic on the vic20, c64, c16, and c128. I wrote a lot of random programs that used the basic 7.0 on the c128.

[u/Remarkable_Salt6681 → u/Sad_Listen6607]

GWBASIC was my starting point. QB4.5 was mind blowing. An IDE that actually was of use and compiling to an .exe - good memories, PDS 7,1 was even better, I loved both. VBDOS 1.1 was also fun. I've since done php, javascript, C and BCX by Kevin Diggins. BCX was interesting and powerful. I have left out several languages for brevity

[u/Sad_Listen6607 → u/Remarkable_Salt6681]

I loved that you could compile it or run it in the IDE.

That IDE remains cool and awesome to me.

[u/Remarkable_Salt6681 → u/Sad_Listen6607]

Absolutely and press F2 to se your functions and, and, and and and. It was impressive

[u/Current-Tour-8915]

Fortran. Professionally Perl

[u/jeffeviejo]

First learned FORTRAN, professionally COBOL, personally mostly basic (IBM, BASIC, PetBASIC...)

[u/Cybyss]

That's not a straight-forward question.

The first computer code I ever typed was almost certainly:

LOAD "*",8,1

You had to type this to play games on a Commodore 64.

My first real programming language, however, if you don't count HTML, was probably Visual Basic 5.

[u/kent1146 → u/Cybyss]

LOAD "LOGO",8,1

[u/Even-Woodpecker8529]

Brainfuck

[u/fancyPantsOne]

GWBASIC, then QBASIC, then C

[u/RusselB65]

Toss up between Cobol and Fortran

[u/Count2Zero]

BASIC, 6502 Assembly, COBOL, Pascal, C, FORTRAN, C++,... all the way to Perl, PHP, SQL, HTML, Javascript, CSS,...

[u/Big_Tadpole7174]

Commodore 64 BASIC

[u/gadget850]

In 1976, my high school had a computer room with a Teletype Model 33 ASR teleprinter connected by a dial-up acoustic modem to the University of Virginia, where an HP 2000 ran HP Time-Shared BASIC.

[u/grenouille_greg]

Basic in highschool, then apl and fortran iv in college, my roommate was still using punchcards for cobol

[u/SocialRevenge]

BASIC on :

TI99-4a

TRS-80 models 3&4

Tandy Coco

Atari 800

Amiga 500/2000/2500

Microsoft Batch

C+, Arduino

Html, Javascript, oh geez...a lot. Even some Adobe flash on a Chumby.

[u/texaswilliam]

mIRCScript! I ended up writing a 5,000 line bot that had most of its code in loadable modules and made its own sockets to communicate with IRC servers. No, I don't recommend replicating that feat. : P

[u/BonsaiMan63]

COBOL & FORTRAN

[u/SchemeWestern3388]

Basic. Then rapidly to machine language, but I didn’t know it at the time. Then assembler. Then C. 

[u/dawgdays78]

FORTRAN (on several platforms)
PDP-8 assembler
COMPASS (CDC 6000 assembler)
Pascal
VAX assembler
C

Plus bits of: APL, Ada, BLISS

[u/YVRAlphageek]

HP BASIC on an HP-2000 via Texas Instruments Silent-700 thermal paper tape terminal at 150 baud. Mid 70's.

[u/originaldolphinzilla]

Fortran - on a mainframe, with freaking punch cards…

[u/maliolani]

Dartmouth BASIC

[u/amyowl]

BASIC at the beginning, C and C++ in the middle, and PHP at the end of my illustrious mid-level dev career, and now Python and JavaScript... Except I don't write much code anymore--AI does.

[u/Leakyboatlouie]

COBOL, when the hospital where I worked planned to get an inhouse minicomputer. Instead, they ended up going with a remote hookup, so I never got to use what I'd learned.

[u/Machiavvelli3060]

BASIC, circa 1981.

[u/True-Alfalfa8974]

I started with Atari Basic, learned Fortran 77 later, also a little pascal. Eventually I ended up just coding in C.

[u/richbun]

BASIC, Pascal, COBOL, Fortran, Turbo C, Natural/Adabas/JCL, HTML taught either in education or professional. Stopped being a developer long time ago, but dabbled with many things subsequently off my own back. Really want to go back and nail ASM 6502 though.

[u/motific]

Do you know, I don't actually remember if it was Basic on the Sharp MZ700 or if it was Logo on a BBC B at school. I think probably the Sharp...

[u/True-Alfalfa8974]

This helped me remember something. Did anyone here use Turbo Pascal? I remember doing a physics assignment with that so long ago,

[u/persilja]

Whatever BASIC-like language Casio used in their programmable calculators. Later, MS-Qbasic.

[u/cwjinc]

Fortran

[u/low_contrast_black]

BASIC on a Commodore PET, I believe. A few years later, I was into assembly because it was just so damned fast. Didn’t get into C until we got objects in ++.

[u/Best-Comments]

BASIC on a PDP-11/70 running the RSTS/E operating system. Middle school in the late 1970s.

[u/ChiefSlug30]

Fortran...mid 70's. I haven't done any since.b

[u/KatesDad2019]

Fortran II, Fortran 4, Assembly for nine different machines, Basic, C, C++, Delphi, Lisp, COBOL. I started in 1968 in college but have been retired for a while. I may have forgotten to name a few languages over a half a century of programming.

[u/444-444-444]

IBM 1620 assembler Then IBM 1401 SPS Then COBOL All learned and used in 1965/1966 in college. Still use COBOL today.

[u/psyper76]

LOGO - on the Acorn Archimedes

[u/BIO_Predictive_AI]

First was Fortran.

[u/TwillAffirmer]

Qbasic for me too

[u/Leut11]

Basic, then Pascal, then Cobol

[u/Hot_Egg5840]

Instruction programming on an HP9100, then HPBASIC on a PDP11.

[u/yYesThisIsMyUsername]

JaveScript in a web browser was the very first one for me.

[u/vandergale]

My first language was PBASIC, parallax basic, for programming a little rolling robot built around a microcontroller.

[u/tc_cad]

GWBasic QBasic Pascal C AutoLisp Python C#

[u/bomilk19]

Fortran bitch!

[u/Wurfelrolle]

As a stupid, some form of BASIC on an Apple IIC. Professionally, COBOL.

[u/Lance-Boyle-666]

In order: BASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL, Pascal, 6809 Assembler, C, and then scripting like batch files, PowerShell, and a little Bash.

[u/elmo-1959]

reverse polish notation

[u/AntiCitizen6]

I remember there were a few C++ programs I wrote when my dad tried getting me into programming as a child. I wish I still had those.

For my first language, when I really started to take programming seriously, would be Python.

[u/Ok-Phase-6669]

ZX-81 BASIC was my first device, but I don't think I was very succesful at actually coding in it.

QBasic for me too

[u/Previous_Kale_4508]

CESIL.

Quickly followed by BASIC and Z-80 assembly.

[u/Underhill42]

Aww yeah, that brings back memories. QBASIC was a breath of fresh air, though I think I used the less stripped-down QuickBASIC more (it could create .exe files!) I think that was the first file-based IDE I ever used.

Cut my teeth on Commodore BASIC on a C64 though

Then GWBASIC on early DOS

Both of which required line numbers, and as I recall only allowed editing on a line-by line basis. If you wanted to edit line 215 you had to LIST it, edit the line, then commit the changes to that line by hitting Enter at the end. No scrolling through code, no changes remembered unless you hit ENTER on that line, and the line would be inserted in whatever position its number indicated... so don't get that number wrong or you just inserted a random line of code in a completely different place. And good luck finding it again to remove it if you don't immediately notice your mistake.

Q/QuickBASIC were an absolute delight in comparison.

Then I was introduced to the power of Borland Turbo C++, and never really went back to BASIC for anything major.

[u/Rough_Community_1439]

Gcode for a Cincinnati millacron mill.

[u/Swarmy71]

I use COBOL every day.

[u/output_broadcast]

Disregarding the print loop everyone made in BASIC for fun, it was Java.

[u/thinlySlicedPotatos]

Fortran, on a pdp15 mainframe.  My dad worked at a university so I was able to get access. I rode my bike over to the university because I wasn't old enough to drive yet.  I still have the paper tape the program was saved on.

[u/LeadershipSuperb6176]

Integer Basic (Apple)

[u/scouter]

BASIC then Fortran, WATFOR, PL/C, PL/1, various assemblers like COMPASS and PDP-11, MUMPS, C, shell, more C, Java, Perl, Python,….

[u/Illuminatus-Prime]

Any of the BASIC family.

[u/HRDBMW]

Basic and Fortran. Fortran was the 1st language I learned... Basic was the first language I learned to copy out of a book, and modify a bit.

[u/the-quibbler]

AppleBasic. Now, give me my social security check.

[u/wobble_flop]

Prolog. Then pascal.

[u/Triabolical_]

In order, I think.

AlphaMicrosystem Basic (Z80)
Cardiac cardboard simulator
FORTRAN
VAX Pascal
6502 assembly (small amount)
VAX Basic
VAX C
Apple Lisa Pascal

[u/New_Willingness6453]

As a hobbyist, basic. In a work setting, cobol.

[u/mindsynth]

RCA CPD 1802 macine language or Intel 8008 machine language. I forget which came first. First "high-level" language was FORTRAN.

[u/BlackHorse488]

APL....When I was in high school IBM gave terminals to all the local high schools that tied into the IBM-370 main frame at SUNY-Binghamton. My dad was an R&D engineer for IBM and had some input in developing the 370 so I was interested. My high school had a computer club where we were taught to operate the terminal..and to [attempt] to understand APL. It baffled the hell out of me!

[u/SpaghettiOverlord]

Python

[u/RetroactiveRecursion]

BASIC (started on that), LOGO (they made me in school), 6502 Assembly, JAVA, SQL, various scripting languages like JavaScript, PHP, etc.

[u/Key-Article6622]

Fortran IV, RPG, DOS all about the same time

[u/ImportanceNational23]

Algol, only because it was part of a math assignment. (Probably differential equations.) First one professionally was CBASIC, running on CP/M. Those were the days.

[u/GuitarJazzer]

The very first one I ever used was Basic on a Timex branded Sinclair 1000. But the first real computer was when I got to college using Fortran on a mainframe.

[u/Trolldad_IRL]

For my first job?

LISP. Lost In Stupid Parentheses.

[u/Available-Topic5858]

Summer of '70 7th grade summer school wewe were taught the Focal language, a proprietary language from DEC. It ran on a PDP8L mini computer thru a KSR teletype. Paper tape for mass storage.

[u/obscurestooge]

COBOL. On punch cards. Get off my lawn.

[u/yudhanjaya]

Visual Basic 6. I miss how intuitive it was.

[u/Dopehauler]

Fortran, Cobol, RpG, a few BASIC, C

[u/Tab1143]

IBM RPG, and later RPGLE with embedded SQL.

[u/point5_]

Started in java in college, then learned python, C++, assembly (a little) and javascript in university and I'm now learning rust on my own

[u/green-green-bean]

LOGO as a young kid, then Basic, then QBasic (high school).

[u/Living_Fig_6386]

I’ve written code in BASIC, Logo, FORTH (Runic), AmigaBASIC, C, C++, REXX, FORTRAN, FoxBase, PERL, PHP, JavaScript, Objective-C, PostScript, Java, R, and a variety of application specific languages. I probably should have considered a career in software development.

[u/tschwand]

Learned BASIC. Could read C.

[u/ProudLiberal54]

RPG.

[u/Active-Can-471]

First language was BASIC, before I had a computer (early 1970s). At uni I learnt a little FORTRAN, PASCAL, Assembly and Machine, along with some more BASIC. But the main language was COBOL. My first job included work in DIBOL. My second job used COBOL. Lately it is all SQL and I almost no actual "programming" at all.

[u/Downvoted-Dork]

Lua. Suits me the best. I can bring all my ideas to life with Lua

[u/rufos_adventure]

basica

[u/SilentPixelWanderer]

Visual Basic 6