Invisible schrieb:

> That must make me rare then. I can program in BASIC [I MEAN OLD SKOOL 
> BASIC WITH ALL-CAPS AND LINE NUMBERS INSTEAD OF A TEXT EDITOR], Pascal 
> (which is structured), PostScript (which is weird), JavaScript, Java, 
> Smalltalk, Eiffel (which are all OOP), Haskell (which is functional), 
> SQL (which is relational), and I have a vague grasp of Lisp and Prolog. 
> I've also written in machine code. (No, I don't mean assembly. I *mean* 
> machine code. I couldn't afford an assembler, so I assembled the program 
> by hand with a big book of op-code tables...)

Hum...

BASIC: Yes, first language I learned. On a home computer, of course. 
Locomotive Basic, to be precise. Amstrad CPC 6128.

Pascal: Second serious language I learned. Turbo-Pascal 3.Something back 
then on CP/M machines, later Turbo-Pascal 6.0. My personal favorite 
language in DOS times.

PostScript: Yes, been there. Weiredest (and therefore most interesting) 
language there is out there, if I'm asked (except for /deliberately/ 
obfuscated languages, which aren't half as interesting due to the 
frustration potential involved).

JavaScript, Java, SQL: Yes.

Smalltalk: Seen it; would take some days to get back into it.

Eiffel, Haskell, Lisp, Prolog: No, never seen (well, seen a /bit/ of 
Haskell here of course :-))

Machine code: Yes, I think I did "poke" a few bytes into my Amstrad CPC 
6128; 0xCD was CALL and 0xC9 was RET, if I remember correctly, but it 
has been a while; I preferred assembler anyway (Zilog Z80, 16- and 
32-bit Intel 80x86, Intel 8051).


There are lots of other languages out there though, some of which I've 
done serious work in - like BASIC (Visual Basic for Applications, that 
is), BASIC (good old Siemens mainframe BASIC yet another animal), Unix 
shell scripts, XSLT (kind of an XML query language), and C# - some of 
which I had to learn or toyed around with a bit - like COBOL (yuck!), 
Logo (who hasn't toyed around with /that/? Allegedly you could even do 
other stuff with it than just draw), UnrealScript (gee, first time I saw 
a language natively supporting state machines; and network replication; 
and all that object-oriented, of course), Nice, Tcl/Tk, awk, and maybe 
one or two more - and some of which I had a quick look at, like lua.


> Did I mention POV-Ray SDL in there?

Oh, yeah, now that you mention it... :-)

> Lisp isn't too hard to interpret either. (But arguably too hard for 
> 8-year-olds to program with.) Smalltalk is pretty easy to interpret, and 
> easy on the brain too. Prolog would also not be hard to interpret, but 
> probably not especially useful for home users.

I guess all these languages wouldn't really fit the limited capacities 
of a home computer. Can you, for instance, imagine an object-oriented 
runtime system on something like 32kB RAM and 16kB ROM? Running at 1 
MHz? With automatic garbage collection and all?

Plus, I guess these languages would have lacked syntax for peeks & 
pokes. Can you imagine the home computer boom without peeks & pokes? :-)

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