Ask HN: In what order did you learn your languages?

C64 Basic, QBASIC, Visual Basic, HTML, C (pointers were so hard), Perl, Java, and then we got broadband and I installed Slackware and started learning a lot quicker, C++, Scheme, Common Lisp, Dylan, Smalltalk, Ruby, SML, O'Caml, Erlang, Haskell, and then I started university in Gothenburg partly because it's a Haskell school, there I also learned some Agda, and after all that I haven't learned much more, except SQL which I learned at my first job, a bit of Clojure at another startup, and serious bash scripting in the past few years, a bit of Rust for a one-off project, and Nix, and Inform 7.

I am a mathematician doing research in stochastic differential equations, mixing in biomedical applications and some machine learning.

Undergrad course to get me started: Java

Web dev day job: Javascript, PHP, Perl (Bonus: MYSQL)

HPC REU and subsequent undergrad thesis projects: R, Mathematica, MATLAB, Python, C (with lots of MPI and parallelism in each) (the REU is great! http://hpcreu.umbc.edu/)

Grad school: Started out with lots of R, Mathematica, MATLAB, Maple, Python, C (venturing into C++ and CUDA), Fortran. Switched depending on what the project needed. I probably have a project in each of those. But soon after I learned Julia.

Now? Only Julia. I find I don't need anything else anymore.

APL, Snobol, Fortran, BAL, Pascal, Basic, Cobol, C, C++, Smalltalk, Objective C, Java, Lisp, Dylan, Perl, Tcl, Haskell, Scala, Clojure, Python, Erlang,

Pascal, Assembly, C, Java, Python, JavaScript. Somewhere in there was Perl, but that seems to have been largely replaced with bash and Python for those types of tasks. Also somewhere in there was the dead-end Dart language, which I liked. I've been using TypeScript, but it does take effort not to revert back to straight JavaScript.

GW-BASIC, QBASIC, C, C++, X86, 6800/6502 asm, z80 asm, MIPS asm, Clisp, Forth, Perl, Python, Java, PHP, Clojure, Erlang, Prolog, Ruby, Swift, Javascript/Typescript, golang

I resisted JS for a long time and stayed the heck away out of anything Frontend related.

Pascal, VB, Java, C#, JavaScript, Ruby, Clojure, Golang, Elixir.

I'd put SQL in there somewhere, but it spans the whole time, and I'm also biased since I believe it's the most important language any app developer should know.

QBasic, Pascal, C++, VBScript, PHP, Java, Scala, Python

I don't believe this ordering has anything to do with the languages themselves but rather rather the projects I needed to get done at the time.

Counting only languages I've written complete, useful programs in... Color Basic, 6809 assembly, Z80 assembly, C, Pascal, Prolog, C++, Java, php, javascript, Python.

Pascal, HTML/CSS, PHP, C, Javascript, C#, Java, Python, Swift

And for some of these by learn I mean I built something with it without properly learning the language till later.

Pascal, C, ASM, Visual Basic, Java, C#, PHP, JavaScript, Perl, Common Lisp, Scheme, OCaml, Clojure, K, Forth, Erlang, Shen, Go, Rust

School: FORTRAN COBOL Snobol Lisp

Commercially: Assembler: 8008 (8080/80286), 8080, 6502, 6800(68000), Z80(8000) Basic (various) Pascal C Objective-C C++ SQL Perl Python JavaScript

Learning: ELM Elixir

C, BASH, PHP, Perl, Ruby, Tcl, Javascript, Java, C#, Scala.

Then I stopped learning languages because Java solves 99% of my problems.

Using a generous definition of "learn", I learned the following in college and grad school (2006-2016):

C

Assembly

Mathematica

JavaScript

Python

R

In order, covering 18 years of time, dear god:

School: Java, C++, Lisp

Self: Perl, HTML, JS, PHP

Work: VB.NET, SQL, VB6, C#, LiveCode

Self: Ruby, Scala, Clojure, Nim, F#, TypeScript

BASIC, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, C, Assembly, Java, PHP, Objective-C, Python, modern JavaScript

QBasic, Borland Turbo Pascal, C, dBase, Clipper OOP, Java, PHP, Ruby, Javascript, Go

- 8080 assembly - Forth - Ruby (for Rails, of course) - Javascript (barely) - Python - R

Basic, Assembler, Pascal, C, Oberon, Miranda, Java, JS, Python, Clojure, Scala

"HTML, CSS" , PHP / SQL, Javascript, Ruby, Objective-C , Swift

College 1. C++ 2. HTML/CSS

After College 3. VBA 4. Ruby 5. SQL 6. Javascript 7. Python 8. R

"HTML, CSS", PHP, Javascript, Java, Python

Java, C, python, R, Javascript, PHP

BASIC, C, C++, x86, JavaScript, C#

QBasic

C++ (mainly C with classes. Done in AP Programming in high school)

VBA

C#

Java

-- Start Grad school classes

Scala

C

R

C++ (better C++ but focused on performance, so again, more C based)

--- End grad school

Elixir

Delphi

QBASIC

Visual Basic

Delphi

Pascal

C

I don't remember the order of everything that came afterward :)

1. Logo

2. QBasic

3. C

4. Java

5. C#

6. C++

This over 15 Years:

BASIC

PHP

Python

-- Engineering School

C

C++

Java

-- After

JavaScript

Scheme (GNU Guile in particular)