Poll: What was the first programming language you learned? | Hacker News Reader

Poll: What was the first programming language you learned?

16 pointssolipsist66 comments

Where's Assembler in the list :) I loved me some MASM. Did no one learn this in the late 80's early 90's? It must still be used a lot for embedded systems ...

What I liked about it was a) it was hard and made you really really think about what you where doing (in terms of memory and CPU usage) as you where in total control of both at all times and there was often no abstraction (well unless you wrote in binary I suppose). b) it was super tedious and required keeping a lot of code in your head at one time so when moving to say C/C++ it made you review your code with some sympathy of how it will run and how to optimise it (say rolled and unrolled loops etc). When things went wrong in C you could look at the produced ASM and understand perhaps why.

Do I miss it? Heeeeeellll no!

I would also have voted for assembler if it was on the list, since that's actually the first language I ever used. (On a Magnavox Oddessey 2 game console, no less). I did choose BASIC, because that's the first language that I first successfully used. :)

oh the memories! I just voted for BASIC (having self learned BBC Basic using school computers after school). Your post reminded me that I actually first started to learn to program asm on an ORIC 16k.

Yes, I voted for BASIC too but ASM was what I first messed around in on an Amstrad 512k using the manual that it came with. Remember when manuals had pin outs of all the ports and sometimes circuit digrams and included a reference manual of the CPU instruction set and sample programs?? Oh those where the days =)

Not sure how BASIC didn't make this list. Played around with it first on an old tandy my dad had and then got actually interested when I started learning ti-basic for the ti-86. First "modern" language was PHP, although I don't know if you can really count PHP3 as modern.

My bad. I'm from a younger generation so I'm pretty uneducated when it comes to some of the earlier programming languages.

Just for curiosity sake, what is now the younger generation (I'm 23 and hadn't quite realized I've already left the younger generation).

I'm 15.

Ah.. MASM, AFD, Peter Norton's PC Programmer's Bible... anybody remembers how that first hyper-link based helpfile was called with all the INTs and stuff ?

Although I studied programming (I was 13) one of those Soviet IBM System/360 clones in FORTRAN I did not like it. I was pretty much fascinated with Ataris which started to popup in USSR in late 80th, so I learnt 6502 assembly soon after I put my hands on one of 130XE. When IBM PCs came in I learnt x86 asm, then C and C++, but much much later :-)

There's probably quite a few people who started out during the 8-bit micro era who will have some variant of BASIC or BASIC + assembly as a 'first language'. Pascal was widely used in higher education during roughly the same period.

Learning simple logic gates in LOGO making the turtle go around a path... do kids still do that today or is it much fancier?

seems strange to put php with javascript, html, and css, while giving ruby and python their own options.

I didn't have the luxury of ruby or python when I learned to program HTML--this was sometime in 1997/1998. I had cgi and perl, although I didn't use them too much.

Yeah, it was probably a bad decision. But I chose to go strictly by definition, and PHP is a "a widely-used general-purpose scripting language" (http://www.php.net/).

Javascript, HTML, and CSS are obviously very different from PHP, but they are all scripting languages.

i think you are mistaken. generally speaking, python and ruby are considered scripting languages. html and css are not.

I started with HyperCard as a kid. My parents got me a couple Java books but I never got into it. My first real programming experience was with Python when I was in high school. My dad told me that no one uses Python and that I should learn C++, so that's what I did. That was over 10 years ago so things have changed a bit with regard to Python :)

These days my favorites are C, Python, and Scheme.

Since when HTML and CSS have been programming languages? Why is javascript (a real, turing complete language) bundled with them?

Beyond DOS/Windows batch files which are terrible but indeed a language, my first "real" language was Turing ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_(programming_language) ). It was mainly used in Canadian high schools - at least it was when I was there at the beginning of the decade.

I didn't like it but it had a full graphical environment that was pretty accessible to students. I liked that our particular IDE/interpreter was called WinOOT (Windows Object Oriented Turing) - OOT pronounced like the stereotypical Canadian pronunciation of about, "aboot". If that's not patriotic enough, it also had a built-in graphics function named drawmapleleaf.

I chose scripting language, because I was introduced to programming with mIRC script. :) I actually used mIRC script to write socket-based tools that didn't even run on IRC. I wrote Battle.net bots with it, if anyone recalls those days. This was in like 1997.

The GR program (I guess it was vaguely BASIC?) on the Apple IIe back in elementary school.

It was fun to do, mostly because of the instant gratification of actually seeing a line draw across the screen. We even got to making crude animation with for next loops (it pretty exciting for us kids!)

I can't find too much about it, but this site has a list of some of the commands (in the Graphic section):

http://www.landsnail.com/a2ref.htm

FORTRAN, on a mainframe, with punched cards, in the early 1970s. Shortly after that, BASIC on a hard-copy terminal. (Yeah, I'm an old geezer.)

Thats awesome that so many people along with me started with BASIC, I'm guess a lot of people in HN community are between 28-33 years old now

Yeah probably. Seems it was mostly BASIC + asm for that age range. Rock on GWBasic! It's probably where you learnt to use your first GOTO like a billion times :)

BASIC. Specifically, TI-BASIC on the TI-83+. I started out small, but I experimented in writing:

Fractal renderers on the graph screen

GA solvers using the L_1 through L_6 lists

Pong, on the homescreen, with an AI, with ']', 'o', and '['. I think I found a memory leak somewhere, because the game would get slower and slower if you played too long.

BASIC on a SpectraVideo SV-328 (CP/M).

I didn't have storage for a while, so initially I had to type in my games every time before playing them.

Then I got a tape drive and spent months playing Tetra Horror :)

http://www.generation-msx.nl/msxdb/softwareinfo/227

I feel like the biggest loser posting this, but VBScript + ASP. Not ASP.NET, just vanilla ASP. After building a couple of perl CGI scripts, I thought it was the greatest thing ever. Not having to print() all my HTML was like a dream.

Ada was the first language I learned properly, 1996 first year Computer Science. It was the last year that they taught Ada as the starter language at that University, they moved to Java after that.

Visual Basic :|

Same here. 9th Grade Computer Programming. :-)

BASIC, from a book, around 1978-9. This was several years before I ever actually saw or used a computer, because my dad was convinced it would be worth learning. Turns out he was right!

BASIC, on a MicroBee.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroBee

A beaut little machine for its time. Oh the hours lost to playing space invaders ...

The first language that I "learned" was BASIC but the first language that taught me how to program was JavaScript (especially when 'JavaScript is a Lisp' was a popular meme).

C# (and the rest of the .NET paradigm along with it). once i got the taste of command-line + gcc in my first Computer Science courses, I never really looked back ..

As I said in the other thread... Visual Basic 6 when I was 14... I literally had to stop programming for about 3 years before I could start "fresh" again.

LOGO! It's not a bad first language for a 5 year old.

I remember figuring out how to make a turtle graphics sailboat, faking the curved surfaces by stepping a bit then turning a bit.

I bet I'm the only person here who can answer Teco. I found a PDP-11 at college and Teco was what it had, so it's what I started playing with.

There's no Lisp/Scheme option. This wasn't my first, but I know many who learned Scheme from SCIP as their first language.

I agree, there ought to be a lisp option.

ActionScript <3. ActionScript 2 to 3, C#, C++ and then most recently JS/HTML, PHP and mySQL. What a strange path.

Qbasic on a 286.

Snap... then moved to QuickBasic..ooooooooowwww. Remember the bundles source for gorillas,money and nibbles?

Nibbles was the good stuff. Those were some great times playing around in QBasic. Totally sold me on how amazing programming was.

Me too. then I discovered you could call interrupts in quickbasic and you could inject hand rolled ASM and execute it so upgraded to 4.5 and never looked back. rapid prototyping in DOS :)

Same here, though on an 8086

Exactly the same.

I presume your "dot net" entry encompasses any .NET language, other than C# which is already accounted for?

TI-86 Basic! Turns out ticalc.org is still hosting games I uploaded in the late 90's, impressive.

Pascal. With Just Enough Pascal, way back when Symantec was mainly known for making compilers.

My introduction to programming was with Applesoft BASIC on an Apple IIE in 7th grade.

Scheme is not in this list?

Aw, no Pascal?

MacPascal here... weirdest code syntax highlighting ever.

IBM BAL360---Basic Assembler Language

Smalltalk should be in the list :)

BASIC (CPC-6128, then TI-83+).

BASIC on the TRS-80. I was 8.

COBOL

My condolences.

But seriously, I am grateful for all the awesome hackers that came before and continue with me. My tools and languages are far superior now than when I started.

Thanks, I've now added that to the list.

dBase... Well, it was on the computer dad brought home from work.

Yeah my first paid job was in dBase II on CP/M, aged 12.

GW-BASIC!

Pascal

matlab

uhhh...rapidq

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