O/T your language of 'origin'?

Log in or register to post comments
Go To Last Post
61 posts / 0 new
Author
Message
caviar
caviar's picture
Level: Hangaround
Joined: Mon. Jan 16, 2006
Posts: 211 View posts
Location: leeds
#1
Posted by caviar: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 04:02 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

I was commenting on another thread and found myself wondering which language I first learned to programme in. After some thought I remembered that I learned to programme in 6th form at school (aged about 16), which was a long time ago. The language was an assembler for an olivetti machine that had a few registers, virtually no RAM and about as much processing power as a sub $1 calculator now.

I then went on to learn and use:

at uni - Basic, Algol 60, Fortran, and PDP-11 assembler
At work - PDP-11 assembler, Coral-66 (weapons systems), VAX assembler (device drivers and o/s support), Bliss (o/s support), PL/1 (system programming), VAX microcode (development of add-on memory and other peripherals), C (system programming, including o/s development for a multi-user 8080 based micro), smalltalk (for fun), C++ (windows applications development) and Java (for fun).

Oh, and nearly forgot, for my first real job I was trained in COBOL on a mainframe! Luckily though the company realised that I'd programmed PDP-11s at university and moved me to a specialist department so, although I learned it, I've never used COBOL in anger :)

For some time now I have coded mostly just for fun. For a living I 'architect' large application systems.

I'd be interested to know the programming language background of other forum users if you fancy penning it. Just out of curiosity :)

Not that I've stuck imaginary labels on any of you ;)

Tags:

AVR Microcontrollers, megaAVR and tinyAVR
Top
microcarl
microcarl's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Sun. May 30, 2004
Posts: 8363 View posts
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio
Posted by microcarl: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 04:06 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

English, then assembly, then BASIC (late 1970's, early 1980'S vintage) , then Pascal, then C. and a little FROTRAN, COBOL, ALGOL in between.

You can avoid reality, for a while.  But you can't avoid the consequences of reality! - C.W. Livingston

Top
kmr
kmr's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Thu. Apr 1, 2004
Posts: 3732 View posts
Location: New Mexico
Posted by kmr: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 04:59 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

In rough chronologic order starting as a preteen: HP and TI programmable calculators (1975), Basic (1976), assembly (1977), Pascal (1979), Fortran (1980), C (1983), Perl, C++, Shell script / UNIX tools, Java, Matlab, Scheme, ANSI Common Lisp (2002) with some Python and Ruby.

Kevin Rosenberg
http://b9.com
http://kevin.hypershots.com

Top
bobgardner
bobgardner's picture
Level: 10k+ Postman
Joined: Wed. Sep 4, 2002
Posts: 26669 View posts
Location: Orlando Florida
Posted by bobgardner: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 05:14 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

I took a fortran class in hi school about '69. Did fortran in EE school thru '73, then started at a place that used 6800s then most other moto cpus up thru 68020s for io boards, and vaxes and microvaxes for the maintenance simulators. Had to teach myself basic then pascal then c. Still havent learned anything newer than c. Cant do c++ or c# or java or perl or python. Just an old dinosaur.

Imagecraft compiler user

Top
zbaird
zbaird's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Sun. Aug 13, 2006
Posts: 7472 View posts
Location: Bellingham, WA - USA
Posted by zbaird: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 05:19 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

FORTRAN IV (1966), assembly (Honeywell mainframe), SNOBOL, timesharing BASIC, SIMSCRIPT, a little COBOL, more assembly (8080, Z80, 6802, etc.), C (1984), FORTH, VB (DOS and Windows), various scripting languages (Javascript, VB script, Notes), among others which escape me now.

Chuck Baird

"I wish I were dumber so I could be more certain about my opinions. It looks fun." -- Scott Adams

http://www.cbaird.org

Top
stevech
stevech's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Tue. Dec 18, 2001
Posts: 6148 View posts
Posted by stevech: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 05:21 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Skipping a few: FORTRAN II, Assembly for DG Nova; assembly for PDP-11; original BASIC/Tymshare; Assembly for 6809; Pascal, C, Ada, C, MS Visual Basic; assembly for PIC and AVR, more C, C some more. (and brief tangents on Java and Java Script).

Unpopular opinion that C++ and OOP is software running amok with a grand canyon of abstractions.

Top
sparrow2
sparrow2's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Mon. Oct 7, 2002
Posts: 6425 View posts
Location: Denmark
Posted by sparrow2: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 06:11 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Ok I can see that I’m young. :wink:
ASM, BASIC 1978. (for 6502)
PASCAL 1981 in high school (Org turbo pascal for CP/m 17.5 K version).
My first 68000 computer 1985 C programming
My first PC in 1986 and with that Borland turbo pascal and more C, and ASM.
I had to have ASM, pascal PLM/86 Fortran lisp prolog at university.1983-1988
DANBOT we had to write at compiler and DANBOT (Danish robot) was our project. (written in turbo pascal) 1986
After that most of my programming have been C and ASM to 4, 8, 16,32 bit controllers

Jens

Top
cpluscon
cpluscon's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Mon. Jul 10, 2006
Posts: 2730 View posts
Location: Minneapolis
Posted by cpluscon: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 06:22 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

BASIC
Assembly
Pascal
C
C variants

(Others not worthy of mention.)

C: i = "told you so";

Top
barnacle
barnacle's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Tue. Jan 3, 2006
Posts: 5837 View posts
Location: Hemel Hemsptead, UK
Posted by barnacle: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 07:46 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

8060 (SC/MP) machine code, 6502 machine code, (then I started buying assemblers - I remember Avocet was rather nice for the 6502), 6800, 8080, 6809, 6805, 8088/6/386 assembler, Basic (microsoft, on the Tangerine), Forth (on the Tangerine and on the Jupiter), C, C++ (bleagh), AVR assembly, Bascom.

Barely literate, really...

Neil

Neil Barnes
www.nailed-barnacle.co.uk

Top
Mike B
Mike B's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Tue. Jun 22, 2004
Posts: 3839 View posts
Location: South West Utah, USA
Posted by Mike B: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 08:05 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

My 'origin' for learning an existing language was Gotran on an IBM 1620 using punched cards and printouts from the console typewriter. It belonged to our high school district office and they let us use it two nights a week. Gotran is a Simplified 12 instruction subset of FORTRAN.
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/histor...

Later I was on a team that created the micro-code for a 2901 bit slice custom processor. Its language was circuit descriptions, pin outs and digital signatures processed directly into machine code to run the embedded bit slice. This was my 'origin' for creating a language from scratch.

Top
jfiresto
jfiresto's picture
Level: Resident
Joined: Mon. Oct 7, 2002
Posts: 671 View posts
Location: Germany
Posted by jfiresto: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 08:19 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Cardiac machine code (cf. http://www.porticus.org/bell/belllabs_kits_cardiac.html) was my first language. :wink: That was followed by 1802, 6502, PDP-11 and Micronova assembly languages, and then lots of C and family, with a brief but happily cured recidivistic period of PIC assembler a few years back.

Lately I have been using Python when the system can support it. It is an absolute hoot for embedded work. I recently used it in an autonomous deep sea lander that is now poking holes in the mud at ca. 6000 m depth.

- John

Last Edited: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 08:57 AM
Top
valusoft
valusoft's picture
Level: Moderator
Joined: Sat. Jul 2, 2005
Posts: 14899 View posts
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posted by valusoft: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 08:37 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

OK, I'll play along...

Algol 803(circa 1967/8 ), Fortran, assembler for 6800/3/9, Forth, Basic, GeeWiz Basic, Pascal, dBase (various), Clipper S'87/5.01/5.2, MiniGUI, Bascom...cannot pretend to know assembler for any AVR...but have it on the list as a "todo".

Ross McKenzie ValuSoft Melbourne Australia

Top
Guillem Planisi
Guillem Planisi's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Fri. Jun 11, 2004
Posts: 2418 View posts
Location: Vilanova (Barcelona)
Posted by Guillem Planisi: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 08:56 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Mallorqui
Castellano (Spanish)
Pascal
Basic
Assembler for 8086/8088
Assembler for 8051
English
Assembler for PIC :S
Visual Basic
Assembler for AVR
C
Visual C#

Merry Xmas. Feliz Navidad. Bones Festes.

Guillem.
"Common sense is the least common of the senses" Anonymous.

Top
JohanEkdahl
JohanEkdahl's picture
Level: 10k+ Postman
Joined: Wed. Mar 27, 2002
Posts: 26988 View posts
Location: Lund, Sweden
Posted by JohanEkdahl: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 10:50 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Cool thread! Especially seeing Ross' Algol entry. That language is special to me. Never used it myself, but that was what my late father used when running statistical models on the SMIL computer at the local uni in the early sixties. I still have his Algol book somewhere...

Myself: BASIC (circa 1976), Pascal ('79), and then COBOL, SQL, Simula, Lisp, Modula-2, APL, (DG MV8000-)assembler, C, C++, (some Java), HTML, Perl, XML, C#... The road never ends - if you stop you risk dying.

So, language of origin: BASIC. Language of choice: C/C++. The language of choice I wished I had: Java. New challenge right now: C#/.Net, Language I wish I had time to learn: Ruby.

As of January 15, 2018, Site fix-up work has begun! Now do your part and report any bugs or deficiencies here. 

No guarantees, but if we don't report problems they won't get much of  a chance to be fixed! Details/discussions at link given just above.

 

"Some questions have no answers."[C Baird] "There comes a point where the spoon-feeding has to stop and the independent thinking has to start." [C Lawson] "There are always ways to disagree, without being disagreeable."[E Weddington] "Words represent concepts. Use the wrong words, communicate the wrong concept." [J Morin] "Persistence only goes so far if you set yourself up for failure." [Kartman]

Last Edited: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 11:46 AM
Top
steve17
steve17's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Tue. Sep 7, 2004
Posts: 6288 View posts
Location: New York State
Posted by steve17: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 11:21 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Mike B wrote:
My 'origin' for learning an existing language was Gotran on an IBM 1620 using punched cards and printouts from the console typewriter.

I programmed one of those. It was a "scientific" computer that used decimal numbers. But the one I used had paper tape, not punched cards. I don't remember the programming language.

My first language was MAD. It allegedly stood for Michigan Algorithm Decoder. It was an improvement over Fortran. The next language was assembler. Both of these languages were used to program an IBM 704. That was a real computer. It used vacuum tubes, not transistors.

Top
mcollas
mcollas's picture
Level: Hangaround
Joined: Fri. Jun 29, 2001
Posts: 222 View posts
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posted by mcollas: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 11:43 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

I can remember the chronological order of my first experiences OK, but it gets fuzzy later because the novelty of acquiring a language diminished.

  • FORTH, then Basic and a tiny bit of APL at about the same time;
  • Z80 machine language, 6502 machine language and Pascal at about the same time;
  • C and then later lots of C++;
  • FORTH so that I actually understood it instead of just toying with it enough to call it my first programming language;
  • Assembly language for various CPUs but mostly x86;
  • Modula, Ada (uni courses only);
  • Scripting languages for various navigational databases (DBase, Paradox);
  • Object Pascal (Delphi);
  • SQL and related stored procedure languages for a range of relational databases;
  • Assembly for various micros - Motorola and of course AVR;
  • Java (around 1999, and still using it today);
  • Shell scripting types of languages, especially Bash;
  • XSLT and many other web related technologies that only sort-of count as languages;
  • Javascript, ActionScript (Flex);
  • Ruby (about 2 years, and I still get a kick out of how cool it can be).
There's a number of other little bits and pieces mixed in there as well in small quantities - Python, TCL, and others that I could really only use now with reference material open in front of me. There's also lots of libraries, frameworks, and tools, which I think accounts for considerably more learning than just the languages.

I try to learn a new language whenever it is being used in a project I am involved in or when something particularly interesting comes along. I think there's a lot of value in learning a new language or programming practice - getting used to something a bit different like Ruby can expand your programming horizons.

Michael

Top
daqq
daqq's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Mon. Dec 15, 2003
Posts: 4313 View posts
Location: Slovakia, Bratislava
Posted by daqq: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 12:09 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Heh, my list:

BASIC
Visual Basic
C on PCs
C on AVRs
BrainF*ck on PC
PHP
Currently learning Java

There are pointy haired bald people.
Time flies when you have a bad prescaler selected.

Top
ossi
ossi's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Tue. Apr 25, 2006
Posts: 2332 View posts
Location: Germany
Posted by ossi: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 12:51 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Warm memories are coming up...

languages and CPUs:

1976 TI58 pocket-calculator
1976 machine language of home-brew TTL computer
1977 NUALGOL on a UNIVAC1108
1977 8080 assembler
1978 Tiny Basic
1978 Poly88 Basic
1979 Fortran on a (German) TR440
1979 Cobol
1979 TR440 assembler (using german mnemonics !)
1980 Pascal
1984 8048 assembler
1984 Fortran on a CDC175 and on a PDP11/60
1985 NS32000 assembler
1985 C
1990 Forth on a Harris RTX2000
1991 80x86 assembler
1991 8051 assembler
1995 PIC assembler (sorry, but I got paid for a PIC project)
2000 Java
2002 AVR assembler
2004 C on AVR

Top
JohanEkdahl
JohanEkdahl's picture
Level: 10k+ Postman
Joined: Wed. Mar 27, 2002
Posts: 26988 View posts
Location: Lund, Sweden
Posted by JohanEkdahl: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 12:59 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Quote:

on a UNIVAC1108

Oh, yes - those where the days: 36-bit words, Fieldata encoding, punched cards, linking was "@MAP,NIX" (ain't it strange what useless things that stays forever in memory). Sobbing uncontrollably now...

As of January 15, 2018, Site fix-up work has begun! Now do your part and report any bugs or deficiencies here. 

No guarantees, but if we don't report problems they won't get much of  a chance to be fixed! Details/discussions at link given just above.

 

"Some questions have no answers."[C Baird] "There comes a point where the spoon-feeding has to stop and the independent thinking has to start." [C Lawson] "There are always ways to disagree, without being disagreeable."[E Weddington] "Words represent concepts. Use the wrong words, communicate the wrong concept." [J Morin] "Persistence only goes so far if you set yourself up for failure." [Kartman]

Top
theusch
theusch's picture
Level: 10k+ Postman
Joined: Mon. Feb 19, 2001
Posts: 39609 View posts
Location: Wisconsin USA
Posted by theusch: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 04:12 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

1968 -- Analog computers for engineering projects (summer intern; probably doesn't count)
1969-1973 -- At university: FORTRAN, SNOBOL, LISP, FOCAL (BASIC-like), COBOL
Machine languages/assembler: PDP/8, CDC 8080, CARDIAC, CDC 6400, IBM 360
1970's -- Burroughs machines, all ranges. COBOL, ALGOL, FORTAN, MPL (Pascal/C-like block structured systems language) Medium Systems were BCD machines.
TRS80 BASIC
1980's & 1990's -- DEC VAX/VMS; FORTRAN was the "system" language. Some C & COBOL.
8080, 8086, 80186 embedded
PCs in C and assembler and many other languages in vogue, e.g., FORTH, Modula2
2000's -- virtually all AVR in CodeVision C, some ASM. PC-side in VisualBASIC6.
Some for other microcontrollers: x51 in C & ASM; Moto '08 in C & ASM

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.

I've never met a pig I didn't like, as long as you have some salt and pepper.

Top
zbaird
zbaird's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Sun. Aug 13, 2006
Posts: 7472 View posts
Location: Bellingham, WA - USA
Posted by zbaird: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 04:12 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Reading through these made me remember one I had pounded out of my memory - binary machine code on the Altair. The January, 1975 issue of Popular Electronics had the MITS Altair on the cover, and I immediately ordered one. I got serial number ~375 when it arrived. No software of any kind. You used the front panel switches to toggle in addresses and opcodes and do manual loads. Power glitch? (quite common) - Repeat.

Chuck Baird

"I wish I were dumber so I could be more certain about my opinions. It looks fun." -- Scott Adams

http://www.cbaird.org

Top
MegaTorr
MegaTorr's picture
Level: Hangaround
Joined: Fri. Dec 3, 2004
Posts: 361 View posts
Location: Sunny Vancouver
Posted by MegaTorr: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 05:54 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

ZX Spectrum Basic
hp41C assembler
Z80 assembler
DG Nova assembler
Fortran 77
Pascal
PLM 51
uPP Pascal
ELM
C
ReXX
Transputer assembler
C++
Smalltalk
Java
Ruby
AVR assembler
... and some more

Who would have thought, it all started with a Spectrum of a friend of mine, in basic.

Top
Bingo600
Bingo600's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Sun. Apr 25, 2004
Posts: 4082 View posts
Location: Denmark
Posted by Bingo600: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 06:56 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

I'm a "youngster" :-)

1978 : Ti-59 & Basic (Z80)
1980 : My first Motorola D2kit 6800 Hex
1981 : My first Home uC , a combined 6800/6809 , based on Flex O/S , Basic/assembler
1983 : My first VME 68010 (had a friend at Motorola) , assembler
1983 : Got the cpu upgraded to a MC68020 , assembler
1985 : Programming a TI-990 system (DX10/DNOS) in assembler 
1986 : Got my first PC (an 8Mhz Nec V20) , w. a Seagate ST225 (25Mb hdd) , thought i'd never run out of diskspace.
       Startd in Pascal (Turbo) , then Turbo C.
1987 : Started w. C for real , and wrote my first device driver for the TI-990. 
       Wrote a my first device driver for a VAX 730.
1988 : Wrote my first device driver for I386 and DOS , in assembler.
1990 : C (Lattice on DOS) & assembler , started out w. OS/2
       Started out on IBM SNA , and did VTAM for 8 years
..
1996 : Misc private programming in C , doing TCP/IP routing on the job.
..
2003 : Starting out with AVR @home
..
..
Now  : Well still doing C on PC & AVR

/Bingo
Top
daqq
daqq's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Mon. Dec 15, 2003
Posts: 4313 View posts
Location: Slovakia, Bratislava
Posted by daqq: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 07:00 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Yipes! Is there anyone else, besides me, with less than 10 years of programming experience?

There are pointy haired bald people.
Time flies when you have a bad prescaler selected.

Top
barnacle
barnacle's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Tue. Jan 3, 2006
Posts: 5837 View posts
Location: Hemel Hemsptead, UK
Posted by barnacle: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 07:49 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Yeah, Dean's only been doing it a couple of year, I think. Mind you, he knocked up a USB stack in about fifteen minutes :D

Damn, just remembered that I forgot to include my EZ64 CPU machine code... I designed it, so I can claim exclusivity there... if only I had enough time to sit down and find why it doesn't quite work :mrgreen:

Neil

Neil Barnes
www.nailed-barnacle.co.uk

Top
mtrute
mtrute's picture
Level: New Member
Joined: Fri. Jun 4, 2004
Posts: 4 View posts
Posted by mtrute: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 08:39 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Assembler, Basic and Forth for some Z80 systems in the 80ties.
Than I switched to PC based systems and there were TurboPascal and
TurboC my favorites. The next decade saw me with perl and python and
some more scripting languages. Very recently I went back to
forth and enjoy it again (on Atmegas)

Top
DocJC
DocJC's picture
Level: 10k+ Postman
Joined: Tue. Dec 11, 2007
Posts: 12720 View posts
Location: Cleveland, OH
Posted by DocJC: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 09:51 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

What a list the above represents!

I started in high school with a PDP-8, load the paper tape, then run your Basic. (Transistors).
PDP-8 used an ASR-33 Teletpye at 110 baud, with a 20mA current loop serial interface.
About then I learned the Sinclair Basic, (Z85 if I recall the processor), TV for display, tape cassette for storage.
My favorite calculator of all time, the HP-45, (I think the HP-65 was the programmable one).
College: Fortran on punch cards on a Vax, & 8080 Assembly Lang on home made system.
Then Basic on the Vax.
A smigin of 8086/80186 Assembly.
Fortran, F77 and MNF versions.
GW-Basic on PCs.
Turbo Basic, (Bob Zale's Language). ISRs and hardward control on PC from Basic.
Power Basic, (Advanced version of Turbo Basic).
Visual Basic, (And total loss of real time hardware control, :cry: )
ADA on Cray I for NSA
Just kidding on the last one 8)
The Basics of HTML

Bascom, on AVR, as of last week, still a newbie.

Never made the jump to C, but the book is on the shelf...
Sitting next to my Learn Java in 21 days book...
Sitting next to my HTTP, The Definitive Guide book...

I learned German and Morse Code along the way, too, but I believe I permanently
fried the fuse bits controlling that part of my memory long ago.

Somewhere, buried deeply in my basement, is the issue of Popular Electronics with the
Altair on the cover. Such memories!

JC

Top
stu_san
stu_san's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Fri. Dec 30, 2005
Posts: 2327 View posts
Location: Fort Collins, CO USA
Posted by stu_san: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 10:24 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Dang, this will be painful...

1970 - HP Timeshare Basic - on a Teletype ASR 33; I was 15.
1971 - FORTRAN II for Univac SS/80 (vintage 1959 - magnetic amplifiers! Card compiler! Drum memory!)
1971 - RPG (card only) for Univac 9800 (summer job)
1972 - HP 9800 "calculator" language (~RPN)
1972 - HP Basic for 9810/20
1973 - Fortran IV for CDC 6400
1974 - Assembly for CDC 6400 (University only)
1975 - Fortran IV for Univac 1108 (summer job)
1975 - Cobol for Univac 1108 (summer job)
1976 - Intel 8080 Assembly for Altair 8800 (mine, like Chuck's)
1977 - Opus One for Altair 8800 (summer job)
1977 - Snobol, Algol, LISP for CDC6400 (University only)
1977 - DEC LSI-11 Assembly
1977 - FORTRAN IV for LSI-11 (part-time job thru 1978)
1979 - Ratfor for HP 3000 (the last Fortran I learned)
1980 - SCL for HP 3000 (SCL was 3000's "Assembly")
1980 - HPL for HP 9825 (don't ask)
1980 - IBM 370 JCL (trust me, it's a language!)
1981 - UCSD Pascal
1983 - Motorola 68000 Assembly
1983 - "ModCal" for HP 9826/36
1984 - C on HPUX ("bastard" AT&T Unix)
1984 - Awk (wrote 2 3000-line programs in 1992!)
1988 - Verilog (used for simulations of ICs)
1994 - Perl
1996 - C++ on WinDoze
1996 - Intel x86 Assembly
2000 - PHP (variant of Perl)
2003 - Java (well, just played with it)
2004 - LabView (yup, it's a language!)

I left out some of the more mundane items like HP65/69/29/... calculator stuff. I also left out the assembly for the two different computer architectures I designed in school for projects. Finally, I've probably forgotten a language or two somewhere.

Oh, and let's not get started on OSes or Editors, eh?

(brings a tear to my eye) :cry:

Stu

Edit 1: Added LabView

Engineering seems to boil down to: Cheap. Fast. Good. Choose two. Sometimes choose only one.

Newbie? Be sure to read the thread Newbie? Start here!

Last Edited: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 10:33 PM
Top
JohanEkdahl
JohanEkdahl's picture
Level: 10k+ Postman
Joined: Wed. Mar 27, 2002
Posts: 26988 View posts
Location: Lund, Sweden
Posted by JohanEkdahl: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 10:30 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Quote:

1975 - Cobol for Univac 1108

Stu-san! All is forgotten! Assuming "ASCII COBOL":
@ACOB,ISEX

@MAP,NIX
@XQT

(Some more of this and I'll have to go down in the basement and find that old card stack...)

As of January 15, 2018, Site fix-up work has begun! Now do your part and report any bugs or deficiencies here. 

No guarantees, but if we don't report problems they won't get much of  a chance to be fixed! Details/discussions at link given just above.

 

"Some questions have no answers."[C Baird] "There comes a point where the spoon-feeding has to stop and the independent thinking has to start." [C Lawson] "There are always ways to disagree, without being disagreeable."[E Weddington] "Words represent concepts. Use the wrong words, communicate the wrong concept." [J Morin] "Persistence only goes so far if you set yourself up for failure." [Kartman]

Top
stu_san
stu_san's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Fri. Dec 30, 2005
Posts: 2327 View posts
Location: Fort Collins, CO USA
Posted by stu_san: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 10:38 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Johan wrote:
Quote:

1975 - Cobol for Univac 1108

Stu-san! All is forgotten! Assuming "ASCII COBOL":
@ACOB,ISEX

@MAP,NIX
@XQT

(Some more of this and I'll have to go down in the basement and find that old card stack...)

Oh, yah! The fun part of that job was trying to make interactive changes to a program...

Log on (enter user and password).. go have coffee

5 minutes later: Get a command prompt. Start editor. Go plan the exact edits you need to make.

5 minutes later: Get the editor prompt. Enter first edit change.

60 seconds later: make second change...

You get the idea. The 1108 was not geared for interactive. We had a card remote station and I did most of my work that way.

Best part of the job: I created a land data database using Fortran for data selection and COBOL for formatting. Oh, and they had a Calcomp drum plotter, so I wrote a graphic program to plot results. Way cool for the time.

Stu

Engineering seems to boil down to: Cheap. Fast. Good. Choose two. Sometimes choose only one.

Newbie? Be sure to read the thread Newbie? Start here!

Top
ossi
ossi's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Tue. Apr 25, 2006
Posts: 2332 View posts
Location: Germany
Posted by ossi: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 10:39 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

And if I remember right, there was something like

PIC 9999

in COBOL :shock:

Top
JohanEkdahl
JohanEkdahl's picture
Level: 10k+ Postman
Joined: Wed. Mar 27, 2002
Posts: 26988 View posts
Location: Lund, Sweden
Posted by JohanEkdahl: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 11:05 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Yes, ossi. You got the PICTURE right.

Stu wrote:
trying to make interactive changes

CTS (Conversational Timesharing System) maybe? Now I gotta go find that old manual binder also...

As of January 15, 2018, Site fix-up work has begun! Now do your part and report any bugs or deficiencies here. 

No guarantees, but if we don't report problems they won't get much of  a chance to be fixed! Details/discussions at link given just above.

 

"Some questions have no answers."[C Baird] "There comes a point where the spoon-feeding has to stop and the independent thinking has to start." [C Lawson] "There are always ways to disagree, without being disagreeable."[E Weddington] "Words represent concepts. Use the wrong words, communicate the wrong concept." [J Morin] "Persistence only goes so far if you set yourself up for failure." [Kartman]

Top
Bingo600
Bingo600's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Sun. Apr 25, 2004
Posts: 4082 View posts
Location: Denmark
Posted by Bingo600: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 11:41 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

stu_san wrote:
Dang, this will be painful...

1980 - IBM 370 JCL (trust me, it's a language!)

He..He

We used to call it "Job Cancelling Language" , i hated those DD cards , but as a VTAM maintainer i had to use it ....

/Bingo

Top
awit
awit's picture
Level: Hangaround
Joined: Tue. May 13, 2003
Posts: 228 View posts
Location: Opole, Poland
Posted by awit: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 11:53 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Oh, it's hard to remember dates, but order is that:
Fortran IV
Basic ZX Spectrum
Basic Amstrad CPC
Assembler 6502 (Atari XL)
Turbo Pascal CP/M
Turbo Pascal on PC
Assembler 8086
C
Modula
Derive
Assembler Z80
Assembler 8051
C++
AWK
RPL hp48
TCL/TK
Scilab
MuPAD
Maxima
Assembler AVR
Python

That's all, I thing. ;-)

Suplement
I thing wrong. :-)
I must add:
Logo
TopSpeed make (it's different language that GNU make)
bash scripts

Last Edited: Sat. Dec 22, 2007 - 12:27 AM
Top
matt6ft9
matt6ft9's picture
Level: Hangaround
Joined: Sat. May 24, 2003
Posts: 106 View posts
Location: Chanute, Kansas, USA
Posted by matt6ft9: Fri. Dec 21, 2007 - 11:57 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Turbo pascal, using turtle graphics. Circa, 1992-1993.
'those were the days.
Matt

Top
velko
velko's picture
Level: Rookie
Joined: Wed. Jun 28, 2006
Posts: 21 View posts
Location: Ogre, Latvia
Posted by velko: Sat. Dec 22, 2007 - 12:58 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

I feel so young here.

Vilnius BASIC, 1994

Top
madid87
madid87's picture
Level: Rookie
Joined: Sun. Aug 27, 2006
Posts: 30 View posts
Location: Croatia - Zagreb
Posted by madid87: Sat. Dec 22, 2007 - 11:30 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

I'm 21 so my list is short :(

-C
-ASM for ARM, 8051 and AVR
-VHDL

I wanna be an expert on VHDL and C only :)

Top
bloody-orc
bloody-orc's picture
Level: Posting Freak
Joined: Sat. Dec 17, 2005
Posts: 1663 View posts
Location: Europe- Estonia- Tallinn
Posted by bloody-orc: Sat. Dec 22, 2007 - 12:18 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

"gugu-gaga"(1989), Estonian(1992), English(1995), German(2000), C(2000), C++(2001), Basic(2002), Russian(2003), GCC(2005), PHP(2007)

Top
Kleinstein
Kleinstein's picture
Level: Posting Freak
Joined: Sat. Sep 22, 2007
Posts: 1024 View posts
Location: Germany
Posted by Kleinstein: Sat. Dec 22, 2007 - 07:10 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Basic
Pascal
Assembler (6502)
Fortran (a little)
ARexx
Modula2
Oberon2
C with a little C++
Assembler (AVR)

And a few experiments in Forth, Next, Postscript

Top
stevech
stevech's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Tue. Dec 18, 2001
Posts: 6148 View posts
Posted by stevech: Sat. Dec 22, 2007 - 07:47 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

we ought to have a new thread

Your most favorite programming language:
Your least:

Top
kmr
kmr's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Thu. Apr 1, 2004
Posts: 3732 View posts
Location: New Mexico
Posted by kmr: Sat. Dec 22, 2007 - 08:42 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

stevech wrote:
we ought to have a new thread

Your most favorite programming language:
Your least:

You can create that thread, but, at least in my case, my favorite programming language depends upon the task at hand. I have different favorite languages for AVR programming, dynamic web page servering, text processing, numerical analysis, and rapid prototyping. I'm not sure how many people have a most favorite programming language.

Kevin Rosenberg
http://b9.com
http://kevin.hypershots.com

Top
stu_san
stu_san's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Fri. Dec 30, 2005
Posts: 2327 View posts
Location: Fort Collins, CO USA
Posted by stu_san: Mon. Dec 24, 2007 - 06:50 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

I suspect this will be true for many folks...

Your most favorite programming language: The one I'm using

Your least: The one I'm trying to learn

Languages really are like tools -- each has its own advantages and disadvantages, given the problem at hand.

Stu

Engineering seems to boil down to: Cheap. Fast. Good. Choose two. Sometimes choose only one.

Newbie? Be sure to read the thread Newbie? Start here!

Top
caviar
caviar's picture
Level: Hangaround
Joined: Mon. Jan 16, 2006
Posts: 211 View posts
Location: leeds
Posted by caviar: Mon. Dec 24, 2007 - 09:19 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Well, the thread seems to be dying off now so Ill take this opportunity to thank those who have contributed.

From this I've learned one thing and relearned another:

    * This forum not only represents a massive amount of AVR knowledge, but an equally massive amount of general computing knowledge.

    *"Don't assume, it makes an ass of you and me." Or... the replies have shown the assumptions that I've made about some posters to be totally wide of the mark :)

Anyway "merry christmas" to you all.

Top
Jepael
Jepael's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Mon. May 24, 2004
Posts: 6279 View posts
Location: Tampere, Finland
Posted by Jepael: Tue. Dec 25, 2007 - 11:49 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Hmm, I bet my list of programming languages is like this:

1) Basic on Commodore VIC-20 and PC
2) Maybe some LOGO programming on a school PC
3) Borland Turbo Pascal on PC
4) x86 assembly language on PC
5) C++ on some unix derivative
6) AVR assembly language
7) regular C on AVR, HC11 and HCS08 platforms
8) Modula-3 on some unix derivative (Solaris I think)

So nothing fancy, just for fun and just something that passes university courses. I didn't include DOS batch (.BAT) programming or unix shell scripts as I am not so used to them nowadays. No Java, Perl or Python, although I might have edited both Perl and Python programs so that they work better when someone has done the initial revision.

- Jani

Top
nikbamert
nikbamert's picture
Level: New Member
Joined: Wed. Jan 11, 2006
Posts: 4 View posts
Posted by nikbamert: Wed. Dec 26, 2007 - 02:33 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

1998 Lego Mindstorms RCX (language "RCX Code") Does that count as a programming language? :lol:

1999 Basic for Sharp ZQ-750M(PDA/Organizer like)
2000 JAL (Just another Language http://jal.sourceforge.net/) on PIC16F84

2001 PicBasic, Basic for the PIC16F84
2001 Visual Basic / VBA
2002 Basic (Bascom (AVR))
2004 C - AVR-GCC / WinAVR
2005 PHP/MySQL

I've learned all of the above with books / internet / looking at examples etc. Basically learning by doing.
I never had the chance to learn something like that at school :( But maybe in university in 2 years :P

Merry christmas to all! :)

Nik

Top
ezharkov
ezharkov's picture
Level: Posting Freak
Joined: Tue. Jun 21, 2005
Posts: 1411 View posts
Location: Chicago area, USA
Posted by ezharkov: Wed. Dec 26, 2007 - 02:41 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Several assemblers (8080, PDP-11, VAX-11)
Fortran
A couple of years of BCPL somewhere at that same time
Many years of mostly C
Lately mostly C/Java/C#

Eugene Zharkov

Top
nxp
nxp's picture
Level: Rookie
Joined: Fri. Sep 8, 2006
Posts: 47 View posts
Location: Malta
Posted by nxp: Wed. Jan 9, 2008 - 09:21 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Wonderful thread guys! ...except for the fact that I'm realizing that quite a bunch of you have been programming before I was born :/

Started off with some flavour of basic on an Apple in my early/mid teens
A couple of years later I started non-spaghetti programming with Turbo Pascal
Then in Uni I did
C,
VHDL,
8086 assembly (a little),
8051 assembly (a bit more),
Matlab,
a whiff of Haskell and Prolog which I doubt I'll ever use in real life,
LabView (quite a cute thing),
more C (on an 8051 and on an ARM7),
and now that I'm away from school I've done some C on AVR.

I would like to do AVR assembly too when I stop staying late at work and re-start my hobbies (hopefully soon)

NxP

Top
JohanEkdahl
JohanEkdahl's picture
Level: 10k+ Postman
Joined: Wed. Mar 27, 2002
Posts: 26988 View posts
Location: Lund, Sweden
Posted by JohanEkdahl: Wed. Jan 9, 2008 - 09:38 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Quote:

Then in Uni I did [...] VHDL

OK, so tell me what I should read to understand this behemoth of a language. (Specifically Xilinx Spartan3 devices and Xilinx ISE WEBpack development software if that helps).

Honestly. I'm struggling harder with this than John Samperi is with C...

As of January 15, 2018, Site fix-up work has begun! Now do your part and report any bugs or deficiencies here. 

No guarantees, but if we don't report problems they won't get much of  a chance to be fixed! Details/discussions at link given just above.

 

"Some questions have no answers."[C Baird] "There comes a point where the spoon-feeding has to stop and the independent thinking has to start." [C Lawson] "There are always ways to disagree, without being disagreeable."[E Weddington] "Words represent concepts. Use the wrong words, communicate the wrong concept." [J Morin] "Persistence only goes so far if you set yourself up for failure." [Kartman]

Top
nxp
nxp's picture
Level: Rookie
Joined: Fri. Sep 8, 2006
Posts: 47 View posts
Location: Malta
Posted by nxp: Thu. Jan 10, 2008 - 12:19 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

I beleive you, it's far from being trivial... and I was suicidal enough not to get a textbook (I thought that since it was a minor two-point subject it was not worth the time and money). I managed to get past the wierd exam using the even wierder and more disorganized notes I took in class and some simulation in the lab.

Unfortunately when I came to using VHDL the following summer as an intern doing some design work I had to unlearn quite a bit of it and re-learn it from a colleague. Tht's what happens when you can't dedicate yourself as much as you should to something

I can try to help you a bit and see if I can find some valid examples which I wrote, especially if you tell me what is bugging you most. I was using Spartan 3 with ISE just as you are, but had never gone to hardware (I was just working on the device's core and protocols, someone else did the flashing). In class we had much older software to synthesize and flash the hardware.

Just a few hints:
1: DO NOT use ISE to develop and learn VHDL. Use a package such as ModelSim or ActiveHDL - these permit you to simulate and learn how to code. You can also design your system and see it working and then you synthesize the same code using ISE.

2: If simulating remmeber that not all constructs and syntax elements can be synthesized to hardware. If you feel comfortable first coding a logical program and then a compilable program, by all means do it, but do not let it confuse you.

3: To simulate remember to create a "top level" containing a "signal generator", a "logic analyzer" module and your module. Generate the test signals for your module in the first with logical VHDL code (since this never needs to be compiled) and capture the output results with the second.

I think I am getting too far off topic, but if you need any assistance and feel we shouldn't discuss here just PM me.

NxP

Top
ncherry
ncherry's picture
Level: Rookie
Joined: Mon. Oct 29, 2007
Posts: 32 View posts
Location: NJ
Posted by ncherry: Thu. Jan 10, 2008 - 03:01 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

1975 - TI SR Calculator assembly language (I didn't know it was assembly language)
1978 - a little theoretical Fortran (never touched the keyboard)
1979 - Fortran WATV
1981 - BASIC on a PDP-11
1982?- Atari BASIC (I'm still pissed off that the Polar-rectangular program I wrote didn't save to cassette when my mother turned on the dryer and my sister turned on the hair dryer and we lost power :evil:)
1983 - Assembly language on the 6502 manually poked in via basic. :-) And 8080 manually entered hex via a hex pad on the 8080 SDK.
1985 - C on a Gimix Ghost with OS9, my first real multi-user/multi-tasking introduction.
1986 - Turbo C, Pascal, LISP on the Atari 800xl and PC. I hated the PC it just couldn't do what we could do on the 6809 Ghost! 6800, 6802, 6809 and 68HC11 assembly language & 8052 with BASIC.
1988 - Unix & networking on the Unix PC and 3B2. Shell and Ksh (I hated csh).
1989 - 1995 - Perl and AWK, expect and TCL.

After that point it becomes hazy as to what I was working with as far as languages and processors. I know I have worked with the Z80, x86 family, played with the 320xx, 680xx, the PICs, the AVRs, the 8051 family, ARM and MS products, Vaxen and various Unix and Linux. I've taken course in Pascal, C++, Java (I hate C++, I like Java) and Javascript (and this new langauge called HTML :shock:, oh I learned *roff with my Unix PC and 3B2). In 1998 I took a course on mainframe assembly language and was offered a job to help translate pre-Y2K programs to handle Y2K. I turned it down as they couldn't match my salary in computer and voice networking.

One problem with asking what language is that I wasn't just learning a language, it was electronics, algorithms, protocols, and a lot of other computer/electronic related subjects. I just happen to work in the fields that are my hobbies too (and I'm loving it). It's tough to keep up, when's the last time you used PUP, XNS or NCP (not Novell ;-) )? I guess I'm a jack-ASS of many trades and a master of none. ;-)

Since I wrote a book I've learned what I don't know about English and can't say that I know the language. :-)

Neil Cherry
Linux Home Automation
Author: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies.

Top
sellis
sellis's picture
Level: Hangaround
Joined: Tue. Mar 6, 2001
Posts: 204 View posts
Location: Surrey, UK
Posted by sellis: Thu. Jan 10, 2008 - 11:43 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Ahh, memories...

1979: NASCOM BASIC
1980: SC/MP assembly on a MK14
1981: ZX81 Basic
1981: Z80 assembly
1982: FORTH
1984: Pascal, LISP, some Prolog, Modula-2
1985: 68000 assembly
1987: C
1987: ARM assembly
1988: 80x86 assembly
1994: C++
1995: Java
1999: AVR assembly
2000+ JavaScript, PHP, Bash, a little Perl
2000+ ARM assembly revived

Sean.

Top
SteveN
SteveN's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Wed. Nov 14, 2001
Posts: 3635 View posts
Location: Charlottesville, VA USA
Posted by SteveN: Thu. Jan 10, 2008 - 11:51 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Off topic:

Hey, wow, you are still alive Sean. Great to hear from you!!

Top
clawson
clawson's picture
Level: Moderator
Joined: Mon. Jul 18, 2005
Posts: 97834 View posts
Location: (using avr-gcc in) Finchingfield, Essex, England
Posted by clawson: Fri. Jan 11, 2008 - 11:12 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Sean,

So (with my Sherlock Holmes hat on) I guess that makes you 41-42 ?

Cliff

Top
JohanEkdahl
JohanEkdahl's picture
Level: 10k+ Postman
Joined: Wed. Mar 27, 2002
Posts: 26988 View posts
Location: Lund, Sweden
Posted by JohanEkdahl: Mon. Jan 14, 2008 - 07:51 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Hey, Sean! Nice to se you de-lurk!

As of January 15, 2018, Site fix-up work has begun! Now do your part and report any bugs or deficiencies here. 

No guarantees, but if we don't report problems they won't get much of  a chance to be fixed! Details/discussions at link given just above.

 

"Some questions have no answers."[C Baird] "There comes a point where the spoon-feeding has to stop and the independent thinking has to start." [C Lawson] "There are always ways to disagree, without being disagreeable."[E Weddington] "Words represent concepts. Use the wrong words, communicate the wrong concept." [J Morin] "Persistence only goes so far if you set yourself up for failure." [Kartman]

Top
uidzer0
uidzer0's picture
Level: Hangaround
Joined: Mon. Dec 3, 2007
Posts: 106 View posts
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Posted by uidzer0: Mon. Jan 14, 2008 - 11:12 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

I wasn't alive for most of these =]

Here's my path starting around 99'

Perl
C
C++
Java
PHP
Obj-C
C#

These days I generally use C/Java/PHP for most things. At this point, aside from assembly it's become more of a syntactical nuisance to switch/learn new languages.

Top
Simonetta
Simonetta's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Wed. Mar 12, 2003
Posts: 2720 View posts
Location: Portland, Oregon USA
Posted by Simonetta: Tue. Jan 15, 2008 - 09:56 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

I started learning computer languages as a progression from learning analog electronics after getting a worthless college degree in Economics. I learned op amps, then digital logic, then Bill Gate's BASIC on a Radio Shack Color Computer.
A gut feeling that there had to be a better way of doing programming led to reading about 6809 assembler. The more 'advanced' Commodore computers led to 6502 assembler, with a very brief exploration into FORTH I remember going to Toys-R-US to buy the FORTH cartridge for the VIC-20 and being amazed that the only place that one could get an advanced programming language for a home computer was at a toy store.
Abandoned the Commodore 64 for a PC in 1989 and learned Intel 8051 assembler. Attempted to learn 8080 but the bizarre kluge of the segment/offset addressing scheme for that processor led me to Turbo C instead for MS-DOS programs. Abandoned programming for eight years in the 1990s.
Briefly learned AVRs when they came out in 1998. Having Flash memory and peripherals on chip meant never again using ultraviolet EPROMs and wire-wrapping a hundred connections between the CPU chip, the memory chips, the peripherals, and the TTL glue logic. Happy days had come finally.
Learned Visual BASIC for a job connecting air quality monitors with embedded systems to Windows PCs. Introduced to object-oriented programming in order to customise Microsoft Word and Excel applications to work directly with data received from embedded systems using VBA (Visual Basic for Applications, a strange and fascinating language-very far from BASIC)
Relearned AVR assembler in 2003 to develop flexibility in using inexpensive microcontrollers to replace TTL clusters and to do things that weren't possible before. Studied PICs and wish that I could convince all the PIC users to switch to AVR.
Currently studing embedded-systems C for the AVR by rewriting my assembler code into WINAVR C.
Hope to be fluent and flexible in C by the time that 8-bit controllers like AVRs are replaced by 32-bit controllers like ARM.
Some day I might even be able to get a job in this field, but I'm beginning to doubt it. I always seem to be five years behind the level where people are hiring. Advice and suggestions requested and warmly received.

Top
John_A_Brown
John_A_Brown's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Sat. Sep 20, 2003
Posts: 6060 View posts
Location: Surrey, England
Posted by John_A_Brown: Wed. Jan 16, 2008 - 12:16 AM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Quote:
A gut feeling that there had to be a better way of doing programming led to reading about 6809 assembler. The more 'advanced' Commodore computers led to 6502 assembler,

6502 "more advanced" than 6809? I don't think so! The 6809 was the perfect 8 bit processor.
8080 segment/offset? I think alpha-particles(now whatever happened to them?) have affected your memory!

Four legs good, two legs bad, three legs stable.

Top
stu_san
stu_san's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Fri. Dec 30, 2005
Posts: 2327 View posts
Location: Fort Collins, CO USA
Posted by stu_san: Wed. Jan 16, 2008 - 05:08 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Simonetta wrote:
Attempted to learn 8080 but the bizarre kluge of the segment/offset addressing scheme for that processor...
Surely the 8086. The 8080 had no segment/offset addressing.
Simonetta wrote:
Some day I might even be able to get a job in this field, but I'm beginning to doubt it. I always seem to be five years behind the level where people are hiring. Advice and suggestions requested and warmly received.
Put your experience on the resume and concentrate on embedded. Embedded experience seems to be strongly desired in the marketplace right now, if the calls I get from headhunters are any clue.

Although your experience is "light" (I wouldn't put it that way :wink: ), don't be afraid to put "hobby" experience down on your resume -- some "hobbyists" I know are far better at this than I am!

Good luck!

Stu

Engineering seems to boil down to: Cheap. Fast. Good. Choose two. Sometimes choose only one.

Newbie? Be sure to read the thread Newbie? Start here!

Top
Guillem Planisi
Guillem Planisi's picture
Level: Raving Lunatic
Joined: Fri. Jun 11, 2004
Posts: 2418 View posts
Location: Vilanova (Barcelona)
Posted by Guillem Planisi: Wed. Jan 16, 2008 - 08:59 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Just a side note: I had been always fascinated by the Transputer technology, but never met anybody that worked with it... It's nice to know that someone had already used them.

Simonetta, although I'm an ARM fan as I'am an AVR fan, I seriously doubt that 8 bit microcontrollers would be replaced by ARM's or similar in a near future, only the 'big ones', like ATmega256 or similar.

Anyway, I also would recommend you to check Cypress PSoC. I'm pretty convinced that this 'fresh air' in the microcontroller market would have some future. And they also are programmed in C. But it seems that the 8 bitties ones will still be something like a PIC core, while I'm awaiting for the new ones, probably ARM-CortexM3 based cores.

Ah, and the 'hobbyst' side of me was what let me switch from a SAT to R+D job.

Guillem.
"Common sense is the least common of the senses" Anonymous.

Top
jgmdesign
jgmdesign's picture
Level: Moderator
Joined: Mon. Mar 19, 2007
Posts: 16473 View posts
Location: Long Island New York
Posted by jgmdesign: Wed. Jan 16, 2008 - 09:16 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

Oh hell, why not......

BASIC (1979)
Assembler for 80c51 (1987)
Ladder logic for Modicon PLC's(1990)
ladder logic for Omron PLC's(1991)
Ladder logic for Allen-Bradley PLC's(1991)
Ladder logic for GE/FANUC PLC's(1992)
Assembler for Microchip PIC (1995)
ISP Synario for Lattice semiconductor CPLD's(1998)
Assembler for Atmel AVR's(2004)
WinCUPL for Atmel CPLD's(2006)

Whew!!

What was the original question? :mrgreen:

Jim

I would rather attempt something great and fail, than attempt nothing and succeed - Fortune Cookie

 

"The critical shortage here is not stuff, but time." - Johan Ekdahl

 

"Step N is required before you can do step N+1!" - ka7ehk

 

"If you want a career with a known path - become an undertaker. Dead people don't sue!" - Kartman

"Why is there a "Highway to Hell" and only a "Stairway to Heaven"? A prediction of the expected traffic load?"  - Lee "theusch"

 

Speak sweetly. It makes your words easier to digest when at a later date you have to eat them ;-)  - Source Unknown

Please Read: Code-of-Conduct

Atmel Studio6.2/AS7, DipTrace, Quartus, MPLAB, RSLogix user

Top
ncherry
ncherry's picture
Level: Rookie
Joined: Mon. Oct 29, 2007
Posts: 32 View posts
Location: NJ
Posted by ncherry: Thu. Jan 17, 2008 - 11:57 PM
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0

John_A_Brown wrote:
Quote:
A gut feeling that there had to be a better way of doing programming led to reading about 6809 assembler. The more 'advanced' Commodore computers led to 6502 assembler,

6502 "more advanced" than 6809? I don't think so! The 6809 was the perfect 8 bit processor.
8080 segment/offset? I think alpha-particles(now whatever happened to them?) have affected your memory!
I think he meant that the Commodore was more advanced than the CoCo (at least that's what I hope he meant). I'm pretty sure he confused the 8080 with the 8088 which many PC clones used at the time. I hated the 8088 memory arch. too. I hated doing C on the 8088/86 also, nasty far and near pointers would drive me mad.

My favorite assembly language was 6809, I learned that before C and I thought C looked a lot like it.

Neil Cherry
Linux Home Automation
Author: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies.

Top