Ask HN: Which “old” programming language(s) you still use in your $DAYJOB?

16 pointssmlckz4y ago25 comments

And what's your experience of using such “old” programming language(s)?

Here “use” can mean writing new code, debugging/maintaing old code etc.

25 comments

Fortran is quite heavily used in computational science domain. Both the "old" (F66, F77, F90) and the new modern F2003, F2008, F2018. and Yes, (modern) Fortran feeds my family daily (along with many other computational tools and skills). Modern Fortran is a bliss. The parallel features of it are quite advanced comparable to advanced modern MPI capabilities, yet with an extremely intuitive and simple "Coarray" syntax. It is a fully vectorized, parallel shared and distributed, array-oriented, also Object-Oriented, language. It has influenced and shaped the syntax of MATLAB, Python, R, even C++ numerical libraries by its simple powerful high-level array-syntax.

fiftyacorn4y ago

It's still heavily used in the chemical industry too

whinvik4y ago

I also use Fortran daily but I see more and more people/organizations try to move out of it. What language they move to remains to be seen, however the recent efforts to modernise Fortran, create a standard library may yet breathe new life into it.

mbfg4y ago

Aren't almost all of them old at this point? The numbers of people using what most people would count as new is pretty small percentage wise.

jstx14y ago

Even the newer ones aren't that new - Rust, Go, Kotlin, Julia are over 10 years old at this point. TypeScript is 8.

MH154y ago

What's the newest -real- language do we think? Not just "gained popularity recently" but actually newer.

2 more replies

jweather4y ago

.NET Compact Framework 3.5. Might not sound that old, but it's only supported in Visual Studio 2008. Microsoft keeps trying to kill it off, but the manufacturer I support is still shipping products using it.

Multicomp4y ago

I work at a downstream customer of some company like yours. They like their windows mobile 6.5 devices very nicely, thank you very much. so when 2005 rugged wall-mounted tablet-with-barcode scanner or more commonly an RFID inventory scan gun dies, they just order another one, use MDM like Avalanche to give it its network policies and programs, and next shift grabs it and are off to the races.

Using a rugged android phone is talked about and sat on, that's about it.

jjice4y ago

Maybe I'll come off as a youngin' with this one, but PHP. I honestly really enjoy it. There are some quirks and syntax I don't particularly like, but overall, using PHP in a server setting isn't bad at all. I always heard people talk down on it in college, but those people probably never used it either. PHP by day and Rust by night is a nice combo honestly. Pretty different, but it gives some variety.

mattmanser4y ago

It used to be a really dodgy language, but I heard it's improved a lot. I've only ever fixed other people's PHP code or written small plugins for wordpress, so I can't give a good opinion, but a few people have told me I should give laravel a go over the years.

One of the common complaints was that a lot of the core library had inconsistent function signatures[1], did they ever fix that? Always seemed to me that it would be an unfixable problem.

[1] https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3254...

the_only_law4y ago

I’ve written PHP in the past. Frankly I don’t hate it much more than any other programming language that sees industrial use.

mindcrime4y ago

The oldest stuff I use regularly at work would be Bash, Java, and Groovy. And then one specific utility stands out as something I use a lot, despite its age: sed. I use sed all over the place in scripts to inject values into config files as part of scripts.

yen2234y ago

SQL, hands down

Bostonian4y ago

Through 2015 I used Fortran to develop trading strategies for a fund, and since then I have developed strategies for my personal account. I used to use g95 and now use the gfortran compiler. Fortran 90 and later versions (the latest standard is F2018) have modern features, including array operations like Matlab or NumPy. For plotting I wrote some subroutines that called gnuplot. Fortran does not have libraries to download financial data like Python or R, but once you have the data, coding is straightforward and the programs are fast.

dyingkneepad4y ago

C and Bash. I absolutely love and and hope to be able to continue using them long-term. Performance is key to what we do. Sometimes we even need to look at the code generated by the compiler, so some assembly knowledge is required too.

(although sometimes I prefer C++, and learning Rust is still on my TODO list)

ArtWomb4y ago

Not a language per se, but I'm on a Qt based distro this summer, and I was pleasantly surprised to see what's new in 6.0. Qt is ancient, ubiquitous. We use it everyday without realizing it. But now it's got its own IDE, UI editor. And supports a Vulkan rendering backend ;)

lmiller19904y ago

Until recently wrote a lot of Perl 5 (still very popular in bioinfomatics).

thorin4y ago

SQL, Oracle PL/SQL, bash/ksh

Previous jobs, not so long ago: Fortran, C, BASIC

the_only_law4y ago

VBA, VBScript, VB6, VB.NET

Maybe not “old” but most of those are solid legacy.

jweather4y ago

Yup... I have to support VBScript for one of our digital signage platforms. Always a joy...

ausudhz4y ago

VB6 is definitely old

giantg24y ago

The usual stuff (SQL, ksh, etc) and COBOL.

joshxyz4y ago

i honestly like batch and bash files haha

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

25 comments

TheRealKing4y ago

fiftyacorn4y ago

It's still heavily used in the chemical industry too

whinvik4y ago

mbfg4y ago

Aren't almost all of them old at this point? The numbers of people using what most people would count as new is pretty small percentage wise.

jstx14y ago

Even the newer ones aren't that new - Rust, Go, Kotlin, Julia are over 10 years old at this point. TypeScript is 8.

MH154y ago

What's the newest -real- language do we think? Not just "gained popularity recently" but actually newer.

2 more replies

jweather4y ago

Multicomp4y ago

Using a rugged android phone is talked about and sat on, that's about it.

jjice4y ago

mattmanser4y ago

One of the common complaints was that a lot of the core library had inconsistent function signatures[1], did they ever fix that? Always seemed to me that it would be an unfixable problem.

[1] https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3254...

the_only_law4y ago

I’ve written PHP in the past. Frankly I don’t hate it much more than any other programming language that sees industrial use.

mindcrime4y ago

yen2234y ago

SQL, hands down

Bostonian4y ago

dyingkneepad4y ago

(although sometimes I prefer C++, and learning Rust is still on my TODO list)

ArtWomb4y ago

lmiller19904y ago

Until recently wrote a lot of Perl 5 (still very popular in bioinfomatics).