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Vintage Computers Any vintage computer systems, calculators, video games etc., but with an emphasis on 1980s and earlier equipment.

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Old 6th Jan 2004, 10:46 pm   #1
BlowFish
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Default Vintage Programming Languages

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[My programming is still mainly limited to BASIC, and I'm trying to get to grips with VisualBASIC 6. I have messed around with Perl a bit (out of necessity), and also used LabVIEW, Clipper (dBase language) and Forth where I used to work.
The first programming language I used was BBC Micro Basic, then later I used Borland Turbo C and Microsoft QBasic. I still use VB for prototyping graphical interfaces, but the ones I use today are Java and C++ and maybe the occasional assembly language programming.
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Old 7th Jan 2004, 12:01 am   #2
Jeremy M0RVB
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Default Re: Vintage Programming Languages

My first was Algol 60 on an ICL 1906A mainframe in 1978.

In fact I think I missed out on the whole Basic thing as my first actual language on a micro was Pascal. Then a bit of Algol 68R, Fortran and Cobol on mainframes (I wrote a command interpreter in Cobol to prove it could be done! Silly really...).

Nowadays most of my programming is ASP and PHP web apps... I miss Pascal! It was nice 'till they insisted on crowbarring in all this fangled OOP business
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Old 7th Jan 2004, 11:39 am   #3
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Default Re: Vintage Programming Languages

My programming knowledge was always fairly basic (no pun intended!) and its years now since I've done any...

I used to write simple programs and games using GW Basic and then later when I acquired copies of Turbo Basic and QuickBasic 4 I used then to compile my existing programs rather than 'learn new tricks.' I also messed about at a low level with Fortran and Prolog, but nothing too serious.

I suppose that it was Borland with its range of 'Turbo' compilers (Turbo Basic, Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, Turbo Prolog) which made programming more straightforward for a generation of computer enthusiasts in the '80s - certainly these were more user friendly than some of the other Borland products (has anybody tried wordprocessing with Borland Sprint?!).
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Old 7th Jan 2004, 1:11 pm   #4
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Default Re: Vintage Programming Languages

I started with Acorn BASIC and assembler.

I bought a Forth compiler for the Electron on account of how I was told the compiled code ran faster than BASIC. Which it didn't !

Early PC experience was Borland C 3.1 - great compiler that and when I tinkered with Linux it was most pleasing to find someone had written a clone for Linux.

At the start of the 80's I did Pascal on a mainframe - using punched cards !!! (1st year student scum wern't allowed to use the proper terminals). Never got the hang of when a " ; " was needed or not so it was a case of " if it doesn't compile add (remove) the ; character " .

Of course things moved on with 'C' ... " if it doesn't compile, add an '&' and if it still doesn't compile add a '*' " .

Things have moved on further since then with MFC under Visual C++ V6 .. " If it doesn't compile, open the options dialog, select build tag, select precompiled headers drop-down menu, tick auto generated, add stdafx.h [..3 further pages of instructions ommitted..] ... and make it dynamically linked " .

No prizes for guessing I'm NOT looking forward to the next modern language !!!

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Old 7th Jan 2004, 3:15 pm   #5
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I started with Sinclair BASIC, on the ZX80 and ZX81, as well as the Research Machines version at school.

At college I used PASCAL,which I found to be a wonderful, easy structed language, we also had the GHOST 80 grafics package, which could be called as PASCAL routines, allrunning on a VAX cluster with VT100 text terminals, and a limited number of Tektronix graphics terminals (write the code, compile it, walk to the room with the graphics terminals, wait for 300 other students, run code, find error, repeat the above!)

At work we use GW BASIC on the workshop hack machine (whatever dubious bit of hardware we found in the skip.... usually a 286 or 386), which is handy for writing alarm monitor programs, data loggers and the like.

If we have some serious data handling to do (file conversions, data preparation and the like) it tends to get done in Visual Basic, which I'm just starting to get my head around, just in case the guy who normaly writes our little applications decides to take an early retirement.......

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Old 10th Jan 2004, 12:51 am   #6
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I much prefer hardware, but from time to time I am forced into blunder around with software.

My first language was BBC basic (Model B BBC) followed shortly by 6502 assembly language (on the same machine). In my early days at work I fiddled around with a strange language called ART but only to slightly modify other people’s programmes. Then I learned Pascal in the guise of Modula 2 for an IT course I did. I have tried my hand at C++ but after the elegance of Pascal, I find it a " messy " language.

Oh! and when logic design went down the FPGA route learned some VHDL.





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Old 10th Jan 2004, 3:24 pm   #7
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Default Re: Vintage Programming Languages

Did anybody ever use a language called Logo?

I have read about it from time to time as a language used by early home computers in the late '70s/early '80s and in the context of controlling remote devices and I just wondered at its capabilities.
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Old 10th Jan 2004, 4:21 pm   #8
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Default Re: Vintage Programming Languages

I used TI Logo on the TI994a it was aimed at education
and let you do things like guiding a " turtle " around the screen this was in the days before robot buggies became available. Logo wasn't much good for any type of high level programming


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Old 30th Jul 2004, 5:17 pm   #9
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How about CESIL? A school programming language from the seventies which, in my case, required an acoustic coupler link to Town Hall and one's programs would be returned, about a week later, on punched cards.
 
Old 29th Nov 2005, 11:32 am   #10
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Default Re: Vintage Programming Languages

A thread re-appears from the depths of time... (well, 2003)...

Logo - vintage maybe, but not obsolete! Its still used in education in teaching Maths (my job, for better or for worse...)

Its useful because of its geometry. You can teach the kids about subroutines also, but its use outside of education is probably quite limited.

-- Tim.
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Old 29th Nov 2005, 7:13 pm   #11
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Hello,

The first programming languages I used on an ICL 1906S some 30 years ago was PLAN, ICLs assembler language, and Algol. Soon after I moved onto IBM machines and IBM Assembler which I still occasionally use. Inevitably I also learnt Cobol, Fortran 77, RPG2, and then C on PDP11 Unix machines in 1980. But the most unusually named programming language I ever used some 20 years ago was one called Mantis, a 4 GL - actually I really liked Mantis !

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Old 29th Nov 2005, 7:26 pm   #12
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Default Re: Vintage Programming Languages

Ah Logo,

I remember doing that at school, on something called a link computer?

Couldnt have made much of an impression though!

Had a play with basic on the VIC20 as well, poke 259 sticks in my mind for some strange reason........cannot remember what that particular code did though!

Cheers
Sean

Blissfully ignorant of all programming languages!
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Old 29th Nov 2005, 8:24 pm   #13
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Default Re: Vintage Programming Languages

More recently, but I remember doing Logo and BASIC on BBC micros at school. The novelty of the turtle soon wore off, but people never got bored of inserting a: 'GOTO', 'PRINT' loop into someones program when they went away! Almost worth getting BASIC back again for that.

More recently (ok, last couple of years) I have been battling with C, real-time C , and Matlab.

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Old 29th Nov 2005, 11:00 pm   #14
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Default Re: Vintage Programming Languages

Apart from machine code on an English Electric valve-based computer with a 3 ton cast iron drum memory, the earliest computer 'language' that I experienced was FOCAL (a BASIC-like interpreter) which, along with its operating system and loader, successfully ran in 4,000 twelve bit words (6,000 bytes) of magnetic core memory on a DEC PDP-8. Were we excited when the memory was upgraded to 8,000 words (12 kb) and we could start using trignometric expressions!

There being no such thing as CMOS or EPROM, when the machine was powered on we had to enter the bootstrap loader program, by hand, through the front panel switches (or switch register as it was known) before we could load a punched paper tape through the tape reader of the ASR33 Teletype.

I subsequently designed what I believe was the first ever automated eprom programmer using a PDP-8 as the controller. The early eproms were either programmed and verified manually/visually, or by rather crude punched paper tape machines which had a tendency to irreparably overheat the chips. The PDP-8-based design switched off the programming power as soon as the relevant bits had 'popped', thus reducing any unnecessary heating and significantly speeding-up and improving the yield of the automated mass production process.
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Old 29th Nov 2005, 11:58 pm   #15
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My very first programming was at the end of the 1960s (sixth form) using FORTRAN IV on an IBM 1800, sending bunches of punched cards over to the Instute of Oceanography next door to the school, who very kindly allowed us to use spare time on their computer. The only computer equipment the school owned was a manual card punch - I became quite efficient at converting the written code into the correct fingerings (rather like sight reading to play a musical instrument). Occasionally we were honoured to be allowed to use the keyboard-operated punches of the Institute.

When I left school, I became a computer programmer using mainly PL/I and assemler on an IBM 360, but doing a college course where we used COBOL and PLAN on an ICL 1900.

I seem to have ended up doing a fair amount of my programming in assembler on most computers (including PC and a BBC micro before that), due to wanting to perform the sort of tasks that high level languages don't allow.

On the PC I do my high-level programming using a fairly ancient DOS version of "C" (no plusses!). I have never progressed to programming for Windows.
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Old 30th Nov 2005, 9:31 am   #16
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Default Re: Vintage Programming Languages

Quote:
Originally Posted by quantum
Did anybody ever use a language called Logo?

I have read about it from time to time as a language used by early home computers in the late '70s/early '80s and in the context of controlling remote devices and I just wondered at its capabilities.
I did write a LOGO interpreter in C once! Sad

Anyone used FORTH? It could be said that it is debatable that you would call it a language per se, as it is so different. There is even a Windows version about!
Not impossible to build your own.

Anyone used BCPL (the forerunner of C)? There was a book that showed you how to construct a BCPL compiler on any platform, proviving you had a running version on another machine.

In the pre-PowerPoint days there was Dan Bricklin's Demo which had its own programming language and was mainly used to demonstrate software like a slide show, even simulating typing sounds!
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Old 30th Nov 2005, 12:51 pm   #17
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Dave...did you say 'progressed' to programming in Windows?!?!?!?!

Mike - I played around with Forth once on a ZX Spectrum. Definitely a programming language and quite interesting but I'm not sure or can't remember why you'd want to use it other than for keeping up the admirable tradition of English eccentricity.

-- Tim.
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Old 30th Nov 2005, 1:31 pm   #18
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Default Re: Vintage Programming Languages

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Dave...did you say 'progressed' to programming in Windows?!?!?!?!

-- Tim.
Well, maybe not the best-chosen verb - but then, is "progress" necessarily a step in the right direction, anyway?
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Old 30th Nov 2005, 5:53 pm   #19
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Default Re: Vintage Programming Languages

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Originally Posted by TimS
Mike - I played around with Forth once on a ZX Spectrum. Definitely a programming language and quite interesting but I'm not sure or can't remember why you'd want to use it other than for keeping up the admirable tradition of English eccentricity.

-- Tim.
Hi Tim
My reason for questioning it as a language was that it was then, and still is now, quite unique.

In the days of the old DOSsers such as me, languages simply started at the beginning and then ran in various directions depending on control structures that were found - a bit like the path of a ball in a pinball machine.

Object-orientation changed this; lots of parts (objects) just sit there until one of them does something (events).

Forth does not work like any of these; it has a set of dictionary definitions that equate to assembly language subroutines, and are little building blocks like arithmetical operations and display items.

A Forth application created new definitions based on existing ones, and a hierarchy builds up with a single root that launches the app.
It is very fast, but, indeed, eccentric!
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Old 30th Nov 2005, 6:05 pm   #20
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Default Re: Vintage Programming Languages

God, someone else has used SIMPLE. I did my CSE computer studies in it on the very first year that they introduced it in darkest Wales.

As to FORTH. I love it. I don't use it very much any more but the threaded model that the original versions were built from intrigues me. I wrote several versions of the threaded interpreter that Loeliger used in his BYTE book on threaded languages which was quite good fun and don't forget that a compilation option in early DEC Fortrans for the PDP11 was to generate threaded code.

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