Category Archives: computers

Another Undead Computer Language

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From Competitive Programming to APL, with Conor Hoekstra.

The first half or so of this article was like reading an anthropological report of a strange culture far away: There were no programming contests when I was getting started out in the field (1967-1976). I rarely had the kind of technical interviews that Hoekstra went through, and did not get any of the five programming jobs I held from 1977 to 1998 through such an interview.

I started reading more closely with

Conor: So, I heard about APL five different times between the year 2010 and 2019.
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The Lifetimes of Programming Languages

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I started programming computers in February of 1967, when I was a junior in high school. After dropping out of grad school I began a 41 year career in information technology in January of 1977. I have seen a lot of computer languages come and go. So I read 5 Programming Languages You Won’t Likely Be Using by 2030 with some interest. The only one on the list I had ever used was Perl. It was kind of fun, but I did not get very attached to it 🙂

Meanwhile, some much older languages live on. Last year COVID-19 demonstrated how much the financial world still depends on COBOL:

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