Taking the bull by its horns

[flatekmonkey]

On Tue, Jul 17, 2007 at 10:26:45PM +0900, Robert D. wrote:

Ok I’ll put my cards on the table

Okay, here goes . . .

32yo Male, Colorado

Counting only languages in which I could ever do more than “Hello
World”,
this is my programming linguistic background (in chronological order):
Atari BASIC
QBASIC
C/C++
Logo
DOS batch files (shouldn’t really count, but what the heck)
JavaScript
Visual C++ (distinct from C/C++, really) and Visual Basic (ditto for
BASIC)
Perl
PHP
Java, Object Pascal (Delphi), and Objective C, in no particular order
Python and bash, roughly simultaneously
Ruby
Logo again – UCBLogo to be specific
OCaml
tcsh
C again

Some of those I couldn’t do much more than “Hello World”. In no
particular order, these are languages in which I could and/or can “get
by” if I had/have to:
C
UCBLogo
DOS batch files
Object Pascal (Delphi)
bash
Ruby
tcsh

These are the languages in which I could/can actually claim some real
competence:
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
. . . though I’m getting awfully close with Ruby. Looking at that
(somewhat sad) list of three languages, these are all languages for
which
I get paid currently, and have for a while. Of them, Perl is the only
one I really like.

In no particular order, languages I really like from the first list:
UCBLogo
Perl
Objective C
Ruby
OCaml

Those languages that are like a poker in the eye for me:
any BASIC
C++
DOS batch files
Visual $foo
PHP
Java
Python (yes, really)

My work, at present, consists mostly of industry and technology analysis
and consulting, web development, small business disaster recovery, and
writing. I guess things are at this point leaning toward increasing the
writing slice of the pie at the expense of the rest of it, and coding
more and more often on projects I like rather than those that I “need”
to
pay the bills (since writing takes up the slack).

The professional writing I do is, of course, technology related – at
the
moment, increasingly oriented toward security-related topics. I
wouldn’t
be surprised if I ended up finding vulnerabilities for a living, at the
rate I’m going. Ruby strikes me as an excellent tool toward that end.
It’s also heaps of fun to use.

Did I cover everything? I might have forgotten a language or two along
the way.

[flatekmonkey]

On 7/18/07, Michael U. [email protected] wrote:

Personally I am surprised to be the only having used Ada and I am even
more surprised that Lua missed out at all (I was hoping to see Io and
Self too).

I’m more surprised that Ruby only got one vote. I thought I saw it
mentioned more than once. I guess at my age, I can’t trust my memory
anymore.

LOL
I do not count ruby, I assume 100%, but one slipped into the data, thx
for pointing it out.

[flatekmonkey]

male 30y

bg: Pascal, x86 Assembly, Perl, Linux shell scripting, JavaScript,
Delphi,
Visual Basic, Visual FoxPro, PHP, Ruby, Lua, Python, Scheme, Erlang, C.

wk: web programming (mostly Ruby, PHP), Linux sysadmin (making good use
of
Ruby here as well).

Cheers,
Alex

[flatekmonkey]

Male, 32 years old. Location: Malmö, Scania (sweden).

bg: 6502/6510 assembler (C64), 680x0 assembler (Amiga), C, C++
wk: sysadmin, using Perl, Ruby & PHP at work.

[flatekmonkey]

On Jul 17, 2007, at 11:24 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

Dang … someone beat me out for “doing it the longest”. Not by much,
though.

I also began programming on an IBM 650 (in 1958). Oh, the fond
memories: the glow of vacuum tubes, SOAP II [*], clearing card jams
from both ends of the reader/punch unit, the 25-millisecond latency
of drum memory

By 1961, I had already moved to the IBM 1620, a great improvement
over the 650. But my all-time favorite computer remains the DEC
PDP-11 (the original, not the VAX-11).

Regards, Morton

[*] an ancient assembly language – nothing to do with XML messaging.

[flatekmonkey]

On 7/18/07, Morton G. [email protected] wrote:

By 1961, I had already moved to the IBM 1620, a great improvement
over the 650. But my all-time favorite computer remains the DEC
PDP-11 (the original, not the VAX-11).
Playing dungeon and dragons or something like that on it, you see I
have been a very diligent student, that was in 83/84 if I am not
mistaken, great machine indeed, although I was not good enough in HW
to judge it for myself.
R.

[flatekmonkey]

Michael U. wrote:

Hmmm … AI but not Lisp?

[flatekmonkey]

Nice initiative!

male 20y
bg:

• PHP (yuck!)
• JavaScript
• C
• C# (yuck as well!)
• Java (the yuck goes without saying)
• Standard ML (I love it!)
• Assembler (just a little bit)

wk: studying CS at the University of Copenhagen
location: Copenhagen, Denmark

Cheers,
Daniel

[flatekmonkey]

Martin DeMello wrote:

I haven’t settled on an implementation yet. Chicken is a good one, but
PLT has an excellent user interface (Dr Scheme), gambit-c has the
Erlang-like Termite for concurrent programming, Guile is ubiquitous, and
I think there is another one that’s the fastest available because it has
the best compiler. At one point last year I installed all of the ones in
Gentoo’s Portage repository to have a shootout, but I got nudged back
into Ruby shortly afterwards.

I think when all the smoke clears, it will be Gambit, though, because of
Termite. They’re on the edge of a major release – I think they’re at
release candidate stage now.

[flatekmonkey]

On 7/18/07, Stefan R. [email protected] wrote:

I suspect he didn’t add, I guess he’s really 55 ;-p
Is it my wisdom that betrayed me

[flatekmonkey]

Hi,

In message “Re: Taking the bull by its horns [was background]”
on Wed, 18 Jul 2007 10:38:16 +0900, John C.
[email protected] writes:

|bg: fortran,mortran,algol,basic,pascal,dcl,c,c++,lisp,scheme,assembler,perl,awk,sh,R,joy,sql,…

Just curious, but what is mortran? Fortran for Martians?

…Sorry, I couldn’t resist after seeing your name. I was a fan of
Burroughs novel when I was young.

          matz.

male 42y
bg: BASIC,FORTRAN,Pascal,C,C++,Emacs Lisp,Scheme,AWK,sh,Perl,…and
Ruby. (Yey)
wk: Open Source Developer
location: Matsue-city Shimane-prefecture, Japan

[flatekmonkey]

Yukihiro M. wrote:

Hi,

In message “Re: Taking the bull by its horns [was background]”
on Wed, 18 Jul 2007 10:38:16 +0900, John C. [email protected] writes:

|bg: fortran,mortran,algol,basic,pascal,dcl,c,c++,lisp,scheme,assembler,perl,awk,sh,R,joy,sql,…

Just curious, but what is mortran? Fortran for Martians?

Mortran was Macro Fortran. It came out of one of the California
“high-energy physics” labs, and it was a pre-processor that generated
Fortran code. I never used it, but it had some features that were
missing from the prevalent Fortran dialect of the day, Fortran 66, that
later made it into the mainstream Fortran language.

male 42y
bg: BASIC,FORTRAN,Pascal,C,C++,Emacs Lisp,Scheme,AWK,sh,Perl,…and Ruby. (Yey)
wk: Open Source Developer
location: Matsue-city Shimane-prefecture, Japan

You left off CLU.

[flatekmonkey]

On 7/18/07, Damjan R. [email protected] wrote:

Location:Slovenia, on the sunny side of the Alps.
I know that will reveal my origin, but what the heck
That is not funny, well that’s why I left;)

R.

[flatekmonkey]

oops I guess there is no language called cppi, so that will just add
to C/C++ score

[flatekmonkey]

Erratum

logo … 4 15.38%

(O)Caml … 4 15.38%
(O)Caml … 6 23.08%

caml … 0 --> (O)Caml

[flatekmonkey]

Last résumé;)

Avg age: 34.3125
Avg sex: 0.00female + 1.00male

Grouped languages thus values > 100% are normal
c/c++ … 37 142.31%
java … 16 61.54%
lisp/scheme/CLOS … 14 53.85%
basic … 14 53.85%
pascal/delphi … 13 50.00%
perl … 10 38.46%
assembler … 9 34.62%
python … 9 34.62%
php … 8 30.77%
sql … 8 30.77%
shell … 7 26.92%
javascript … 6 23.08%
obj_c … 5 19.23%
csq … 5 19.23%
logo … 4 15.38%
(O)Caml … 4 15.38%
awk … 3 11.54%
prolog … 3 11.54%
visual_basic … 3 11.54%
ada … 3 11.54%
smalltalk … 3 11.54%
vhdl … 2 7.69%
erlang … 2 7.69%
hypercard … 2 7.69%
eiffel … 2 7.69%
rexx … 2 7.69%
haskell … 2 7.69%
caml … 2 7.69%
apple_script … 2 7.69%
fortran … 2 7.69%
forth … 2 7.69%
and : dylan, lua, pl1, dos_batch, matlab, dcl, visual_fox_pro, turing,
sm, joy, cppi, visual_cpp, lotus_notes, modula_2, algol, R, tcl,
mortran, sh, xslt, neko, elang, clipper, pl_sql

and furthermore - hopefully you can swim – the average Ruby ML
contributer is leaving somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, not far off
the shore of the East Coast though – it’s a guess ;).

This was great fun, thx to all for replying, keep doing so by all
means but I do not think I will update the stats, unless we get a lady
of course

Cheers
Robert

Legal Notice: I have not recorded any personal data only a list of
ages and prog languages and no association of that to any name or
other entity identifying a person.

[flatekmonkey]

Le 17 juillet à 15:26, Robert D. a écrit :

Ok I’ll put my cards on the table

So…

Male, 32.

Background : Started with BASIC on a TRS-80 when I was 5, then a long
string of languages, including BASIC variants, Pacal variants,
Clipper, C, (Visual) C++, Visual Basic, Delphi, shells, javascript,
perl, and a passing interest in anything I can get my hands on.

Work : Systems / network administrator (in a multi-platform environment,
mostly BSD/Linux/Windows), software architect and programmer, VB6
first and foremost (ew), then Perl, Ruby, Ruby on Rails and whatever
is at hand for the task.

Hobbies : My small part of the internet, running news servers (hi
list !), and (right now) trying to make smallish games in Ruby and
Ruby on Rails… (And stuff outside computers, of course.)

Location : Liège, Belgium ; will travel for food and alcohol… }:>

Fred
Still 100% males.

[flatekmonkey]

On 7/18/07, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky [email protected] wrote:

I think there is another one that’s the fastest available because it has
the best compiler. At one point last year I installed all of the ones in

Stalin, but it’s R4RS and seems to be more an academic research
project than anything that has an actual community around it. The USP
is that it does whole-program optimisation.

martin

[flatekmonkey]

quoth the Robert D.:

Personally I am surprised to be the only having used Ada and I am even
more surprised that Lua missed out at all (I was hoping to see Io and
Self too).
I am sure there is some folks having experience with these

Well, I for one taught myself Lua. Couple things about it: 1. It is very
fast.
In some trivial tests I have done it runs with roughly 50% the speed of
C,
which means it edges out Perl as fastest “interpreted” language in my
books.
And 2. It uses ‘silly’ 1 based arrays (tables). See the other thread
about
that

I have also written a couple of trivial programs in Io. See [0] for one.
It
seems quite an interesting language, but I cannot get past the
poor/incomplete documentation to write anything more complex…

Keep in mind I am strictly a hobbiest, and have not programmed in any
language professionally.

For the record:

m 30 yo
Know well: (ba)sh, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Scheme, Lua
Know enough to get by: C/C++, Java, MIPS asm
Have played with: Io, Ada, Haskell, Erlang, OCaml
Work: Currently unemployed
Location: Currently incarcerated in Edmonton Alberta

No, I’m not in jail, But I am here against my will

Cheers
Robert

-d

[0] badcomputer.org: codeアーカイブ

[flatekmonkey]

Hi,

In message “Re: Taking the bull by its horns [was background]”
on Thu, 19 Jul 2007 00:11:28 +0900, “M. Edward (Ed) Borasky”
[email protected] writes:

|> bg: BASIC,FORTRAN,Pascal,C,C++,Emacs Lisp,Scheme,AWK,sh,Perl,…and Ruby. (Yey)

|You left off CLU.

No, I’ve never used CLU in my life. I just read the article on it,
and that article influenced me a lot in Ruby’s design. For the same
reason, I left off Smalltalk, although I actually used it for 3 days
in my school days.

          matz.