See Programming Languages I've Learned (more-or-less in order) [Update].

This came up on Twitter and Fosstodon.

See https://fosstodon.org/@vpavlyshyn/109908255464181943 and https://fosstodon.org/@slott56/109908527412493172.

I omitted a few things from the list because -- well -- there are a LOT of languages.

For example, in the 90's I …

See 9 Reasons Why Python Is Weird For C++ Developers.

I'm often bothered by inter-language comparisons. Mostly because programming languages -- except in the most abstract way -- aren't really very comparable. At the Turing Machine level the finite state automata are comparable, but that reductionist view (intentionally) eliminates all the expressive …

Happy birthday, mom. Glad to see you're still doing well, avoiding the complications of COVID-19.

You asked what it was I did for a living. Emphasis on the past tense, now that we're both fully retired old people.

I have to confess that it's not easy describing high-tech work. There's …

I know folks who struggle with the core concepts of writing software. Some of them are IT professionals. With jobs. They can't really code. It seems like they don't understand it. Maybe a gentler introduction to programming will help? I have my doubts. The folks who seem to struggle the …

Check out this idiocy: https://github.com/slott56/py-false

What is the point? Seriously. What. The. Actual. Heck?

I think of it this way.

• Languages are a cool thing. Especially programming languages where there's an absolute test -- the Turing machine -- for completeness.
• The Forth-like stack language is a cool thing …

I've had a lingering question about the "spike solution" phrase. What's the etymology of this?

For a long time, I thought of spike as in "nailing down some details."

Today, I found this: http://agiledictionary.com/209/spike/

I was wrong. I'm happy to see this explanation.

The phrase appears …

Read this: "Here Comes Functional Programming" by Larry O'Brien in SD Times.

people who should know better continue to assert that statically typed languages are "safer, because the compiler can catch errors that otherwise wouldn't show up until runtime." While it's true a statically typed language can detect that you've …

Too much of programming is intimately tied up with the tools to support the development of the software.

Example 1. I was told -- with absolute and fierce conviction -- that VB may suck as a language, but Visual Studio more than makes up for the obvious problems. For some people, Tools …

Check out this item on eWeek: Java, C, C++: Top Programming Languages for 2011 - Application Development - News & Reviews - eWeek.com.

The presentation starts with Java, C, C++, C# -- not surprising. These are clearly the most popular programming languages. These seem to be the first choice made by many organizations.

In …