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What was the First Programming Language You Learned?


Hardison

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I know that I'm dating myself, but the first language I learned was Fortran. Does anyone remember that? I learned it in my first year of college. I remember sitting in class asking myself, why am I in this class? At that time, I was an engineering major. I eventually switched majors, but the main take away from that class was learning flowcharts and learning to think logically. Little did I know that I would work with computers later in life.

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Programming languages haven't been a strong point for me, I do struggle with them. But I learnt some HTML/PHP (which aren't really programming languages as such) in school and college. In my current job, I've learnt some VBscript and Visual Basic, but that's about it.

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I know that I'm dating myself, but the first language I learned was Fortran. Does anyone remember that? I learned it in my first year of college. I remember sitting in class asking myself, why am I in this class? At that time, I was an engineering major. I eventually switched majors, but the main take away from that class was learning flowcharts and learning to think logically. Little did I know that I would work with computers later in life.

Wow I never heard of that langauge when were you in collage :o I tryed to learn C++ and pearl but failed misserably as i wasnt able to find enough free time .
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Wow I never heard of that langauge when were you in collage :o I tryed to learn C++ and pearl but failed misserably as i wasnt able to find enough free time .

 

It was awhile ago! From your reply, probably before you were born. ;)

 

Fortran

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The only programming I have ever gotten into is Python, simply because it is easy to learn and not to complicated. However, I have done a bit of HTML CSS and PHP for web development purposes. I learned to do some web dev while in high school because I was bored and had nothing better to do. I probably should have learned some more hard core stuff like C++, but it just takes forever to learn.

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I know that I'm dating myself, but the first language I learned was Fortran. Does anyone remember that? I learned it in my first year of college. I remember sitting in class asking myself, why am I in this class? At that time, I was an engineering major. I eventually switched majors, but the main take away from that class was learning flowcharts and learning to think logically. Little did I know that I would work with computers later in life.

 

Yes my first language too!

 

And I also did my BEng in Engineering. Fortran is still big in engineering. Its actually faster than C++. Take a look at some of the maths libraries..

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I never had the chance to learn programming from the basics. More or less, I jumped into the deep end with relational database programming. My first tool was dBase. Then when Foxbase came out, I migrated to Foxbase. I stayed with Foxbase all the way to Foxpro. It has been many years since I last wrote any code. Now I am thinking of learning Lua.

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I started with sql along with VBA in order to help with stats in the accounts department I worked in. Soon realised I didnt want to be an accountant after all. Funny how life turns out aint it LOL

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I took a basic C++ course in a summer youth program at Michigan Tech after my freshman year in high school, but the instruction wasn't great and not a lot of it stuck with me. The first language I learned seriously was Java, although I did some work in teaching myself some basic HTML.

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Programming languages haven't been a strong point for me, I do struggle with them. But I learnt some HTML/PHP (which aren't really programming languages as such) in school and college. In my current job, I've learnt some VBscript and Visual Basic, but that's about it.

PHP is just as much a programming language as VB or Java or C. The medium of which it is interpreted does not change its classification.

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It's certainly much easier (IMO) to look through books or stored documents than it is to seek through a video, and when learning a programming language you're going to want to search and verify a lot on your own, which could be tedious with a video, but if it's working for him he could just get reference books/documents as a supplement. Personally, I've never looked at that site so I don't know how or how much they teach you to make a firmer judgement on the matter.

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I think it depends on your learning style tbh. I find it easier to take things in from videos, however could not do it with videos alone. A book is certainly needed for reference whilst learning even if you are using videos.

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Yes my first language too!

 

And I also did my BEng in Engineering. Fortran is still big in engineering. Its actually faster than C++. Take a look at some of the maths libraries..

 

I will for nostalgia's sake. I'm surprised that it's still in use. I did think it was replaced by c++.

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I know that I'm dating myself, but the first language I learned was Fortran. Does anyone remember that? I learned it in my first year of college. I remember sitting in class asking myself, why am I in this class? At that time, I was an engineering major. I eventually switched majors, but the main take away from that class was learning flowcharts and learning to think logically. Little did I know that I would work with computers later in life.

 

Ok, I'm going to date myself too a bit (actually a lot). WAY back in high school, I first learned BASIC (beginner's all-purpose symbolic instruction code), RPG II (report program generator) and COBOL (common business oriented language). And yes, in college I had a FORTRAN class also. I remember when I first graduated from college, mainframe were still "the big thing" and PC's were kind of laughable. I got a job working with DOS PC's and little did I know that was such a blessing in disguise. So glad I didn't waste my energies with mainframes....

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Ok, I'm going to date myself too a bit (actually a lot). WAY back in high school, I first learned BASIC (beginner's all-purpose symbolic instruction code), RPG II (report program generator) and COBOL (common business oriented language). And yes, in college I had a FORTRAN class also. I remember when I first graduated from college, mainframe were still "the big thing" and PC's were kind of laughable. I got a job working with DOS PC's and little did I know that was such a blessing in disguise. So glad I didn't waste my energies with mainframes....

 

It's been awhile since I've heard anyone mention COBOL and BASIC. I also remember when people thought PC were laughable. My Fortran professor told me, "It's ridiculous to think that people would want a computer in their home." Crazy!

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It's been awhile since I've heard anyone mention COBOL and BASIC. I also remember when people thought PC were laughable. My Fortran professor told me, "It's ridiculous to think that people would want a computer in their home." Crazy!

 

Every year or so developers talk about "COBOL is dead". It always makes me chuckle, its being "dying" for 40+ years :)

 

I don't think programming languages really ever die, they fade but not die. As long as some legacy system still runs that code, it needs someone to maintain it.

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Heh...the one guy who thought Fortran was going to give away his age isn't going to feel very bad. Anyone here remember BASIC?

 

10 PRINT "Dang I'm old.."

10 GOTO 10

 

10 PRINT "What is your name?"

20 INPUT $a

30 IF $a="marc" GOTO 50

40 GOTO 60

50 PRINT "Hi Boss!" END

60 PRINT "Hello " & a$ END

 

 

No .... I dont remember it at all, Im not old enough ..... Honest, Im not! :whistle:

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My first experience of programming was using something called Logo (or Turtle) on a very old RM Nimbus. Although my memory from that far back isn't great I remember I used to spend ages hacking away just to get the turtle to draw some crazy graphics on screen. Even to this day I can't remember what the point of it was.

 

First proper programming was in QuickBASIC where I wrote the most inefficient text adventure game ever. This was long before I discovered the use of Subs and had my entire program all coded in one with countless GOTO statements. Ahh, those were the days :)

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