2010-07-21 » Programming Languages

The Matrix!

I figured this would be a good time to talk about the programming languages I’ve used, am using and will use in the near future.

I recently overheard Kevin telling someone: “You’re old, you must be what? 30?”. I’m sure to him I’m ancient. Never does that feel more true than around my birthday.

Birthdays seem like a reasonable time for reflection so I’ve decided this time around I’ll reflect here on the programming languages I’ve used and the programming languages I’ve been using recently at work and the programming languages I’m interested in spending more time with soon.

I think the first program I wrote was on a TI-99A/4A. My dad got one and I thought it was amazing. You could hook this machine up to your TV and write programs that actually made the computer do stuff. I’m pretty sure my first program looked something like:

10 PRINT "JOSH IS AWESOME"
20 GOTO 10

after that, I was hooked.

I remember spending some time playing with BASIC, but I think most of what I was doing until Jr. High was just messing around. It was around that point I started using BBSes and learning C (on my own) and Pascal (in school). These two languages let me do way more complicated stuff than what I could do with BASIC. It was around this time (1994/1995) that I also started using Linux and BSD. It was also around this time that I started using the Internet via a shell account at CyberPort Montana. It was awesome!

Since then I’ve used C on and off (on as my primary language for quite a few years, then off more at Layerboom) and Linux or other UNIX-like OSes almost exclusively. Before working at Layerboom, I think I spent time working in (roughly from most amount of time spent to least):

  • C
  • PHP
  • Perl
  • Bash
  • Python
  • TI-BASIC
  • BASIC
  • C++
  • Assembly
  • ColdFusion

and probably a few others that I spent a little bit of time with.

Since I started at Layerboom, I have been coding almost exclusively in Ruby. I have spent a little bit of time using Bash or C, or reading through someone’s Perl, but it was mostly Ruby. Sometime I’ll write another whole post about my experience with Ruby.

As you can tell from the fact that the Smart platform’s written in it, Joyent’s big into Javascript among other things. So, for the foreseeable future, while it seems like I’ll probably continue to be spending the majority of my time using Ruby, I think I’ll also need to start using Javascript as well. Specifically, what I’m interested in getting started with is server-side Javascript using Node.js. As such, I’m going to try to spend some time over the next while getting myself up to speed on Javascript and Node. I hope to post more in the future regarding my progress!