And what still stuck with you after that experience? What unique facts do you still remember?
I start!
At my first (actual) job, I used Zope2, a Python framework that, for that version, was able to hold code and templates in its database. The database was not relational, but instead, a tree-like structure of objects, called ZODB - zope object database. I see both projects are actively maintained.
In a big tech I had to migrate some API clients that were written in Perl, while some template rendering was done in Mason. What stuck with me, was that Mason scripts had some kind of delimitation of execution context; they had some kind of header that was being executed in a faster manner than the rest of the script. Can't remember much.
In spring 2022, I went through Primeagen's Solidity class on frontendmasters when I was doing "my research" on non-fungible tokens and blockchain tech. I don't see myself coming back to that language, but it did showcase a framework in which operations matter in terms of cost. Directly. In 2022 I also watched Richard Feldman's class on Rust - the way you could "cast" the life span (lifetime) of the allocated memory for a variable to an annotation ('a) - that, that stuck with me. Probably, on this list, Rust has the highest potential to find its way into my keystrokes again.
Reminding myself of computational cost and memory brings me back memories of all the obscure development environments I went through in my 4-year Computer Science Bsc - Assembly (mnemonic processor instructions), Matlab (actually Octave, useful for running numerical algorithms that approximate or sample continuous signals), Verilog (simulating simple logical circuits or more advanced electronics, using static gates as well as clock based circuits). Then we have the other programming paradigms that we experimented in, as students: Prolog (solving the Wolf, Sheep And Cabbage Game), Clips and Haskell (functional programming).
Can you top it? :) What's your less-popular development experience?
Top comments (2)
Yeah assembler - I wrote and released games built in Z80, 6502, 68000 and ARM assembly code :)
I used to care a lot about Sprites on the Commodore 64 and how to split them on VSYNC intervals.
Then there was writing 3D shadow code for a game engine... Roll on Unreal 5 now lol.
We used to have self modifying code and packages to help with it, these seemed vital for performance back in the day.
I once wrote an entire engine that compiled sprites into the assembly code to write them to screen - that saved a bunch of memory stalls which were once the biggest nightmare.
Visual Basic 6 and Delphi were mainstays back there for a while too.
Those must have been wonderful times to code. What an era you experienced! Golden!
Thanks for sharing, Mike!