DEV Community

OM
OM

Posted on

What's your 1st programming language & What you use today?

Hey, Dev folks ๐Ÿ‘‹

What was the first programming language you learned?

And what are you using today?

Let's discuss how far we have come ....

.
.

Follow - Om Bharatiya on Twitter

Top comments (67)

Collapse
 
oguimbal profile image
Olivier Guimbal • Edited

Somewhat in order, since ~2000, omitting front technologies (JS, html, etc):

  • VBA
  • C++
  • BlitzBasic (an old 3D game thing)
  • PHP
  • ActionScript
  • C#
  • Java
  • F#
  • Fortran (Masters in a research domain... this one hurts)
  • Python
  • Typescript (node+front+deno),
  • Clojure(script)
  • Purescript & Haskell

I still use today:

  • Typescript
  • Purescript & Haskell
  • Python
  • C#
Collapse
 
ombharatiya profile image
OM

Wow ... 2 decades of tech bath! You started the same year ECMAScripts's first stable version was launched. And things have changed like war in these 2 decades. Your journey must have been amazing!

Collapse
 
oguimbal profile image
Olivier Guimbal • Edited

Haha pretty much, yes :) Web technologies were mostly out of my radar until 2004 though (except for Flash).
It wrote code mostly for pleasure and student money back then, and I still have some code I wrote 15 years ago that I'm not very proud of :D
Professionally, I only used C++, C#, Python, Java, F#, JS/Typescript/node.

That said, I'm pretty sure the techs I listed would appear as "modern stuff" to some. Year 2k is not that far away !

Thread Thread
 
ombharatiya profile image
OM

You're talking about the time when there were no StackOverflow and good documentations, no YouTube tutorials. Great to e-meet you :)

Thread Thread
 
jennrmillerdev profile image
Jen Miller • Edited

no stackoverflow!?
how in the world were you guys able to center a div in a div? :)

Collapse
 
sandordargo profile image
Sandor Dargo

If we don't count Logo, I started with Turbo Pascal. Today I mostly use C++ and Python.

Collapse
 
ombharatiya profile image
OM

Python really has come a long way. Nowadays I see folks starting with Python and staying Python forever.

And C++, unbeatable as always.

Collapse
 
_hs_ profile image
HS

C++ was introduced to me by my fathers cousin. I currently hang on JVM stack with Kotlin, Java and Groovy.

But let's put it in some order:

  1. C++ at 13 just the basics like loops, variables... then BASIC (not visual one) at school
  2. PHP at 15 or later just to explore Joomla at that time (and of course JavaScript, SQL ...), and Pascal for school which I have no idea about right now
  3. C to check out what's different from C++ at 19 when going to college (starting to understand a bit more now)
  4. At the same time C# and Java - I knew about Java before and liked it but never tried it (the OO hell :D)
  5. PHP again - for a job this time
  6. Java for a Job
  7. C# and a bit of Node.js and Java for Android
  8. Java and a bit of Scala
  9. C# again with TypeScript(Angular) for front
  10. Java, Kotlin, Groovy, C#, Python (simple scripts), (Cyher - if SQL counts so does Neo4j language :D)

And of course besides of mandatory ones for job or school, played with VB as a kid, later Ruby and Go. Planing on checking out more languages like Rust just for fun. I would love to write my own language following "Nand to Tetris" just to get an overview of the things I'm missing at some places :D.

Collapse
 
metalmikester profile image
Michel Renaud

BASIC on the C64, then GW-BASIC on the PC. But it's with Turbo Pascal that I started getting more into it.

Nowadays it's largely C# and JavaScript.

Collapse
 
ferceg profile image
ferceg

Similarly, C64/C16/C+4 BASIC + assembly, then Turbo Pascal on PC, i386 assembly, C, C++, then Java, JS, PHP, C#.
Nowadays working mainly in PHP, learning Rust and Dart for fun and for widening my sight.

Collapse
 
metalmikester profile image
Michel Renaud

I also did some assembly on 8088 and SPARC, but just for fun (8088) and university (SPARC). That never amounted to anything but a frozen PC (8088 assembly) - lol. I forgot that I do have a web site that uses PHP. I rarely need to change the code these days. My stalled personal project is to rewrite it completely using ASP.NET Core.

I also did some COBOL and Modula-2, but never outside of school. I did some C++ and C++/CLI at work.

Definitely forgot a lot earlier. I guess my coffee is starting to kick in.

Collapse
 
ombharatiya profile image
OM

Yeah, I started learning Turbo Pascal as well in the very beginning. But later moved to Java Soon, due to its demand.

Collapse
 
metalmikester profile image
Michel Renaud

Java didn't come out until nearly 10 years later in my case. So there was some C, xBASE languages (dBASE III Plus, Clipper, FoxBase+/FoxPro) in the meantime. And SAS. I've never actually worked with Java.

Collapse
 
shaijut profile image
Shaiju T • Edited
  • Overview of C , C++ , Java and C# in College.
  • Java project in Internship.
  • Now C# in work. I like it because, C# is making developer life easier with tooling support of Visual Studio and VS Code.
Collapse
 
tominekan profile image
Tomi Adenekan

Python was my first (not counting scratch ๐Ÿ˜‚). Python is what I use today.

Collapse
 
ombharatiya profile image
OM

Yeah, the same thing I was discussing with Sandor. It's a great language indeed.

Collapse
 
tominekan profile image
Tomi Adenekan

Exactly ๐Ÿ˜€

Collapse
 
jbryan11 profile image
Peek.A.Bo0 • Edited

Back when I was in high school, I remember my first language that I used was VB. After that I shift into C/C++, Java, ASM, VHDL(Idk if this counted as a programming language...) when I entered in college.

Recently I use Javascript (Nodejs and other frameworks), C# for game dev, C++ or Python for IoT/Embedded Systems.

Collapse
 
jennrmillerdev profile image
Jen Miller

hmm I started with Java in high school. Learned Java in University (also Python), and continued with Java and Javascript today.

I have never touched C or C++ other then for assignments in university. I always say it would be nice to dabble with C one day...but that day never happens...

Collapse
 
josuerodriguez98 profile image
Josuรฉ Rodrรญguez (He/Him)

My first programming language was Java and today I'm mostly using TypeScript. Along the way (about 5 years I've been studying engineering) I've learnt C++, JavaScript, Python and a little PHP. I've got a long way ahead of me, but I'm staying positive ๐Ÿ˜

Collapse
 
mandrewcito profile image
Andrรฉs Baamonde Lozano

I started with PHP at 15, now profesionally, python and C#, for backend and frontend (javascript -insert random framework here-). And for my personal project projects python. If project needs a fronted ... vue is my preference

Collapse
 
brianfoley81 profile image
Brian Foley

My first language was BASIC back in the late 80s. I'm not completely sure what version of BASIC it was, but I remember making text adventure games with my sister and father on our home PC and having a lot of fun doing it.

The first language I learned that I still use today is Javascript, which I learned when it was new in the mid-90s when I was in high school. Naturally, I use it for much different things nowadays.

The first language I learned "the right way" according to some snobs I've worked with through the years (meaning I learned it in a college classroom) was C++. I never really used it after leaving college but learning it definitely opened my eyes to how programming works under the hood.

The first language I learned that I fell in love with while learning it was Python, which I learned in the mid 00's. I still love using it today even though its not something I use at work (unfortunately). It's my daily driver for my home projects, despite a lot of my programmer friends thinking you should be using JS for everything!

Collapse
 
jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy ๐ŸŽ–๏ธ • Edited

Since 1983:

  • ZX Spectrum BASIC (ZX Spectrum)
  • Z80 Assembly Language (ZX Spectrum)
  • QBasic
  • Powerbasic
  • C
  • Pascal
  • GFABasic (Amiga)
  • AMOS (Amiga)
  • VisualBasic
  • VBA
  • Javascript
  • PHP
  • Ruby
  • Python
  • Haskell

At the moment - mostly Javascript and Python, some PHP

All self taught from age 7

Collapse
 
ahferroin7 profile image
Austin S. Hemmelgarn

Rough order of what languages I โ€˜learnedโ€™ (excluding data-only stuff like YAML or JSON and purely presentational languages like HTML and CSS):

  • Racket (back when it was DrScheme, I probably could not use it or any other Scheme dialect today even if my life depended on it)
  • C
  • FreeBASIC (like with Racket, probably could not use it today).
  • Lua
  • Python
  • MS-DOS CMD
  • Java
  • JavaScript
  • Lex
  • Yacc
  • Forth
  • AVR assembly
  • MSP430 assembly
  • POSIX sh
  • VimScript (and by extension ex and sed)
  • SQL
  • PowerShell
  • AWK
  • Elixir
  • M4

In theory, Iโ€™ve not โ€˜learnedโ€™ but can still kind of understand most C family languages, Erlang, PHP, Ruby, Pascal, FORTRAN, ALGOL, PERL, and Go.

Of all of that, the only ones I actually work with regularly today are Python, POSIX sh, and more recently Elixir, though I still make occasional use of many of the others.

Collapse
 
dvlprmo profile image
Mohammad

I started using Java as a first programming language, but then I move fast to other languages specifically php and js. I haven't use Java at all since I got out of my two intro to programming courses at college. Today I am using js including its framework angular and RoR. I used C/C++ and Python. I have done some assembly and drRacket [dunno if it's spelled correctly]. Now, I am focusing on web development alot till i get myself mastered in it.

Collapse
 
yoursunny profile image
Junxiao Shi • Edited

My first general purpose programming language is Visual Basic 6.0. The first program I made on my own, excluding examples from books, is a typewriter game (2002).
Source code and binary: github.com/yoursunny/code2014/tree...
Screencast: twitter.com/yoursunny/status/82845...

Before that, I learned PC-LOGO and FoxBASE in elementary school (1997), but I did not realize that these were programming languages.