Computer programming
Computer programming is the act of creating a list of instructions for a computer to follow.
Personal
I saw my very first computer program on a TRS-80 Color Computer, written in Color BASIC, when I was around six-years-old, and helped write my first program on an Atari XE, in Atari BASIC, when I was around eight. I began writing my own programs in GW-BASIC shortly thereafter with the help of my uncle using his Tandy 1000, and, when my family got a computer in 1991, I started using QuickBASIC. I occasionally tried to do some extremely simple stuff in C, but as Windows became more popular, I started learning Visual Basic. Most of my teen years were spent on QuickBASIC and Visual Basic, though I occasionally worked with C in high school. I got a job when I was 19-years-old writing primarily in Visual FoxPro. In order to work on this web site, I started learning about various Internet programming languages including JavaScript, PHP, and SQL. For Windows scripting, I use JScript, and I'm trying to teach myself more C#. I also know a little Python, Java, C, C++, and 6502 machine language.
Languages I Know
This table lists the computer programming languages I know, even if only a little. They're ranked by how well I know them, and, how much I like them.
| Language | Comprehension | Appreciation | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visual FoxPro | 1 | 4 | Been writing professionally since 1999. A wonderful hybrid of Visual Basic and SQL. Shame Microsoft killed it. |
| FreeBASIC | 2 | 3 | A fantastic modern 64-bit BASIC variant. |
| C# | 3 | 1 | My favorite desktop application development language. Extremely quick and easy. |
| JavaScript | 4 | 5 | A surprisingly competent scripting language. |
| SQL | 5 | 6 | Wonderful for data handling, and nothing else. |
| QuickBASIC | 6 | 7 | The best traditional BASIC variant of the late 1980s and whole of 1990s. |
| Visual Basic | 7 | 2 | Used to be the best for RAD. Never should have been discontinued. |
| PHP | 8 | 11 | A complete mess of a language, but somehow gets the job done. |
| JScript | 9 | 13 | Only useful on Windows. |
| Java | 10 | 8 | The worst UI design in the world, but codes easy enough. |
| C | 11 | 9 | Credit for being so foundational, but very cryptic to work with. |
| C++ | 12 | 10 | Painful to read, but insanely powerful. Really should convert symbols to words. |
| Lua | 13 | 12 | I learned this for hacking video games, and developed an appreciation for it as a unique language. |
| Python | 14 | 15 | I don't understand why people like this language. I don't find it easy to work with or useful for application development. |
| 6502 machine language | 15 | 14 | Near impossible to use, but it runs at lightning speed. Extremely popular for 8-bit CPUs. |
| RPG | 16 | 16 | Should have been obliterated when they made SQL. |
| COBOL | 17 | 17 | Horrible, horrible, horrible. |
Markup Languages I Know
These aren't so much programming languages as structural layouts. Most are for design, but some are for data.
| Language | Comprehension | Appreciation | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| HTML | 1 | 1 | Been typing it by hand since 1998. |
| CSS | 2 | 3 | For as many committees, meetings, and versions it's gone through, it's still really unfriendly and messy! For example, if you want to center a box, you don't say "alignment: center," you say, "margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;" |
| MediaWiki | 3 | 2 | Superior to HTML and CSS in several respects, but ultimately based on them. |
| XML | 4 | 6 | An extremely slow and bloated data format that was meant to do everything, and, therefore does nothing well. Querying it is like pulling teeth and extremely abstract. Good luck if you need to read it from an older language or if your source relies heavily on namespaces! |
| VT | 5 | 5 | An old video terminal markup language for displaying on old text terminals. |
| CSV | 6 | 7 | An extremely simple data format, but, without an official way to escape quotes, rather error-prone. |
| SVG | 7 | 4 | A vector graphic markup language using XML. |
Gallery
A time line showing the evolutionary history of programming languages.
A quick look at programming languages.
A flowchart of which programming language you should begin with. A bit skewed toward Python.
Saving the princess with various programming languages.
Categories
Links
- rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code - Rosetta Code, various programming snippets in various languages.
- repl.it - Replit. An online interpreter of many languages.
