# Programmers: How many dead languages do you know? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 11, 2010, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563 "2010-01-11T21:48:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![kushiel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbce88/32.png) [@kushiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kushiel)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2010, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563/21 "2010-01-12T14:39:28Z")
Basic will never die, too many high school teachers use it in their Comp Sci classes. I did Basic, Visual Basic and Java in high school. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2010, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563/22 "2010-01-12T14:45:18Z")
I wrote a lot of Vax VMS command procedures in DCL (Digital Command Language) 15 years ago. DCL was incredibly powerful. Digital had a complete library of system calls for DCL and an excellent Sort. I had a Vax workstation on my desk for 10 years. Plus our campus had a cluster of Vax’s. I’ve heard VMS died when Digital shifted to Unix. So that killed DCL too. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2010, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563/23 "2010-01-12T14:52:27Z")
I’m surprised Pascal declined. For awhile Borland’s Turbo Pascal was the hottest “new” compiler around. It was one of the first fully implemented compilers for the PC 8088 and 286’s. ---
**Author:** ![UncleRojelio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unclerojelio/32/3160_2.png) [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2010, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563/24 "2010-01-12T15:11:25Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > I’m surprised Pascal declined. For awhile Borland’s Turbo Pascal was the hottest “new” compiler around. It was one of the first fully implemented compilers for the PC 8088 and 286’s. Most of what I know about Pascal, I learned from writing a Pascal compiler in C for a CS Compilers class. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2010, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563/25 "2010-01-12T15:58:21Z")
> [@El\_Zagna](#): > > That got me thinking about all the now useless languages that I had to learn to keep up with the market. For me that would be: > > [ul] > [li]COBOL[/li][li]FORTRAN[/li][li]dBase III[/li][li]Clipper[/li][li]Visual Objects[/li][li]PowerBuilder/Powerscript[/li][/ul] > > and operating systems like: > [ul] > [li]VAX[/li][li]DOS[/li][li]whatever the old IBM mainframe OS was called (JCL was the language I think)[/li][li]Univac was in there somewhere also[/li][li]lots of others I’m sure I’ve forgotten.[/li][/ul] > > What are yours? Are you me? Pretty much everything on your list, plus Databus/Datatrieve for the Datapoint computers. And let’s not forget TRS-DOS for the Tandy PCs. On second thought, let’s do forget it. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2010, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563/26 "2010-01-12T16:21:02Z")
Remember the client/server applications from the 1990’s? Our campus spent a fortune upgrading the network backbone to support it. Seven years later client/server gets dumped for web browsers. Our users start their applications with IE now. We don’t even have a direct ODBC connection to Oracle anymore. We have to fake it with a software client. That’s the only way I can run my SQL queries. ---
**Author:** ![amarone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@amarone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarone)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2010, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563/27 "2010-01-12T19:32:19Z")
Nobody has yet mentioned any of mine: - SPPS-II - EDL - 4680 Basic ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2010, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563/28 "2010-01-12T20:14:26Z")
Did QBasic count? It’s a language, it just isn’t a compiler. I learned it all from using the online help. And it seriously bummed me out when I got my first computer with a Windows operating system, and found out Qbasic never got a Windows version, and thus was pointless. (I did find it on a Win95 CD, though. That made my day, until I couldn’t find any of my old programs.) ---
**Author:** ![PatriotGrrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9dc877/32.png) [@PatriotGrrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotGrrrl)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563/29 "2010-01-13T01:13:45Z")
> [@LiveOnAPlane](#): > > C You have GOT to be kidding. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563/30 "2010-01-13T01:53:16Z")
I spent two years _teaching_ Ada (Ada83). It was a classic bubble language. Many young 'uns today don’t realize that Rational started as a _hardware_ company making machines that were designed from the ground up for Ada development. Everybody thought the DOD support for the language made it a gold mine. Then the bubble burst in the 90’s. ---
**Author:** ![Cunctator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/43a26b/32.png) [@Cunctator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cunctator)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563/31 "2010-01-13T02:47:16Z")
> [@rowrrbazzle](#): > > APL - from the IBM 5100 desktop computer. Actually a very interesting language which had very powerful handling of arrays of any dimension. But programs could be hell to maintain. This was the one I was going to nominate. I remember being introduced to it as an actuarial student. It was difficult to learn, but incredibly powerful once you knew what to do. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563/32 "2010-01-13T04:19:09Z")
> [@rowrrbazzle](#): > > APL - from the IBM 5100 desktop computer. Actually a very interesting language which had very powerful handling of arrays of any dimension. But programs could be hell to maintain. > [@Cunctator](#): > > This was the one I was going to nominate. I remember being introduced to it as an actuarial student. It was difficult to learn, but incredibly powerful once you knew what to do. I also came into this thread to nominate APL (“A Programming Language”). It used a very unusual character set and keyboard. Program expressions were very concise and looked like Greek (literally). I had to learn APL during in 1986, my freshman year in college as an engineering student. A year later it was replaced with MATLAB, which I used extensively. I learned FORTRAN 77 as well, but never used it beyond college. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563/33 "2010-01-13T07:54:37Z")
> [@El\_Zagna](#): > > VAX VMS, Unix, or something else? I do know some VAX assembly language, but not much. I’m also able to read PDP-8 assembly but some -8s are still in use, so I don’t think you can call it ‘dead’ yet. Ditto BLISS: As long as VMS is in use by someone, somewhere, I’m pretty sure someone will still be writing code in BLISS. CORC is probably dead. (‘CORnell Compiler’, an ancient teaching language based on FORTRAN, like BASIC.) Same with PILOT, a language designed to allow very patient teachers to write very simple educational programs in longer than it would have taken them to just teach the class without the software. Neither of them really deserve to be remembered, but you can still find both online. APL derivatives (A+, J, and K) are in use in the financial industry, but I don’t know about APL itself. > [@aceplace57](#): > > I’ve heard VMS died when Digital shifted to Unix. Nope. It’s just called OpenVMS now, and it’s being sold by HP, which bought Digital. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563/34 "2010-01-13T10:30:29Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > I spent two years _teaching_ Ada (Ada83). > > It was a classic bubble language. Many young 'uns today don’t realize that Rational started as a _hardware_ company making machines that were designed from the ground up for Ada development. Everybody thought the DOD support for the language made it a gold mine. Then the bubble burst in the 90’s. Ada’s definitely not dead. There’s a lot of joint work on it still between academia and industry as it’s still used extensively in critical systems (notably in the military) and it has some nice properties that make it easy to reason about. ---
**Author:** ![sevenwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@sevenwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sevenwood)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563/35 "2010-01-13T13:08:15Z")
> [@robby](#): > > I also came into this thread to nominate APL (“A Programming Language”). It used a very unusual character set and keyboard. Program expressions were very concise and looked like Greek (literally). Does anyone else remember the APL magazines that existed in APL’s heyday? Inevitably their back pages all featured a “guess what this program does?” source code for an APL program (usually a one-liner) that looked like total gibberish but when run did something like print out “the twelve days of Christmas”. ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563/36 "2010-01-13T13:22:47Z")
I did some work in [ul] [li]dBase III[/li][li]Clipper[/li][li]IBM 360 Assembler[/li][/ul] I don’t know for sure that they are dead, but certainly they have been deprecated. ---
**Author:** ![Redwing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/dfb087/32.png) [@Redwing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Redwing)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563/37 "2010-01-13T14:15:51Z")
I’ve not been a programmer in over a decade. Not counting teaching languages, the ones I haven’t heard of anyone using in years are: FORTRAN (V and 77) SmartElements (was Nexpert when I learned it) Nexpert was never that popular, but it was some of the most fun I’ve ever had with a computer. OS wise, I’ve used a completely silly number of unixes, things like SCO, a Unisys version of SVR4, and so on. The one that I’m pretty sure is gone, gone, gone is AOS/VS for DG 15000s. Urgh. ---
**Author:** ![foolscap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9a140/32.png) [@foolscap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolscap)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2010, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563/38 "2010-01-14T21:35:18Z")
SNOBOL I think I still may have my manuals (somewhere). COBOL 86 is on my DR DOS machine. . . While looking for my COBOL manual I found XENIX (where did that come from?):dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Greg\_Charles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/839c29/32.png) [@Greg\_Charles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greg_Charles)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2010, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563/39 "2010-01-14T21:54:13Z")
The languages aren’t quite dead yet, but I’ll never use my Fortran or Pascal again. I don’t think Python could be called the latest flash. It’s been around quite awhile and is quite popular. Ruby also has been around for awhile, but the Rails framework for web development has made it suddenly popular. I’m also amazed by the sudden explosion in languages. I think the Java platform and Dot Net are helping to drive that. Many languages can be compiled down to the byte codes used on these platforms and so can leverage existing code and APIs. F#, for example, is a functional language that compiles into Dot Net byte codes. Clojure, Groovy, JPython, and others. all produce Java byte codes. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2010, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563/40 "2010-01-14T22:58:25Z")
> [@sevenwood](#): > > Does anyone else remember the APL magazines that existed in APL’s heyday? Inevitably their back pages all featured a “guess what this program does?” source code for an APL program (usually a one-liner) that looked like total gibberish but when run did something like print out “the twelve days of Christmas”. APL was the 1960s version of Perl golf. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/programmers-how-many-dead-languages-do-you-know/524563.md?page=3)