What is the oldest programming language still being used?

[Superfluous_Parentheses]

I’d also say that “Machine language” or assembler are programming languages, and that could make them the winner for being the first on the block since general purpose CPUs were invented, but the differences between processors are so great that you can reasonably make the case the languages don’t really constitute a “family” or “dialect” tree of languages going back as far as Lisp or Fortran or Cobol. The first x86 processor was only created in '78 and though I suppose IBM can trace their processor lineage further back than that, I don’t think anyone is programming IBM mainframes in machine language at this time.

[Derleth]

@Aji_de_Gallina

…as long as no-one mentions object-oriented BASIC

Every OO Basic I’ve ever seen has been Object Pascal with somewhat uglier syntax. It’s nothing to be afraid of, but nothing to write home about, either.

@Superfluous_Parentheses

BASIC appears to be later than either of those three.

Indeed. The first BASIC compiler was written in 1964 at Dartmouth. (In other words, the first BASIC implementation was a compiler, not an interpreter.)

[friedo]

@psychonaut

Define “programming language”. All the ones cited so far are high-level languages which the computer then compiles into lower-level assembly or machine language, which the computer can then run directly. It’s entirely possible to program in assembly, or even directly in machine language, and many people still do, particularly for speed-critical applications, or when bootstrapping a compiler. Machine language, of course, was the “original” programming language, unless you could directly modifying circuits by moving wires around.

Yeah, but what assemblers and machine languages are we talking about? Nobody’s yanking vacuum tubes on ENIACs any more, and I seriously doubt anyone is writing new code in even PDP-11 assembler. People are writing code for assemblers on more modern architectures like x86, PPC, Alpha and ARM, but you can’t compare those languages as belonging to the same family as assemblers from the 1960s and 1970s; they are completely different.

[Chronos]

Did Ada Lovelace use any standard format for the algorithms she designed? If so, I’ll bet there’s some niche of nerds somewhere that’s written a compiler for it.

[Bijou_Drains]

Anyone sell a Fortran compiler for Windows? I guess somebody does. MS got rid of theirs long ago.

[sevenwood]

@JoelUpchurch

And don’t get me started on what happens to good code after a few years in maintenance.

I maintain several forty-year-old FORTRAN programs for a living (actually, I’m retired and this pays for my greens fees). And I’m not so sure they all started out as good code

[Aji_de_Gallina]

@sevenwood

I maintain several forty-year-old FORTRAN programs for a living (actually, I’m retired and this pays for my greens fees). And I’m not so sure they all started out as good code

…they started going to COBOL bars and things just went downhill from there.

[aceplace57]

there’s a free GNU compiler
http://gcc.gnu.org/fortran/

@Bijou_Drains

Anyone sell a Fortran compiler for Windows? I guess somebody does. MS got rid of theirs long ago.

[Waffle_Decider]

@Bijou_Drains

Anyone sell a Fortran compiler for Windows? I guess somebody does. MS got rid of theirs long ago.

Intel does.

[Arnold_Winkelried]

@MacSpon

But object-oriented COBOL (yes, it exists) deeply scares me.

[nerd joke]I believe it’s called ADD ONE TO COBOL.[/nerd joke]

[Enright3]

@MacSpon

Object-oriented FORTRAN, I can cope with. But object-oriented COBOL (yes, it exists) deeply scares me.

I speak as someone who writes mainframe Assembler code for a living.

MacSpon,
You wouldn’t be a TPF Programmer would you? I was a TPFer with ‘a major airline’ for many years a long time ago; back when a yellow card was really a yellow card and we had to write our programs in 1K blocks.

[ZenBeam]

@Bijou_Drains

Anyone sell a Fortran compiler for Windows? I guess somebody does. MS got rid of theirs long ago.

@Waffle_Decider

Intel does.

I use it at work. It can be used stand-alone, but it hooks in seamlessly with MS Visual Studio .NET (or whatever the current one is called), so you can work in that IDE. Nice. It’s also well-supported through their (Intel’s) forums.

[LSLGuy]

The current IBM mainframes still run the 360/370 intruction set, at least in some CPU modes.
z/Architecture - Wikipedia

And as the guy above said, mainframe assembler programs (and programmers) are not dead yet.

The first 360 came out in 1964 IBM System/360 - Wikipedia .

Its been 30-ish years since I wrote assembler for 360s; I’m sure new code written today looks about like it ever did.

So there we have an assembler app & corresponding machine instruction set that’s 45 years old now and still in non-trivial use worldwide.

[Rysto]

@Derleth

You also have to question whether the modern dialects of those third generation languages are the same language as the original forms.

If the modern dialects don’t count(and I think a good argument can be made that they don’t), then Lisp would be the clear winner.

[Superfluous_Parentheses]

@LSLGuy

And as the guy above said, mainframe assembler programs (and programmers) are not dead yet.

The first 360 came out in 1964 IBM System/360 - Wikipedia

Which would make it late to the party, thanks for playing

@Rysto

If the modern dialects don’t count(and I think a good argument can be made that they don’t), then Lisp would be the clear winner.

It’s fairly hard to determine the exact point of diversion from the source; which Lisp exactly are you talking about?

[DanBlather]

@Rysto

If the modern dialects don’t count(and I think a good argument can be made that they don’t), then Lisp would be the clear winner.

I would imagine that FORTRAN is a proper subset of the modern FORTRAN languages. I would not be at all surprised to see old FORTRAN programs still running. As far as Lisp, I think we are looking for languages that are part of the solution set, not the problem set

[Superfluous_Parentheses]

@DanBlather

I would imagine that FORTRAN is a proper subset of the modern FORTRAN languages. I would not be at all surprised to see old FORTRAN programs still running. As far as Lisp, I think we are looking for languages that are part of the solution set, not the problem set

Bah. At least Lisp isn’t afraid to do things better than 50 years ago.

[friedo]

@Superfluous_Parentheses

Bah. At least Lisp isn’t afraid to do things better than 50 years ago.

At least Lisp runs on a few more platforms than the lame-ass JVM.

[Derleth]

@Rysto

If the modern dialects don’t count(and I think a good argument can be made that they don’t), then Lisp would be the clear winner.

Which Lisp? (A question that has plagued the Lisp world since almost the beginning, sadly.)

Common Lisp dates from 1994 (ANSI Common Lisp, which is, incidentally, the first ANSI standard OO language) and the latest Scheme standard (R6RS) goes back to 2007. Emacs Lisp is the oldest, depending on how forgiving you want to be of incompatibility, debuting in GNU Emacs in 1984. (AutoLISP might be older, with AutoCAD debuting in 1982, but I can’t tell.)

All other Lisp languages anyone still cares about are even younger than Common Lisp, and a few (Clojure, for example) look like they’re younger than R6RS. But they all look alike, so they must all be the same language, just like Java, C#, and Ada are basically the same, right?

[robcaro]

@Enright3

MacSpon,
You wouldn’t be a TPF Programmer would you? I was a TPFer with ‘a major airline’ for many years a long time ago; back when a yellow card was really a yellow card and we had to write our programs in 1K blocks.

I was a TPF programmer for Western Airlines, Eastern Airlines and System One. Worked in Assembler and Sabertalk. Lots of experience in USAF and other industries also, but not TPF.