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C++ is my favorite language, however I hardly believe that so much of people learned it as their _first_ language. I can believe, that the first language was BASIC, Pascal, C, FORTRAN, Assembler (the last two and other less than 3rd generation languages for those who began before nineties), but C++...
I saw some places that pretended to teach C++ as first language. Most of them taught old C using cin and cout instead of printf() and scanf(). Maybe those who learned at such places can speak about C++ as first language. My practice of interviewing people only confirms this assumption. 
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You are right!  C++ could not be the first!
I guess C or Assembly are most likely first languages of any serious programmer and the BASIC for students as a begin in comp programg during school days 
I myself started with C because I wanted to be in 3D CG and C was the best which still is, added the C++ is much stronger to the extend that I don't think I would need to know assembly that much in detail.
Good luck to all You, Us and Them programmres with coding!
Knowing any language is an asset on its own, however!
Cheers
Masoud
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I remember messing around with basic BASIC (print, goto, etc.). No matter if what I did with it could be considered real programming, just making a computer do anything was great to an unemployed 14-year-old.
However, I really wanted to seriously get into C++, because I heard it was great. About two years later I got the "Sams' Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days" box set, which had the book and the Borland C++ 3.1 compiler. I felt great after compiling a "Hello World" program, and eventually I became familiar with the variables, logic statements, and functions. Even though I didn't really know how to do much, the If and While statements seemed like raw power.
I recently started a correspondance course with Harcourt Learning Direct for Visual C++, continuing my study of the language. Now that I have more experience, programming with C++ is even more productive and enjoyable.
So, even though most people didn't actually start with C++, it's probably their first "real" or serious study of a language. I've found that learning anything about any language can help with understanding how to program. While visiting a college an admissions director had said that computer science students usually don't do well with foreign languages. However, I've notcied many parallels with studying both kinds of languages, and how many things in life have a hidden "syntax" when viewed from a programming perspective. Maybe that sounds wierd, I'm interested in knowing how many people think that way.
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APL = A Programming Language
Status = Stats,
Geez these were Bad !
Anybody else out there to reminisce with
And No they wern't my first Prog Lingo's,
I'm unsure what it was, but it predates
Chris's "Assembler (any chip)" option,
When we use to actually CUT code,
Regardz
Colin Davies
Denim axes examined.
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Has anyone else here walked down memory road by running emulators of their old computers on PC ? There are sites now that have software for Apple ][, Commodore 64, Amiga, etc. that is offered with the blessing of the original authors. I can't tell you the nostalgia on running 'Drol', 'Aztec' and 'Captain Braveheart' again....
Christian
The content of this post is not necessarily the opinion of my yadda yadda yadda.
To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion.
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I've used clipper when I did my military service.
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I've been work in FiveWin (Clipper For Windows) and ORACLE for about 3 years.
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Well, my Clipper was called 'redabas' ( anyone remember THIS?), and it was my first post-basic experience.
Peter
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Does any one out there remember using Apricot Xens or Xi's or for that matter does any one remember a machine called the "Sirius"
Note: these were from an era just before the rise of the PC clone
I started using GW-BASIC on the sirius (sending escape codes to the screen to set inverted color (green) was clever stuff back then ), after that I progressed on to Turbo Pascal on the Apricots
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I first learned Algol on an Elliot 803, which had an engineer run diagnostics on it every morning. The compiler was stored on 35mm magnetic film, and the command console had a row of button from which you entered commands in Octal. This compiler did have the capability of handling 'inline' machine code instructions in Octal of course. The English Electric (ICL) 450 which I used after that even had a line printer and disc drives. It also had a Cobol compiler.
Happy programming!!
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I've heard of this before -- anyone know more about it? Are there good compilers out there?
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I've heard of Modula 2 before. It was some Pascal derivative that came out (I think) before Ada became widely known. I remember seeing a chess game in Compute! back in the early '80s that was written in Modula 2.
--Mike--
http://home.inreach.com/mdunn/
"That probably would've sounded more commanding if I wasn't wearing my yummy sushi pajamas."
-- Buffy
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All of my college courses used Modula2 (88-94). It was a Pascal syntax with C-style #includes. You grouped your functions into modules (files), wrote some header files to go with them and included the headers where you needed the functions - just like C/C++. This helped teach us about modularization and procedures - which were big shocks for all of us Commodore and Apple BASIC people.
I bought an M2 compiler for my Amiga the summer before college started. It was quite a change from BASIC - much more powerful and elegant. But, compared to C, it is (was, at least) more of a teaching/learning language and less of a development language.
-c
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Back when it was BASIC and people could rattle off "Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code" in their sleep. That's when I started.
I had some Timex/Sinclair model; I forget what exactly (not the 99/4a, though). But anyway, that's where I got started. I didn't do much besides enter sample programs from the manual.
Then in 4th grade I took an after-school class on Apple //e's. From there I moved on to the C= models - VIC-20, C=64, then C=128. I even submitted a C=128 BASIC program to Compute!'s Gazette, but it got rejected. It was an equation grapher; this was back before graphing calculators were affordable.
--Mike--
http://home.inreach.com/mdunn/
"That probably would've sounded more commanding if I wasn't wearing my yummy sushi pajamas."
-- Buffy
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I think the pinnacle of my programming experience was in 8th grade when I finally worked out how to write my name - underlined - in the centre of a TRS-80 screen using BASIC. I figured I'd achieved all there was to achieve so didn't touch a computer for another 4 years.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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Ah, the TRS-80. We'll never see engineering like that again.... I hope Did yours have the expansion unit with extra memory, or the vanilla 16K?
In some sick and twisted way I really miss cassette tape storage....
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What the hell is a TRS-80? Is it a computer or a calculator (Texas Inst. call theirs T-somthing)?
I guess I must be relatively new to the computing scene as my first computer was a P75 with 16MB RAM and Windows 95 .
Keeping in topic though, my learning-language was C. Since then it has been C++, HTML (technically not a programming language), JavaScript, Visual Basic (i'm still learning), MFC (Yes I know it's not a seperate language, but it still requires a learning curve). I never learnt BASIC, but I guess from the name that is was the forerunner of the VB language - back before my time.
David Wulff
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The TRS-80 (pronounced "trash eighty") ) was a PC clone, I believe. I never had one, but the name is widely known (well, widely known among folks my age and older!)
TRS stands for Tandy Radio Shack, btw.
--Mike--
http://home.inreach.com/mdunn/
"That probably would've sounded more commanding if I wasn't wearing my yummy sushi pajamas."
-- Buffy
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It actually pre-dated the IBM-PC era by 4 or 5 years. It didn't run MS-DOS, but rather booted right into Basic from powerup displaying the cautious but encouraging prompt 'Ready?'
I believe it ran on a Z80 processor (but I'm getting foggy now), which is where the '80' came from.
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It depended on what model of TRS-80 you are talking about.
I believe Model I's (with 4k, the first computer I ever messed with) booted from rom.
Model III's (I think, memory hazy as this was a long time ago) ran either CP/M or TRS-DOS(bleeecch!). They were Z/80 based. The expansion bay for it was 3 8" drives built into a desk that weighed a ton.
I still remember the Model I's grand total of 3, yes 3 possible error messages. They were "What?", "How?" and "Sorry."
Jim Wuerch
www.miwasoft.com
Quote from my readme files:
"This is BETA software, and as such may completely destroy your computer, change the alignment of the planets and invert the structure of the universe."
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You are absolutely correct, I can't believe my memory of this is as foggy as it is. I owned both a Model I (but alas never got the expansion module), and had a Model III that I upgraded to floppies with an expansion kit from ... Pertec?
I think the expansion kit you are referring to was actually for the Model II, which was the "business" machine that ran on the stunningly fast Z80a processor. Maybe I'll see if I can dig up some info from Tandy...
I remember (not very fondly) the What? How? and Sorry. Messages. We should have seen then what the future of Microsoft's descriptive error messages would be like
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Wow. My first PC was a DX4-100, after years of hating IBM in favour of Apple and then Amiga. A 'Trash80', as they were known, was a computer sold by Tandy, I *think* Z80 based, hence the name, but overall a poor attempt to compete with the Apple ][. ( My true colours showing through... )
Christian
The content of this post is not necessarily the opinion of my yadda yadda yadda.
To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion.
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Ah, yeah, I started with BASIC too, and in 4th Grade. It was on a Commodore Pet. Then I had a Timex/Sinclair 1000 to play with at home. A whopping 2K of RAM, with the 16K RAM expansion pack. A wonder of engineering, the pack was held on by a thin row of pins and merely pressing too hard on the tiny keyboard was enough to knock the RAM module out and force a reboot.
This made it hard to write programs, because just about every keystroke could make you reboot - rebooting was quick, but unfortunately, there was no hard drive or even floppy disk to work from. I had to use a tape-recorder to save anything. It took a full two minutes to save or restore a dozen line BASIC program. Because of the frequent memory module mishaps, I was forced to do a save every few lines to be save, then also a restore every four or five lines after the memory fell out. (No good way to stabilize it the way it was designed).
Despite this, I stuck it out and managed to type in a program that drew (quite crudely, but passably) pixel by pixel, the profile of the space shuttle. (Pixels on this machine being reasonably large black squares).
Needless to say, that first experience made me VERY paranoid of machines giving out on my as I worked on them, and so I have the habit now (sometimes almost unconciously) of saving whatever I'm working on with almost psychotic frequency. Every pause is a time to save. Every paragraph. Sometimes every sentence. But it doesn't slow me down at 100 wpm.
Crazy or not, I can say that in 20 years of using computers, I have never EVER lost any data.
I still remember some of those old BASIC games. I modified a few for more "fun". Mostly I just played them. Miner. Lawn. Some cool text adventure game for the Apple II/e that a friend of mine had. I miss the Infocom games too.
-D
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