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yep! me too! FOCAL, and then we eventually got a version of Basic (which arrived on a big paper tape of course).
The truly 1eet were the ones who could toggle in the boot loader the fastest 
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Now it's VB.NET.
Dinosaur with a new skin. I've been a VB.NET enthusiast since 2001; it's taken a long time to catch on.
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My first language was assembler. Spent several years after getting my degree working in assembler. It was a fun language.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I first started learning Basic on a TRS-80 Model I (my friends) then a Model III (ours) when I was in Middle school 6th grade. Then High school was a Commodore PET and Commodore 64.
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4k of RAM, Atari Basic, and saving "code" on a cassette tape. I decided right then and there that I hated Basic, but decided I wanted to be a programmer. I got an Apple //e a couple of years later, and did Pascal on CP/M. That was the first real language I learned, and even got paid to do it on DOS and Windows (back in the day, it was rare that anyone got paid to write in Pascal).
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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Those were fun machines to play with, weren't they?
My first machine was the Atari 600XL.
I wasn't, now I am, then I won't be anymore.
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Have a 5 since I was scouring through here to find someone else who started with Pascal. It was my gateway drug and decided it was what I loved to do. A year later I was on to the harder stuff (C++) and even experimented with some x86 Assembly in college.
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I’m betting you guys haven’t heard of MAD – the Michigan Algorithmic Decoder, whose logo was the grinning mug of Alfred E Newman of Mad magazine fame. Sometime around 1960, you whippersnappers.
Grace + Peace
Peter N Roth, President
http://PNR1.com
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You're right. I haven't heard of it. Unless you mean the magazine. Or my mental state for that matter.
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Followed by some MAD and then FORTRAN II.
JOVIAL (I've always like the acronym: Jule's Own Version of the International Algorithmic Language.)
Other assemblers (CPM, Apple II, 808x, C, Ada, ColdFusion, Javascript, Java.
Looking forward to another 40 years of learning new languages.
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I shoudda looked ere posting 
Grace + Peace
Peter N Roth, President
http://PNR1.com
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Where did you do JOVIAL?
AFAIK, it was used at the Los Alamos Laboratories to program nuclear weapons simulations!
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Ford Aerospace in the 1980's.
Ada was the designated language for the embedded x86 systems but it wasn't ready for prime time, so someone (AF) came up with the idea that JOVIAL was acceptable as an interim design/test language. I've had the same experience with other AF technologies over the years.
It's been fun watching the reinvention of concepts and the gradual assimilation of stuff like functional programming into the "new" languages. FORTH? LISP? ABC?
In the end, it's how we render the algorithm into machine instructions (macro/micro) and how we can make sure our high-level code describes the problem completely, efficiently, and without failures.
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This was all the rage at the time.
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Actually it was about 1976 when I was programming in FORTRAN IV. I can still remember when someone managed to get a copy of Fortran for their PC.
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I was using Fortran IV in 1990 on a Prime mini - no character type so bit shifting integers to get at individual characters was fun.
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FORTRAN II and then FORTRAN IV and then Fortran-77
although my first language was an assembly language I can't even remember the name of, ie. not just "Assembler".
Since then:
COBOL
Coral-66
PL/1
Pascal & Delphi
Basic (a dozen different varieties up to VB.NET)
Rexx (marvelous fun)
Java (a thankfully brief, painful experience)
C, C++ and now C# and JavaScript.
Oh, and I also invented a couple of languages myself (for specialised applications - more macro languages than anything).
[edit] Oops, I just remembered SQL (does that count as a real language?
also 6502 assembler (and some other assembler languages I can't remember).
and Clipper (for DBase III+) - and a bit of EasyTrieve.
I almost learned APL and Prolog but managed to avoid them by the skin of my teeth.
- Life in the fast lane is only fun if you live in a country with no speed limits.
- Of all the things I have lost, it is my mind that I miss the most.
- I vaguely remember having a good memory...
modified 1-Oct-12 13:32pm.
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Can't remember which was first but both about the same time.
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I am surprised that someone else's first (formally learned) programming language was (or may have been) PL/1. I don't think it ever made the top 20 (I've never seen a single line of non-student code in my life).
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Yeah it was an odd language and never used it or saw anyone use it out of class. We learned Pascal shortly after that and it was a much superior language but never used it either. I did use assembly a lot when I first got out of college then quickly taught myself C, C++ and finally C#.
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If memory serves, it was an attempt on IBM's part to replace COBOL and Fortran with one language so they would have fewer compilers to support. It had structured programming constructs that neither of the other languages had. I learned it out of curiosity and then ended up using it for one program. I was working on a Wang VS mini-computer and was given a data file to process from an IBM mainframe. It had both 32-bit integer data and packed data. The COBOL compiler couldn't handle the integer values and the C compiler didn't know what packed data was. PL/1 could handle both, or I would have had to write a complex billing report in assembler.
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I used SPL which was a PL/1 derivative on the Primos OS - a lot of the systems code was written in SPL and as we had a source code licence I learned it from that (and a Fortran to PL/1 reference book from the library - which had never been taken out before) and developed my first compiler in it. PL/1 was a bit unwieldy but the sub sets such as SPL were often excellent
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Don't remember a thing about PL/1 and very little Fortran other than a lot of people on campus used it for math.
My first job out of college was on the Apple II ProDOS OS and assember. Learned a lot that year!
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I don't recall much of PL/1 other than it was my first introduction to pointers- I do recall emjoying it however
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