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no language in use over 20 years ?? | 543 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
no language in use over 20 years ??
Authored by: nsomos on Wednesday, May 23 2012 @ 05:35 PM EDT
Parent post writes ...
"Think of it as a master tradesman, with more than 20 years experience in
the field. For software this would not exist since no version or language has
been in use that long. "

It would not surprise me if there were more than a dozen computer
languages that are well over 20 years old.

Just off the top of my head, we have Algol, Fortran, Cobol, RPG,
Pascal, APL, PL1, Ada, Simula, Eiffel, Lisp, Scheme, Prolog, C, ...

I am sure I missed more than a few.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

A Simple Question
Authored by: Nivag on Wednesday, May 23 2012 @ 07:29 PM EDT
Java, is not 20 years old.

I wrote my first Java program in 1997, it is now 2012, so Java is at least 15
years old.

However, I brought to Java, programming skills I had developed in a variety
other computer languages (including FORTRAN, ALGOL, and COBOL) over the 20 years
prior to 1997.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

A Simple Question
Authored by: rcsteiner on Wednesday, May 23 2012 @ 08:21 PM EDT
As others have mentioned, you seem to be seriously underestimating the age of
some of the tools that are still being used in production environments. Rather
good tools, some of them.

For example, I'm still using the same FORTRAN 77 compiler in my current position
that I first used back in 1982 as a freshman in college (the basic mode @FTN on
an OS11100/OS2200 box), so that gives me 30 years with that compiler, 24 of it
professional experience, and all of it in the same OS on the same platform.
Newer versions of the hardware, EXEC, and compiler these days, of course.

I actually started coding in Fortran with the MNF compiler on a CDC Cyber in
1978, so that gives me 34 years with Fortran as a language. :-) And I'm only 49,
a junior compared to many here.

If I still used BASIC, I could add a couple of years to that, but I haven't
coded anything in BASIC in a couple of decades.

Up until Delta scrapped Northwest Airline's WorldFlight system a year or so ago,
that was the oldest tool I was aware of still in use. The @FOR (UNIVAC FIELDATA
FORTRAN V) compiler was used to write some of the first bits of UNIMATIC at
United Airlines back in 1966 or so, I started working with it in 1988, I left
NWA in 2002, and in 2010 the system was still in use, so that would have made
some of the early programs 44 years old at that point.


---
-Rich Steiner >>>---> Mableton, GA USA
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

A Simple Question
Authored by: JonCB on Thursday, May 24 2012 @ 07:58 AM EDT
> I think the trick is to narrowly define "skilled". Think
of
> it as a master tradesman, with more than 20 years
experience
> in the field. For software this would not exist since no
> version or language has been in use that long.

But this is not the definition of skilled that is in use. The benchmark for
skilled is not just any level but a "a
person having ordinary skill in the art to which said
subject matter pertains"(from 35 U.S.C. ยง 103).

So this isn't that tech lead you know can guess where the
problems will occur 9 times out of 10 because most of the
problems you're solving they've solved before.

This is talking about an ordinary schlub in the field. If it
was a medieval trade we'd be talking about a "journeyman"
level tradesmen. I've heard the comparison of a university
graduate with in the vicinity of one or two years experience
under their belt (though of course this is highly dependent
on the field itself). Ultimately if you'd objectively hire
someone to work in the field their at least minimally
qualified to be "skilled in the art".

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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