interesting programming technology from old times

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+2 Q:

interesting programming technology from old times

Hello

If you are old programmer or are history of programming/computing buff, what is an interesting programming/computing technology which you liked, which is marginalized today?

In other words, which technology do you miss from old times?

ps: feel free to make this question sound more English

serial ports
parallel ports
punch cards
token ring networks (BNC connectors, UGH!)

OMG Ponies 2010-09-21 03:43:34

do you miss punchcards, in the sense, is it technology you are glad is gone?

aaa 2010-09-21 03:46:58

@aaa carp: Miss one, you have to start over from the beginning... Yes, glad it's gone.

OMG Ponies 2010-09-21 03:54:23

RS-232 is straightforward and simple. I miss that. And no, buggy serial-USB adapters aren't the same.

Michael Petrotta 2010-09-21 03:57:08

@Michael Petrotta: RJ-45, *minimum*

OMG Ponies 2010-09-21 03:58:15

+2 A:

APL, before hearing about functional languages, I had the chance to play with this language full of funny symbols and mathematical operators. It looked like hieroglyphics all right but it was so succint and expressive! And it was good for getting on the nerves of my more traditional Pascal or C oriented fellow students :p

Edgar Sánchez 2010-09-21 03:46:24

I looked at it sometime ago, however alphabet was just overpowering.

aaa 2010-09-21 03:51:14

Conway's Game of Life in APL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4

Robert Harvey 2010-09-21 04:04:21

There exists a reincarnation of APL named J. As cryptic as the predecessor, though without those arcane characters.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_%28programming_language%29

grep 2010-09-21 05:28:58

+1 A:

I can't think of anything I miss, specifically. Things I don't miss:

Greg Hewgill 2010-09-21 04:00:41

About the only thing I can think of worth missing is SNOBOL. I'll go out on a limb and predit that Perl 9 (or maybe 10) will come close to catching up with SNOBOL 3 (but even I'm not brave enough to predict when Perl will catch up with SNOBOL 4).

Then again, given the gestation period for Perl 6, I'm not sure I'll live long enough to know when/if it does happen.

Jerry Coffin 2010-09-21 04:52:30

ansaurus

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