Sometimes we’re so wrapped up in the present and future and don’t take time to remember the past. Today’s popular programming languages will become tomorrow’s ancient languages, collecting dust. For some who still use Fortran or Cobol, to think that these languages were “hip” back in 1984 must feel like going back a thousand years. Well, I went back in the past and took some notes.

The Compupro 8/16 was something to behold back in the day. Floppy disks also used to be a thing.

Languages were specialized for computers and contexts.

Fortran: science/ math software

Cobol: business software. Used for heavy data manipulation.

Logo: education software

2. Personal Cobol was a concept that aimed to allowed those who weren’t tech savvy to create UI without code. Think of the 80’s version of Wix and Squarespace. The user can generate Cobol code.

3. Pascal, a general purpose language, was used in the classroom setting just as C++ and Python are used today.

4. Have you ever heard of Forth? This is a high level language used to build software applications that run smoothly. Yet, during the presentation, the woman admits that Assembly Language was used to optimize the speed of the presentation. Reminds me of having to optimize JavaScript/Ruby/etc…

5. Basic used to be the de facto language for casual programmers. It was inherited from Fortran and was only designed for basic purposes.

6. Logo was a language for kids before Swift Playground.

Closing

The presenter finally says to Dave Eisenberg, a senior software engineer at Apple, “Dave, are there always going to be all these different languages or are they going to merge into a smaller number?” Future me says, “No, never.”

One of the best points made in the video was by Eisenberg who said, ”When you discuss languages it almost becomes like a religious argument. But really a language is just a tool. It’s like arguing, well, which one is better: a hammer or a screwdriver? You tell me what you want to do with it and I’ll tell you which one is better.”