On 03/30 12:41 , Jeremy wrote:

Thanks for the overview Jeremy. Rather a fun read. :)

> ADA - often required for government or govt-regulated projects.

It's nicely similar to Modula-2 or Pascal. Fairly easy to learn & read.

One of the more miserable classes I had in college was one where an
odd-smelling and barely intelligible professor spent 90% of the class
scribbling Ada code on the board as fast as he (and we) could write. We were
never actually required to *write* any code in Ada tho (we could do the
assignments in the language of our choice - I used Modula-2). We worked hard
to do all the assignments, but I don't think I actually learned anything in
that class other than one sentence out of the textbook which said something
to the effect of "Well-behaved programs should not 'bomb' even when given
bad input".

In retrospect, it was another example of the brokenness of the modern
government-inspired-and-regulated education system.

> sed - not a big fan

On the upside, the substitution syntax is similar to Vim's and it's really
handy to include in bash scripts.
"j=`echo $i|sed -e s/onething/anotherthing`" 
is just too handy some days. (Yes, I'm sure there are neater ways to express
that, but this is the one I remember).

> punchcards - do *not* drop the tray just before submitting it, else your 
> coworkers will tell me the story 20 years later.

Never used them myself; but I was told one solution for the spill problem
was to take a black marker and draw a big 'X' on the side of the stack of
cards. That way you just re-order them until the ink marks on the edges of
each card line up and your stack is reassembled.

> Up and coming languages.  Allegedly good.  Already attracting hipsters.
> 	Erlang
> 	Lua

Lua looks like a really simple & easy to learn language; I just never had
reason to learn it. Anyone here have much experience with it?

-- 
Carl Soderstrom (not a coder by any stretch of the imagination)
Systems Administrator
Real-Time Enterprises
www.real-time.com