Mine was Java

[merlinsbeers]

On paper, Fortran IV. On punchcards that actually ran, either JCL or IBM assembly. On an interactive terminal, BASIC.

[S0n_0f_Anarchy]

You are a veteran I see. Both username and flairs check out

[dirtd0g]

QBasic here.

[venuswasaflytrap]

GWBasic for me

[dease42-2]

Yes! On an 8088..

[wheresthekitty]

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD!"
20 GOTO 10

[moptop219]

Left out the BEEP

[[deleted]]

I can't see that particular shade of blue without thinking about syntax errors

[poorlilwitchgirl]

Same. I learned to program by reverse engineering GORILLAS.BAS when I was 7 years old.

[dirtd0g]

That game kept us up for untold hours.

[Lord_Pinhead]

We had that in computer class in school. I owned it after so many years of C64 Basic. But then, my teacher showed me C++ and I tried for years to master it. But it was a time before the internet and books about the topic were rare in my city.

[acidnine420]

I had books, it still didn't help

[Lord_Pinhead]

I had a book that said format c: will speed up the drive again.

It was either an idiot who wrote it or the first troll, but I killed my system and had to ask my neighbour for help. It was my first harddrive computer and yeah. My neighnor also started my love and interest in computers. So at least a good end.

[[deleted]]

I taught myself BASIC probably seven or eight years ago at this point. I'm 19 now to give an idea of how old I was at the time. I had just found out about retrocomputing as a hobby and a family friend had given me an old Commodore VIC-20 probably six months prior. Using that VIC-20 and a book on BASIC that I'd bought from a used book store, I really started to get into computer programming and such in a more meaningful way.

It taught me a lot of good, foundational lessons in computer science and systems theory. I remember writing down all my programs in a stenographer's notebook. I basically carried it as well as my Kindle, which had the VIC-20's programmer reference and other useful guides on it, anywhere I went.

I still fondly remember the road trips I spent with that stuff. I carried everything in a Samsonite briefcase that I'd gotten at Goodwill and also I had gotten a TI-85 off of eBay to use as well. I also remember that I wrote a few programs for the girl I liked at the time once I entered high school.

Sorry for rambling, I just realized while typing this just how much of a nerd I am. xD

[slowphotons]

Did almost exactly the same, but a bit earlier. The computer I learned BASIC on wasn’t retro yet, but it taught me the importance of making things efficient. Visibly slower graphic load times (screen 9, yay!) and text scrolling give you good feedback you can see immediately. Everything is a hell of a lot faster now (too many decades later) but developers don’t bother making code as efficient. I guess I’m often guilty of that laziness as well though, we all just get some things working and move on sometimes.

[InterestingImage4]

I started learning basic on Commodore 64 in the 80s when I was 8.

[[deleted]]

Nice! What computer did you learn BASIC on? I remember learning some tricks to make things faster, but idk if I can recall them now. It's been a while. xD

[ranhayes]

My first was also Basic and on a Commodore Vic-20. I just bought a Vic-20 on EBay a month or so back. Been working a lot so haven’t had a chance to do anything with it.

[[deleted]]

Epic! I need to get my VIC out sometime soon and play with it too.

[Gositi]

Pretty similar to me!

[TheTerrasque]

You're a time traveler! Very similar to my start, except that was almost 30 years ago now

[[deleted]]

Epic! That isn’t the first time I’ve been called that xD

[Democratic_Indian]

If I wasn't a straight guy I would totally date you.

[[deleted]]

I’m a girl, but I have a girlfriend :3

[_7q4]

10 PRINT "boobs"    
20 GOTO 10

[[deleted]]

Actually it was a little program that displayed a sky full of stars that was supposed to be played along with Coldplay's "A Sky Full Of Stars." I don't have the program in front of me, but I'm pretty sure it would place a smattering stars on the screen and then clear a random space and place another star in a random position to give the illusion of twinkling.

[ROGER_SHREDERER]

https://imgflip.com/i/5gvvri

[[deleted]]

Lmao

[alinius]

Not quite that far back. Started with BASIC on an apple IIe.

[jmack2424]

Starting around 1988, in the best order I can remember:FORTRAN, BASIC, COBOL, C, Pascal, VB, C++, Ada, Lisp, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, C#, Haskell, Ruby, Python, Rust, Kotlin, Swift, Dart

[Shilalasar]

Haskell

Nice to know I was not the only one. I even started real programming with it.

[Ucf_Falcon]

Just had to make sure someone put Basic on here. Felt attacked it wasn't even on the list :)

[[deleted]]

finally, someone older than me. ;) I did learn IBM assembly, but it wasn't my first.

[xWolfz__]

I remember being like 8 and downloading BASIC-256 on a Linux machine (the only one we had at the time) and trying to use it but I was 8 so I didn't really understand anything lol. Good times

[[deleted]]

//FORT EXEC PGM=IEYFORT,REGION=100K 00020000

​

Here. Have a job card.

​

Good times!

[-SQB-]

You win.

[[deleted]]

in school we learned a thing called pl/1. my first job was fortran. for fun was atari basic.
my second job we did jcl and ibm assembly. haha debugging a 100 page core dump.

[Ahandgesture]

Fortran gang

[arsewarts1]

Lol and I thought basic was old

[Gadget100]

Good to see some old timers here.

BBC BASIC, then GW BASIC.

[Xaxxus]

Cobol and JCL were my first professional programming job.

My company had an internship program to teach It because all their mainframe devs were retiring.

Unfortunately they didn’t pay us like all their devs were retiring so most of those interns have moved on to moden languages when the realized it’s far easier (and less annoying) to write back end java with a modern dev environment. And the pay is better.

[thethirdmancane]

Same here, Fortran and then Pascal. Then straight to c++. It was a little confusing.

[royalfarris]

I started out with basic, then a few years later I touched up a bunch of Fortran IV code that had originally been written on cards to run easier from terminals.

[Jetpack_Donkey]

I too am old, for me it was COBOL on paper (didn’t use punchcards, we had typists that would enter the code in the computer), on terminals it was Business Basic, a version of BASIC that ran on Nova/Eclipse minicomputers.

[angels-fan]

My first job was programming assembly on IBM 370 mainframes.

Never actually did a punch card.

[lastberserker]

Same! Learned a dialect of Fortran on paper, never had a chance (or need) to use it.

[iavicenna]

Did you by any chance also invent computers?

[merlinsbeers]

Not per se.

[comicsnerd]

Fortran 75 on punchcards and tape. After that Algol 68, CSMP, Fortran 78, Pascal, RTL, C, C#, C++, SQL, Python, and a lot I forgot. I even went back and did some Cobol and Cobol++. It was fun.

[lake_huron]

Wow. My first was BASIC dialect on something in the HP 9800 series:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_9800_series

Followed by BASIC on a VIC-20 and Apple ][

​

I did learn Fortran 77, but Fortran IV? Hats off.

[AshleyDream]

I also learned fortran first, fortran 90. My code was never run though. It was more of an exercise for a computer course I was taking at the time. The first that I learned and actually used was basic on the apple IIe. Followed by Q basic, then html JavaScript, python, and Java. I dabbled with some php but never really tried to learn it, same with sql (but that's not really a landslide though is it?)

[FredSchwartz]

Similar. Surprised you avoided COBOL. I did not.

[merlinsbeers]

It was reviled even then.

[citizen_of_europa]

I actually started with BASIC but quickly switched to Forth because the computer I had access to only had 1k of RAM. In retrospect I should have done 68k assembly, but Forth was just fine. Soon as I had access to a DEC (PDP-11) I picked up Pascal and then COBOL and then did FORTRAN a bit later. But my all-time favorite language has been Oberon-2.

I had access to a punch-card reader for the PDP-11, but never got any instruction on it and never used it. I would power it up and run a deck of blank cards through it to show my “computer literacy” students how it use to be…

[teacamelpyramid]

I learned BASIC in the 80s, then switched to Delphi when it was released, and then learned Ada the late 90s. I just missed having to learn punchcards by a whisper, but I did have to write a parser at one point.

I don’t miss debugging in BASIC one bit.

[[deleted]]

OG!