What's the most obscure language you know?

[nmadd]

I stumbled upon a list of programming languages on Wikipedia and, of course, there are lots of them! Being new to programming, I wasn't surprised to see that I haven't even heard of most of them.

VEE, ChucK, Poplog

I'd be curious to see what is the most "obscure" programming language you know and why do you know it?

[techgnome]

OF all the stuff I know.... Ada might be the most "obscure".... and only because the military trained me on it.

-tg

[Pino]

I friend of mine who I went to college with at the time was fascinated with these langauges. He went through a few of them with me, some of them are just plain stupid!

Some interesting ones out there though!

[superbovine]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ML_programming_language

There is a verison called F# on the MS research that is downloadable. It is probably the most different type of language I have experience with. I have never used F# though, I usually used the one's avaible on UNIX.

[bgmacaw]

I've got a copy of Turbo Prolog (circa 1987) in a box somewhere along with Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, Turbo Basic, and Turbo ASM. I was really into the Borland languages back then before I turned to the dark side.

[nmadd]

Yep. Ada and ML look pretty obscure to me.

That's a lot of Turbos bg!

I friend of mine who I went to college with at the time was fascinated with these langauges. He went through a few of them with me, some of them are just plain stupid!

Some interesting ones out there though!

That's funny. My wife says I'm the same way. We want to learn a spoken language together and she's practical and wants to learn Spanish or some widely spoken language and I'm thinking about some near extinct language that few people speak.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Things get even stranger when you get into dedicated microcontroller based programming. There is VB for the OOPic, but it bears almost no resemblance to any other VB. I also used to do some programming on CR-10 dataloggers. The language and capabilities were reasonably rich considering the very modest range of things you would normally be doing with one of those.

[Hack]

I also got very heavily involved with both Turbo Prolog and Turbo Pascal back in the late 80's. I did a number of applications with them. Turbo Pascal was on the standards list for development languages at the company I was with at the time.

[Slaine]

Shape 35 CNC.

For programming punch presses.

Nowadays it's all done automatically from CAD programs, but back in my day we had to hand craft it.

[superbovine]

Yep. Ada and ML look pretty obscure to me.

That's a lot of Turbos bg!


That's funny. My wife says I'm the same way. We want to learn a spoken language together and she's practical and wants to learn Spanish or some widely spoken language and I'm thinking about some near extinct language that few people speak.

If you work any DoD contracts you might become very good friends with ADA.

[techgnome]

Did you know there's a .NET version of Ada .... it's called (and I kid you not) A#. Developed by the Air Force Academy.

-tg

[RhinoBull]

Yep. Ada and ML look pretty obscure to me.

I don't think ADA was that obscure - expensive, yes. And according to some sources it was the most expensive language at the time.

[nmadd]

I don't think ADA was that obscure - expensive, yes. And according to some sources it was the most expensive language at the time.

Definitely obscure to a new programmer like me. My mental list of programming languages currently consist of what books I see at Barnes & Noble.

So being the most expensive in its time, how much are we talking about?

[si_the_geek]

The most obscure I've ever used was APPLE "A Pathetic Programming Language Example", which was for a class on Compiler Design (very useful for understanding optimisation).

[RhinoBull]

So being the most expensive in its time, how much are we talking about?

You'd have to ask DoD about that.

[Lord Orwell]

everything the dod has is inflated. Street price probably $5.00 but they paid $4,000.00

Anyway, the most obscure i've used is Clipper. It was basically a language designed to use DBASE III databases and you could make .exe files. Interestingly at the time, it made .exe files with their own built-in memory managers, so you could have a dos program a megabyte in size. There were plenty of add-ins for it too, including scripts to convert graphics formats and show true-color images.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper...mming_language
This is the most obscure language i've used on PC.
I also programmed in assembly/machine code on a commodore 64, and kept myself busy converting basic programs to machine code.

[RhinoBull]

everything the dod has is inflated. Street price probably $5.00 but they paid $4,000.00...

I wasn't referring to retail price - rather money spent to develop the language. Again, according to some sources the amount (at the time) was astronomical.

[bgmacaw]

Anyway, the most obscure i've used is Clipper.

I wouldn't call Clipper obscure. It was the 'VB' of the mid to late 1980s. Everybody and his brother wrote DOS based business apps using it. Windows and VB and its failure to quickly embrace server based databases pretty much killed it off in the early 90's although it continued to see some use throughout the decade.

[techgnome]

The development costs were high because the DoD had some strict requirements that were needed. It was built with embedded systems in mind, as well as stability (no one wants a GPF or NullExceptionNotHandled during a bombing run). A# was developed by the AF Academy, essentially free resources there (it's an ongoing student program).

I found Ada a very nice language to work with... but that might be because of my Pascal and C (ANSI) background I had prior to it.

-tg

[RhinoBull]

I've found this artcile: Comparing Development Costs of C and Ada so I thought it might be interesting to some of you.

[nmadd]

I've found this artcile: Comparing Development Costs of C and Ada so I thought it might be interesting to some of you.

That does look like an interesting article. Have to go over it more in depth later.

This line was particularly interesting:

We have related a preliminary finding that Ada performed twice as well as C.

A language that I've never even heard of before today. I imagine there are a number of these that have fallen by the way for one reason or another.

[RhinoBull]

That does look like an interesting article. Have to go over it more in depth later.

This line was particularly interesting:


A language that I've never even heard of before today. I imagine there are a number of these that have fallen by the way for one reason or another.

It often comes down to marketing - you can have the most precious thing right in your hands knowing very little about how to sell it.

[superbovine]

Did you know there's a .NET version of Ada .... it's called (and I kid you not) A#. Developed by the Air Force Academy.

-tg

that is pretty cool. all the ada projects i have see are on the legacy system for the AF.

I alway enjoyed watching Com Squad squarm when you mention ADA.