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On a daily basis I work with C and a handful of modern languages. I do reach for Common Lisp and Prolog sometimes, so I'll count those. Common Lisp: many, many

by dwc 11y ago

On a daily basis I work with C and a handful of modern languages. I do reach for Common Lisp and Prolog sometimes, so I'll count those. Common Lisp: many, many great things about lisp have been incorporated into modern languages, but CL still has a few unique things, and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It's less compelling than it was 10 years ago but some problems are expressed more wonderfully in CL than in other languages. Prolog: when prolog is the right tool then you really can't beat it. You can substitute another logic language if you like, but I'm not aware of major borrowing by modern languages (the odd library doesn't really count). Things I'm meaning to look into but haven't really used yet: Forth: I poke at forth every couple of years but always leave off to go do something else. I'm pretty sure I don't want to embrace the whole forth philosophy thing (real forth people are, uh, different), and doing a deep dive to see what I can take with me is something I just haven't made time for. Snobol: I'm not really interested in Snobol wholesale at this point, but I want to explore how PEGs are used. There are PEG libraries available for other languages and I'd like to see how much benefit there is to be had from working in a modern language with a PEG library.

NickFitz 11y ago
Although I haven't used Forth much since the time I implemented it on the Atari ST and used it for a commercial product, I still like to think of myself as a Forth person. It continues to influence aspects of my programming style, and can be useful to have known well in surprising circumstances; for example, I once solved a thorny problem in some rather complex XSLT by adapting a technique that's quite normal in Forth, but would be considered downright weird in many other languages. So yes, we are different :-)
- i336_ 11y ago
  > I once solved a thorny problem in some rather complex XSLT by adapting a technique that's quite normal in Forth, but would be considered downright weird in many other languages. I'd be very curious to know what technique you used here. I sort of stumbled on Forth recently, and while I'm not sure if I'll do anything with it, I like the philosophy behind it more than any other language I've yet found.

by dwc 11y ago

NickFitz 11y ago

Although I haven't used Forth much since the time I implemented it on the Atari ST and used it for a commercial product, I still like to think of myself as a Forth person. It continues to influence aspects of my programming style, and can be useful to have known well in surprising circumstances; for example, I once solved a thorny problem in some rather complex XSLT by adapting a technique that's quite normal in Forth, but would be considered downright weird in many other languages. So yes, we are different :-)

i336_ 11y ago
> I once solved a thorny problem in some rather complex XSLT by adapting a technique that's quite normal in Forth, but would be considered downright weird in many other languages. I'd be very curious to know what technique you used here. I sort of stumbled on Forth recently, and while I'm not sure if I'll do anything with it, I like the philosophy behind it more than any other language I've yet found.