Back some time around 1990 it was C++ and SCCS (Source Code Control System). OO was clearly a major improvement on structured development, and SCCS was my first

Back some time around 1990 it was C++ and SCCS (Source Code Control System). OO was clearly a major improvement on structured development, and SCCS was my first version control system. Before that we just had a shared directory and would announce "I'm editing foo.c". Then I learned Eiffel. Preconditions, postconditions and invariants, in a language with garbage collection. This was obviously a big step up from C++, and I spent the next decade trying to get everyone else to see it too. As Java took over the world I looked around for the next big thing after OO, and decided to learn a functional language. Having seen how C++ made a mess of the structured/OO hybrid I went for the purest language available and learned Haskell. So now my hobby language is Haskell, and I'm hoping to make it my professional language some time. Once you learn Haskell you realise that every type system in every other language you know was designed by someone who didn't understand what they were doing. You are also finally cut free from the Von-Neumann architecture, so you can pick whatever form of computation best fits the problem you are trying to solve at the time.