4 ms·

Ask HN: Did you code in the 1980s? Which language(s) did you use? What for?

6 points by azuajef 10y ago

vkuruthers 10y ago
Yes, started in 1984 with BASIC on my 8 bit home PC. Used that to learn programming, explore the machine & make a few primitive games. Then moved on to Z80 assembler (massively faster, and that's where you really get to understand how the computer works). At the end before going to University also used some Pascal, but not that much. Didn't know about C back then, wish I had.
informatimago 10y ago
6502, z80, 6809, BASIC, LSE, Pascal, COBOL, 360 assembler, S35 assembler, 68000, Microsoft Basic, LightSpeed Pascal, C, Modula-2, Object-Pascal, 8086, FORTRAN IV, Smalltalk, sh, csh, awk. Some to learn, some to work, some for a hobby. At work on that period, I've used 68000 assembler, S35 assembler, Microsoft Basic, LightSpeed Pascal, C, Modula-2. In the 90's personal computers became more powerful, internet became accessible, and therefore the gamut of accessible programming languages became much wider and much more interesting (Lisp, scheme, prolog, ML, Ada, Modula-3, Oberon, etc). But that's not your question.
- vkuruthers 10y ago
  Quite an extensive list there :)
opendomain 10y ago
Basic, Assembly (6502, 8088), Pascal, Fortran
stevekemp 10y ago
Only for my own personal amusement. I received, along with my sisters, a ZX Spectrum 48k for Christmas in 1984 or so. The machine had a dead tape-deck on arrival, which meant that we couldn't play with any of the games in the bundle (10 IIRC). My sisters lost interest pretty much immediately, but I read the manual and started entering the simple BASIC programs. Over time I learned BASIC pretty well, eventually moving on to z80 machine code. I stopped programming for a few years, instead preferring to play games, but then I wanted to get extra-lives so I started "hacking". Slowly learning how to by-pass the loaders on commercial games, so I could examine the programs and tweak them for infinite lives, timers, & etc. I got a few POKEs published in UK magazines at the time, you'd write a little BASIC program that POKEd in machine-code to load the game from tape, patching it to return to your control, before modifying the game-code and jumping to the entry-point. That occupied me from 84-90 or so.
rpeden 10y ago
I was young, writing very simple games in Color BASIC on a TRS-80 hooked up to the family TV. It didn't have a floppy drive, but it did let you save your programs to an audio cassette tape so you could load them up and reuse them later. This was a highly unreliable way of storing programs, as my sister would often record audio over my programs because she liked watching the needles on the tape recorder move back and forth as she spoke.
joedunn 10y ago
6502 assembly - we were building the Acorn BBC machine (!) BCPL - the "before C" language at Cambridge University Pascal, SNOBOL - just because Modula 2 - because it was sooo cool (and we were using a variant of our own with all kinds of neat stuff - like exceptions!)
osullivj 10y ago
Basic & Z80 ASM on the ZX81 and Camputers Lynx at home, for fun. Basic & DBaseII on PC-DOS as my first paid gig in 83. Then Fortran, C, x86 & 68000 ASM for mech eng software on DOS, Windows, VMS and Xenix [1] from 1985 to 1990. I wrote a Xenix device driver for a PC AT 386 hosted 68000 powered graphics card. That was fun :) Also did some C & Fortran on Intergraph's Clipper based Unix workstation.
wslh 10y ago
Only for fun, games and experiments TI-99/4A: Logo and BASIC Apple II: Applesoft BASIC and 6502 assembler Commodore Amiga: BASIC, ARexx, assembler, Pascal, Aztec C.
cabalamat 10y ago
Z8 BASIC, ZX80 BASIC, BBC BASIC, Sinclair QL BASIC, loads of other varieties of BASIC. Turbo Pascal, C, C++, Smalltalk. Z80, Z8 and 6502 assembler. Ladder logic. Several others that I've forgotten.

6 points by azuajef 10y ago

Yes, started in 1984 with BASIC on my 8 bit home PC. Used that to learn programming, explore the machine & make a few primitive games. Then moved on to Z80 assembler (massively faster, and that's where you really get to understand how the computer works). At the end before going to University also used some Pascal, but not that much. Didn't know about C back then, wish I had.

informatimago 10y ago

6502, z80, 6809, BASIC, LSE, Pascal, COBOL, 360 assembler, S35 assembler, 68000, Microsoft Basic, LightSpeed Pascal, C, Modula-2, Object-Pascal, 8086, FORTRAN IV, Smalltalk, sh, csh, awk. Some to learn, some to work, some for a hobby. At work on that period, I've used 68000 assembler, S35 assembler, Microsoft Basic, LightSpeed Pascal, C, Modula-2. In the 90's personal computers became more powerful, internet became accessible, and therefore the gamut of accessible programming languages became much wider and much more interesting (Lisp, scheme, prolog, ML, Ada, Modula-3, Oberon, etc). But that's not your question.

vkuruthers 10y ago
Quite an extensive list there :)

opendomain 10y ago

Basic, Assembly (6502, 8088), Pascal, Fortran

stevekemp 10y ago

Only for my own personal amusement. I received, along with my sisters, a ZX Spectrum 48k for Christmas in 1984 or so. The machine had a dead tape-deck on arrival, which meant that we couldn't play with any of the games in the bundle (10 IIRC). My sisters lost interest pretty much immediately, but I read the manual and started entering the simple BASIC programs. Over time I learned BASIC pretty well, eventually moving on to z80 machine code. I stopped programming for a few years, instead preferring to play games, but then I wanted to get extra-lives so I started "hacking". Slowly learning how to by-pass the loaders on commercial games, so I could examine the programs and tweak them for infinite lives, timers, & etc. I got a few POKEs published in UK magazines at the time, you'd write a little BASIC program that POKEd in machine-code to load the game from tape, patching it to return to your control, before modifying the game-code and jumping to the entry-point. That occupied me from 84-90 or so.

rpeden 10y ago

I was young, writing very simple games in Color BASIC on a TRS-80 hooked up to the family TV. It didn't have a floppy drive, but it did let you save your programs to an audio cassette tape so you could load them up and reuse them later. This was a highly unreliable way of storing programs, as my sister would often record audio over my programs because she liked watching the needles on the tape recorder move back and forth as she spoke.

joedunn 10y ago

6502 assembly - we were building the Acorn BBC machine (!) BCPL - the "before C" language at Cambridge University Pascal, SNOBOL - just because Modula 2 - because it was sooo cool (and we were using a variant of our own with all kinds of neat stuff - like exceptions!)

osullivj 10y ago

Basic & Z80 ASM on the ZX81 and Camputers Lynx at home, for fun. Basic & DBaseII on PC-DOS as my first paid gig in 83. Then Fortran, C, x86 & 68000 ASM for mech eng software on DOS, Windows, VMS and Xenix [1] from 1985 to 1990. I wrote a Xenix device driver for a PC AT 386 hosted 68000 powered graphics card. That was fun :) Also did some C & Fortran on Intergraph's Clipper based Unix workstation.

wslh 10y ago

Only for fun, games and experiments TI-99/4A: Logo and BASIC Apple II: Applesoft BASIC and 6502 assembler Commodore Amiga: BASIC, ARexx, assembler, Pascal, Aztec C.

cabalamat 10y ago

Z8 BASIC, ZX80 BASIC, BBC BASIC, Sinclair QL BASIC, loads of other varieties of BASIC. Turbo Pascal, C, C++, Smalltalk. Z80, Z8 and 6502 assembler. Ladder logic. Several others that I've forgotten.