On Mon, Feb 8, 2021 at 5:21 PM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:

> I know that I'm gonna be outclassed here, but I taught myself BASIC,
> ALGOL, and FORTRAN (ugh! well, it was WATFOR then WATFIV) from my school
> days in the late 60s onwards.
>
Many much older and more experienced than I on this list.  I'm a relative
youngster that started in the late 1960s.  So Dave, I have to say, ditto,
but I will add a couple of assemblers to the early list (360 BAL, HP2000,
and PDP-8 and 10).  My father showed me the GE-635 assembler in
probably 1968, but I never managed to write anything meaningful in it.

>
> COBOL tried to be drilled into me, but I firmly rejected it (but for some
> odd reason I still know it, but deny all knowledge of it).
>
Funny, I dodged COBOL, but not PL/1 and APL. With the latter, I maintained
the York/APL interpreter on TSS for a bit.  I also saw a number of
languages on the 10's like SAIL, SNOBOL, and over course BLISS.  All before
I saw C on the Fifth Edition of UNIX.  As I've said before, when I first
saw it, I was not impressed.  Little did I know Dennis and Ken would rot my
brain - (and I'm thankful that they did).

Clem
ᐧ