A Chequered Past

I dumped more than a few old backups over the past couple of weeks, to fascinating results.

Much to my amazement, I kept a fair amount of source code from the past couple of decades, and it was fun (if occasionally embarrassing) to look at the hundreds of personal projects I dabbled in, from little hacks and scripts to entire desktop apps (none of which even run anymore, unless I can bother to set up a VM for them).

The awesome thing was that after hitting a set of densely packed folders with coursework, I came across a “Sinclair” folder… I have absolutely no idea how I managed to convert some of those assembly files across (I suppose the older bits were migrated by way of “CP/M”:Wikipedia:CP/M on the “+3”:Wikipedia:ZXpectrum#ZXpectrum2B3), but it was then that I decided to try to summarize the whole thing in some fashion.

For your amusement, here’s a more-or-less complete tally of what programming languages I was into over the years:

Update: Come April 2018, I decided to tack on the post-2013 years.

Year (est.) Languages Platforms
2018 (Very little) C#, a lot of and , a fair amount of , some regrettable moments with on Windows, a fair amount of fun with Lua and C/C++ on IoT devices, some again. (obviously) in Azure services, a lot of , some ARM64, a bunch of tiny ARM devices, Xamarin.
2017
2016
2015 A return to via , a few deep dives into and , yet more and Mostly and ARM devices, a lot less .
2014
2013
2012 A lot more and JavaScript, a little more , a little raw “C”:Wikipedia:C, some Objective-C, some Ruby, a little , a fair amount of R. , some boxes and a plethora of ARM and mobile devices (, , ).
2011
2010
2009
2008 (including PyObjC), JavaScript, a lot less “big iron” and Perl, as little as humanly possible, some “C++”:Wikipedia:CXX and Erlang and assorted ARM devices. A few machines, the dawn of apps, some Qt and LiMo, Ericsson networking gear.
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002 Loads and loads of Perl and , very little JavaScript, some “C”:Wikipedia:C. Mostly .
2001
2000 A bunch of and PCs, some “Sun”:Wikipedia:Sunicrosystems boxes.
1999
1998
1997 (I had faith). Some “C++”:Wikipedia:CXX, some Perl.
1996
1995
1994 MPW, more “680×0”:Wikipedia:68k stuff, “Object Pascal”:Wikipedia:Objectascal, “Objective-C”:Wikipedia:Objective-C, “C++”:Wikipedia:CXX (mostly MFC”:Wikipedia:Microsoftoundationlassibrary), a bunch of , some “Prolog”:Wikipedia:Prolog, some Perl. A bunch of “68k”:Wikipedia:68k , “VMS”:Wikipedia:VMS and gear, my beloved .
1993
1992
1991
1990 “x86”:Wikipedia:x86 assembly, “Turbo Pascal”:Wikipedia:Turboascal, a little “C”:Wikipedia:C (there was even a copy of “Brief”:Wikipedia:Brieftextditor …) A few PCs, some “68k”:Wikipedia:68k
1989
1988
1987
1986 “680×0”:Wikipedia:68k assembly, “Pascal”:Wikipedia:Pascal “QL”:Wikipedia:SinclairL, an Atari ST
1985
1984
1983 BASIC”:Wikipedia:BASICrogramminganguage, “Z80”:Wikipedia:Z80 assembly Sinclair “ZX81”:Wikipedia:SinclairX81, “Spectrum”:Wikipedia:SinclairXpectrum 48K (later +3)
1982
1981

(Some dates are approximate, and could even be wrong since I had to believe the archive dates…)

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