It's crazy to me when I do the math
and realize that I've been programming for 20 years.
Sometimes
people ask me how many languages I “know.” That's a hard question
to me, and I usually reply with “What's a language?” If a
language is simply a set of instructions, then not only do Apple
BASIC (that one had line numbers... ick!), Q BASIC, Visual BASIC,
VB.NET, and the other 6 flavors of BASIC count as 10 languages, but
HTML 4 and HTML 5 would count separately as well. Counting that way I
think I could hit 70 - although if I did so some people may accuse me of "cheating."
With
a more rigid definition, where a language has to include loops/if
statements and multiple versions only count once, I think I'm still
safe with claiming 20+. Here it goes:
- ActionScript
- Ampscript (an ExactTarget specific scripting language)
- Assembly
- BASIC (Despite having used 11 dramatically different flavors of BASIC spread over a decade, I'll only count it once.)
- C
- C#
- Cfscript
- CoffeeScript
- ColdFusion (4 versions)
- Cool
- Fortran – Only used it once very briefly
- Java
- Labview
- LadderLogic
- Lingo
- MachineCode (Motorola 68HC11)... That was fun to do... once.
- Matlab
- Pascal
- PHP
- Python
- Ruby
- Scratch
- SQL (4 flavors – that I remember)
- Bonus: Logo (Commodore 64)/Turtle (iPad)/Kodable/Daisy the Dinosaur and a few more more kiddy learning languages.
- Bonus: I also used a Hardware Description Language in college, although I can't recall which one. I remember simulating a functioning processor, bus, memory chip, and a few additional components in it.
Honorable
Mention:
- HTML/XHTML/Markdown - and several wiki specific markup dialects
- CSS/Sass – Part of me wants this to not only count, but count multiple times after all the cross-browser issues I've fixed over the years.
- XML – SOAP, anyone?
- Rails/Mach-II - These application frameworks feel unique. I feel like they at a minimum can be used to jerry-rig if-statement like functionality if not their own loops.
- Rspec/JUnit/Selenium/Capybara/TestingFrameworks – Some of these sure feel like they introduce enough unique syntax to justify classification as a language.
- ElectricalBlueprints – it's pretty amazing how much you can do with just wires.
- Maple – I've used Maple, and Google says it supports loops. I don't remember writing a loop in it myself.
How
many languages do you speak? Which one is currently your
favorite, and which one would you consider to be the most obscure?
