{"thread":{"id":"PBKNz0bTbz48","title":"What was the first language you actually wrote something useful in?","content":"Not the first one you typed hello world in. The first one where the program did a job you needed done and you kept using it.\n\nFor me it was a horrible little AWK script in about 1999 that reformatted my bank's statement export so I could paste it in a spreadsheet. I still have it somewhere. It has no comments and one variable called x2.\n\nCurious what everyone else's was.","category":"general","status":"open","author":"quill","createdAt":"2026-09-19T18:56:38.234Z","updatedAt":"2026-10-06T03:53:38.234Z","expiresAt":null,"replyCount":15},"replies":[{"id":"DY_aniCguSxE","content":"QBasic. Program that worked out how much of each paint to buy for model aircraft. Dad used it more than I did.","author":"oldpc","createdAt":"2026-09-19T20:00:38.234Z"},{"id":"1yiwKUP229uA","content":"sh. Nothing else was installed.","author":"vek","createdAt":"2026-09-19T21:07:38.234Z"},{"id":"qjWoJBbrd8yT","content":"Excel macros, and I'm not sorry. Got me a raise before I knew what a loop was called.","author":"kettle","createdAt":"2026-09-20T01:38:38.234Z"},{"id":"LRgxV8AkGgjI","content":"I'm still working on this one to be honest! Started Python last year to help with marking. The first thing that actually saved me time was a script that renames the scanned worksheets using the class list. Took me a whole weekend and it saves about 20 minutes a term. Worth it anyway.","author":"bea","createdAt":"2026-09-20T14:46:38.234Z"},{"id":"SsBcemBkzkHi","content":"6502 assembly via a C64 monitor, because BASIC was too slow for the sprite routine I wanted. It wasn't useful as such, but it was useful to me","author":"zp_indirect","createdAt":"2026-09-20T19:31:38.234Z"},{"id":"5CZg1tDIQGqz","content":"Java, sadly, and I've been paying for it since.","author":"gcfail","createdAt":"2026-09-21T19:24:38.234Z"},{"id":"orwrQ5yIDyJR","content":"at least you got paid","author":"vek","createdAt":"2026-09-21T19:36:38.234Z"},{"id":"FdxDiDhMJK9I","content":"Pascal in school. We made program for the school library, to track who has which book. Librarian used it three years until the computer died. I think nobody made backup.","author":"tomasz","createdAt":"2026-09-22T03:48:38.234Z"},{"id":"zZulxAJw9roy","content":"Emacs Lisp. Yes it counts. Everything I've written since has been an attempt to get back to that feeling of redefining a function while it's running.","author":"carcdr","createdAt":"2026-09-23T04:36:38.234Z"},{"id":"BsA5Bm_hQzQl","content":"every lisp thread on every board, within ten posts","author":"Anonymous","createdAt":"2026-09-23T04:54:38.234Z"},{"id":"eR_-qkvYRu6L","content":"Perl CGI guestbook. Took about a week before somebody put a script tag in it, which is how I learned about escaping.","author":"nils","createdAt":"2026-09-24T13:33:38.234Z"},{"id":"48rO3P7Wy26p","content":"nils, we all have that guestbook.","author":"old_perl_guy","createdAt":"2026-09-24T14:04:38.234Z"},{"id":"0MgEeKLwY8bu","content":"Found this searching for something else. Mine was Visual Basic 6, a tool for my dad's shop that printed price labels. He ran it on the same machine until 2017.","author":"joelle_t","createdAt":"2026-10-05T23:08:38.234Z"},{"id":"jxl9i8nqKwtp","content":"Late to this as well but game maker language. A small tool that packed sprite sheets because I was too lazy to do it by hand. Then I wrote more tools than games, and that's still the problem.","author":"teo","createdAt":"2026-10-06T03:20:38.234Z"},{"id":"i12o2R9qZJYq","content":"This has been the nicest thread to get emails about, except that there are no emails, I just keep coming back to check. Joelle, 2017 is a fine run for VB6.","author":"quill","createdAt":"2026-10-06T03:53:38.234Z"}]}