Language Meme
Apr. 28th, 2007 07:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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phinnia et al. - list your languages, computer and standard, and your relative fluency in them. if you speak with a particular accent, list that too.
Computer languages:
C - Enough to get by with some basics. The course I took last year didn't quite get to linked lists, binary files, bitwise manipulation, or even officially, file I/O (although I used that in the course project), but I think if I need those I can handle them from here.
Perl - Self-taught enough to do some basic scripts, including web forms. Been a few years, though, so I doubt I could do much w/o a reference nearby.
PHP - Barely enough to throw some basic scripting into some HTML.
HTML - Fluent in basic static web pages. Tables still give me headaches sometimes, and I stay away from frames.
Fortran - Got very proficient in high school and early college the first time around, then didn't see it again until a brief refresher last fall and then when I started working with it this semester for my radar project. Will probably become quite fluent by the time my Ph.D. rolls around...
Pascal - Early personal history same as Fortran. Does anyone use Pascal anymore since C came along?
6809 Assembly Language - I still remember some of this, from some friends and I teaching ourselves when we had TRS-80 Color Computers in high school, but I'm not so sure it would be of much use today. :-)
NCL (NCAR Command Language) - This is a new one for me, and so far it's pretty easy. I'd say I'm nowhere near fluent, but getting there quickly, and I may get to go to Boulder this summer for a training class at NCAR on the subject.
I never have been able to make an intuitive leap to any object-oriented language, like C++ or Java, but I've also neither spent the effort nor cared all that much. I can read just about any procedural language and figure out what is going on, but I remember my first attempts at studying TARGA 2000 SDK code when I was at Truevision in the mid-to-late '90s, in C++, and just seeing all these class declarations. Where did the program actually do anything? :-)
Human Languages:
English - Well, I like to think I'm somewhat decent at this one.
German - Enough to get around in non-English-speaking sections of Germany, as long as native speakers slow down - it's difficult for me to process what I'm hearing in German if it is at the same conversational speed as I'm used to with English, but I can speak it fine.
French - I managed to buy stamps at a post office in Paris without English, but it also involved some pointing. I can probably get my face slapped just about anywhere in France. In Quebec, however, all I can do is tell someone the time of day.
Dutch - Meh. I'd have liked to have had some practice when I was in Amsterdam and Hilversum, but they're so proud of their English abilities they want to speak English.
Afrikaans - I had a South African friend many years ago who taught me way too much of this. It's a very efficient language - no conjugating verbs, no declension. But she also taught me that it's more fun to swear in English.
Spanish - Despite the influx into this country, I have no interest in this one except listening to some music, mainly from an aesthetic standpoint. I can make my way in it crudely, though.
I can probably get my face slapped in several other languages, from Hindi to Russian to Japanese, but not much beyond obscenities I've picked up from friends and/or slang dictionaries.
phinnia et al. - list your languages, computer and standard, and your relative fluency in them. if you speak with a particular accent, list that too.Computer languages:
C - Enough to get by with some basics. The course I took last year didn't quite get to linked lists, binary files, bitwise manipulation, or even officially, file I/O (although I used that in the course project), but I think if I need those I can handle them from here.
Perl - Self-taught enough to do some basic scripts, including web forms. Been a few years, though, so I doubt I could do much w/o a reference nearby.
PHP - Barely enough to throw some basic scripting into some HTML.
HTML - Fluent in basic static web pages. Tables still give me headaches sometimes, and I stay away from frames.
Fortran - Got very proficient in high school and early college the first time around, then didn't see it again until a brief refresher last fall and then when I started working with it this semester for my radar project. Will probably become quite fluent by the time my Ph.D. rolls around...
Pascal - Early personal history same as Fortran. Does anyone use Pascal anymore since C came along?
6809 Assembly Language - I still remember some of this, from some friends and I teaching ourselves when we had TRS-80 Color Computers in high school, but I'm not so sure it would be of much use today. :-)
NCL (NCAR Command Language) - This is a new one for me, and so far it's pretty easy. I'd say I'm nowhere near fluent, but getting there quickly, and I may get to go to Boulder this summer for a training class at NCAR on the subject.
I never have been able to make an intuitive leap to any object-oriented language, like C++ or Java, but I've also neither spent the effort nor cared all that much. I can read just about any procedural language and figure out what is going on, but I remember my first attempts at studying TARGA 2000 SDK code when I was at Truevision in the mid-to-late '90s, in C++, and just seeing all these class declarations. Where did the program actually do anything? :-)
Human Languages:
English - Well, I like to think I'm somewhat decent at this one.
German - Enough to get around in non-English-speaking sections of Germany, as long as native speakers slow down - it's difficult for me to process what I'm hearing in German if it is at the same conversational speed as I'm used to with English, but I can speak it fine.
French - I managed to buy stamps at a post office in Paris without English, but it also involved some pointing. I can probably get my face slapped just about anywhere in France. In Quebec, however, all I can do is tell someone the time of day.
Dutch - Meh. I'd have liked to have had some practice when I was in Amsterdam and Hilversum, but they're so proud of their English abilities they want to speak English.
Afrikaans - I had a South African friend many years ago who taught me way too much of this. It's a very efficient language - no conjugating verbs, no declension. But she also taught me that it's more fun to swear in English.
Spanish - Despite the influx into this country, I have no interest in this one except listening to some music, mainly from an aesthetic standpoint. I can make my way in it crudely, though.
I can probably get my face slapped in several other languages, from Hindi to Russian to Japanese, but not much beyond obscenities I've picked up from friends and/or slang dictionaries.
