Time for me to learn programming languages, suggestions?

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eargosedown
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Jodwin said:

ROFL. Okay, these days you pretty much have to know Javascript if you're doing anything on the net, but it's a fucking horrible language.

Is even worse. Not to mention that PHP is, in practice, very limited in what you can do with it: It's for text manipulation.

I presume you missed the somewhat sarcastic nature of my post--but I concur, PHP is pretty tacky. Javascript is pretty core for the internet, and while it might be easier for someone new to programming to learn, it can easily develop some bad habits.

It really depends though on what you want to do. C/++ is a decent place to start for executable-based programming.

11-10-12 23:12 #

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Doom Marine
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I'm liking the idea of starting out Python and transitioning over to C at some point. Looking at this right now:

http://wiki.python.org/moin/Beginne.../NonProgrammers

11-11-12 00:21 #

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Maes
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The harsh truth, IMO? A programming language alone won't take you very far, anymore, even if you're the absolute BEST living coder for that language alone AND NOTHING MORE beyond that. The IT job market today seems to be oriented towards specific APIs, frameworks and specialization in various business-oriented systems (e.g. CRMs, ERPs, etc.) so logic dictates that the "best" language to learn is the one that "unlocks" most of them.

Let's see. Java "unlocks" servlet programming, Android development, most Web frameworks (Struts etc.), most persistence frameworks (Hibernate etc.) which seem to be pretty much the only stuff in demand at this time. "Business computing", if you wish. If you choose to go that domain, you should probably ALSO learn at least one of the other "big" web languages: JavaScript, PHP, and maybe a bit of PERL, you never know.

C# comes as a far second, but it effectively means working exclusively with/on Microsoft stuff. This depends on your target job market, so you'd better check on that. Some countries seem to be Java/JavaScript/LAMP-dominated (most of them), while in others there are Sharepoint niches where you might squeeze in. A typical job ad requesting AT LEAST 10 different qualifications is more than enlightening.

C/C++ today seem relegated to system/game programming, so unless you truly want to spearhead into that domain, I'd say don't bother: you'll be pwned on the job market by a 1000 LAMP kiddies. Only exception where they might be helpful: as a stepping stone for Objective-C, which cn mean only one thing: OSX and/or iPhone development. But only if you're willing to go down that dark path.

Stuff like FORTRAN and MATLAB seem only useful in academia or relegated to some research positions (e.g. weather models, neural network modeling etc.) and are but a slim minority in the job market, with almost zero job prospects.

11-11-12 01:46 #

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Doom Marine
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I should've made myself more clear about future prospects with coding. I'm not planning my way towards any IT related-career in the future. I'm currently a School of Medicine research intern, and I'm interested in creating a program that can give me a readout of how closely a given genetic sequence resemble an existing one in the database.

Of course there are such programs that exists already, but I'd like to explore programming as a hobby, kinda like how I first started out mapping as a hobby. My short-term goal is to play around with the programming languages and see where it takes me... who knows, you might even see another Doom source port many years down the road.

11-11-12 02:19 #

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exp(x)

Posts: 2457
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Pick up a book on algorithms. It doesn't matter what language you use.

11-11-12 03:25 #

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Doom Marine
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I decided that I'm too lazy to learn Python, so I'll just move directly into C#.

http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/98/myfirstprogram.jpg

Last edited by Doom Marine on 11-11-12 at 06:19

11-11-12 06:12 #

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hex11
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Posts: 1991
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Is the learning curve that different between those two? (if it is, I'm surprised)

11-11-12 06:38 #

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Maes
I like big butts!

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At least with C# you'll get a solid stepping stone/affinity for other curly-bracket languages like Java, C and C++ (you could consider C# to be Microsoft's half-breed C++/Java, pretty much).

Python currently occupies a niche as a "didactical" programming language, a niche once occupied by BASIC. That should tell you something about how far it can take you.

11-11-12 12:57 #

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hex11
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Posts: 1991
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Yeah, but BASIC was fun. :-)

You didn't worry about libraries or APIs, frameworks, none of that bullshit. Just write some code and run. Some of them even had custom graphics/sound functions for that hardware (like the ones that shipped with Amstrad CPC, or Amiga Workbench 1.x), and you could always hack the machine code via PEEK/POKE. Hell, you were banging on the hardware at that point. That's something that has been lost, unless you're into embedded stuff, or OS drivers, etc.

11-11-12 13:56 #

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Fisk
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hex11 said:
Yeah, but BASIC was fun. :-)

You didn't worry about libraries or APIs, frameworks, none of that bullshit. Just write some code and run. Some of them even had custom graphics/sound functions for that hardware (like the ones that shipped with Amstrad CPC, or Amiga Workbench 1.x), and you could always hack the machine code via PEEK/POKE. Hell, you were banging on the hardware at that point. That's something that has been lost, unless you're into embedded stuff, or OS drivers, etc.

This is of course coming from the man who hasn't owned a mouse in ~15 years and browses Doomworld on a 486 through a text-only web browser

11-11-12 14:20 #

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Jodwin
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hex11 said:
Yeah, but BASIC was fun. :-)

You didn't worry about libraries or APIs, frameworks, none of that bullshit. Just write some code and run. Some of them even had custom graphics/sound functions for that hardware (like the ones that shipped with Amstrad CPC, or Amiga Workbench 1.x), and you could always hack the machine code via PEEK/POKE. Hell, you were banging on the hardware at that point. That's something that has been lost, unless you're into embedded stuff, or OS drivers, etc.

There's a very good reason why that stuff has been lost from most modern software development. :P

11-11-12 15:11 #

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exp(x)

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hex11 said:
That's something that has been lost, unless you're into embedded stuff, or OS drivers, etc.

Which is done in C with maybe some assembly.

11-11-12 17:33 #

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Stygian
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hex11 said:
Yeah, but BASIC was fun. :-)

You didn't worry about libraries or APIs, frameworks, none of that bullshit. Just write some code and run. Some of them even had custom graphics/sound functions for that hardware (like the ones that shipped with Amstrad CPC, or Amiga Workbench 1.x), and you could always hack the machine code via PEEK/POKE. Hell, you were banging on the hardware at that point. That's something that has been lost, unless you're into embedded stuff, or OS drivers, etc.

A while back, I learned 650x assembly and BASIC just so I could tinker with my C64.

I didn't get very far before I realized how time-consuming and impractical it was to do something like that, but I still enjoyed it. :P

11-11-12 18:14 #

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chungy
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C# is a fairly steep learning curve for a beginner and a poor choice for the same reasons Java would be -- it forces some syntactical choices on programs that a beginner would have very little (if any) understanding of. Python (and probably Ruby too) lets you take away all that cruft and use raw statements in the beginning, then you can begin to use functions and classes/objects and modules/packages in the future as you learn them through a natural path.

11-12-12 03:51 #

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hex11
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Stygian said:

A while back, I learned 650x assembly and BASIC just so I could tinker with my C64.

I didn't get very far before I realized how time-consuming and impractical it was to do something like that, but I still enjoyed it. :P

It doesn't have to be BASIC, any language that lets you hit the hardware to some degree will do the trick. For example, homebrew dev on Nintendo DS is done mostly in C, with some bits in ARM assembly.

Oh, and John Carmack understands (no surprise, since he grew up hacking on 8-bit machines):
http://web.archive.org/web/20090131.../index.php?id=7

11-12-12 07:06 #

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Jodwin
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chungy said:
C# is a fairly steep learning curve for a beginner and a poor choice for the same reasons Java would be -- it forces some syntactical choices on programs that a beginner would have very little (if any) understanding of. Python (and probably Ruby too) lets you take away all that cruft and use raw statements in the beginning, then you can begin to use functions and classes/objects and modules/packages in the future as you learn them through a natural path.

This is very much a personal thing though: Which is easier to understand, "print" or "console.writeline"? I'd say that the latter is much more explicit, and in that way easier for a beginner. It could be more difficult if you're one of those people that get stuck on every little detail from the very beginning, but if you aren't...

Python is a good beginner's language because you can just jump into it and start writing code while the language takes care of good practices for you. But it also has some features that are bad in the long run, namely dynamic variables. I guess some new coders would whine about static typing being too restrictive, but it's that same restriction what saves them a metric ton of eventual errors that'll be difficult to track down - especially with their experience (or, rather, lack of).

11-12-12 10:08 #

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Gez
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"Print" is an antiquated leftover from the era before screens were invented; and computer programs produced their output on the teleprinter. (Another funny leftover from this is how the "linebreak" symbol is divided into two characters, Carriage Return and Line Feed, so that it would give enough time for the printer to move its arm all the way back to the left. That's why DOS-format text uses CRLF, while Unix format kept only CR and Mac format kept only LF.)

Kinda like the "save" icon is still a 3� floppy disk. When was the last time you used one, 10 years ago maybe?

11-12-12 10:24 #

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hex11
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console.writeline() may sound more logical (that's debatable) than just print(), but who wants to go through the trouble of writing that much over and over again all the time? You're going to be using that a hell of a lot, not just to output stuff to console, but files, sockets, etc. so why not keep it short and sweet, to make programming more efficient? Heck, some BASIC dialects even provided a shorthand way so say print:
? "Hello world"

It really just takes 30 seconds for a n00b to learn what "print" means. Trying to enforce verbosity carries the built-in assumption that humans are incapable of learning basic syntax for a language they're going to be using for many years to come, and thus should be punished during all those years by having to write lots of extra characters. Whoever invented these languages is a real sadistic bastard, for sure!

11-12-12 11:20 #

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Gez
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That's why you end up doing something like #define log console.writeline and then you can type log("hello world");

Dunno if there are #defines in C#, though. All I know about C# is that it's Microsoft's attempt at making a "better" Java, that is to say, a Java that only works on Microsoft platforms.

11-12-12 11:55 #

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fraggle
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Gez said:
That's why you end up doing something like #define log console.writeline and then you can type log("hello world");

Dunno if there are #defines in C#, though.

There are - but they aren't as powerful as they are in C. It isn't possible to do what you describe for example. #defines are pretty much limited to conditional compilation.

All I know about C# is that it's Microsoft's attempt at making a "better" Java, that is to say, a Java that only works on Microsoft platforms.

It's more like "making a version of Java that the control" - Microsoft used to develop Java development tools until they got sued by Sun. I can't say I really blame them for going down the C# route - they obviously realised that the Java approach is useful but that it's dangerous for them to invest in a technology owned by one of their competitors.

chungy said:
C# is a fairly steep learning curve for a beginner and a poor choice for the same reasons Java would be -- it forces some syntactical choices on programs that a beginner would have very little (if any) understanding of. Python (and probably Ruby too) lets you take away all that cruft and use raw statements in the beginning, then you can begin to use functions and classes/objects and modules/packages in the future as you learn them through a natural path.

I don't think it's that bad to be honest. I agree that Python would be a better choice of first language but you can do a lot worse than C#.

11-12-12 13:09 #

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hex11
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All n00bs should be locked in a room with a text-only OpenBSD machine*, a copy of Learning Perl, and daily pizza/beer rations until they can crank out a working web server in pure Perl (no CPAN modules allowed).

* base system without the X11 stuff, and no packages

11-12-12 16:55 #

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boris
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If you're programming in C# you're probably using some incarnation of Visual Studio. With that you have Intellisense.

11-12-12 17:57 #

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Jodwin
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hex11 said:
console.writeline() may sound more logical (that's debatable) than just print(), but who wants to go through the trouble of writing that much over and over again all the time?

But you don't. Modern IDEs' intellisense keeps track of what you write, and if "console" is the most common word starting with 'c' that you write, and "writeline" is the most common function you use for console, you can just press c,enter,w,enter. :P

Also, Console.WriteLine() writes to the console, not to sockets or files or streams. There's

code:MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
ms.Write(...);

and others for that. As for verbosity, the point is in writing self-documenting code. There's a very good reason why "int fuckyou = something" or "int a = something" is frowned up, opposed to "int carMass = something".

11-12-12 17:59 #

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hex11
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Yeah, vim got that keyword/var/whatever completion stuff now too. It also has a built-in spellchecker. It's slowly turning into Emacs. :-o

But I still don't like the extra verbosity, since it doesn't really clarify things IMO. I mean, if your default print() goes to stdout, then it's pretty obvious what's happening when you write something like this:

open(LOG, '>', $logfile) or die;
print LOG $logmsg;

Variable names is another story, the coder controls all that. Heck, even Perl gives you the option of using the English module, which defines alternative names like $INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR instead of $/, even though the shorthand versions are mnemonic and easy to remember after using them a bit.

11-12-12 20:29 #

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Aliotroph?
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Jodwin said:

But you don't. Modern IDEs' intellisense keeps track of what you write, and if "console" is the most common word starting with 'c' that you write, and "writeline" is the most common function you use for console, you can just press c,enter,w,enter. :P

That doesn't happen for me. The first 'C' word I get is const, so I have to type "conso." The first 'W' I get within Console is "WindowHeight." The end result is something like "conso"+TAB+".wr"+TAB+DOOWN+TAB.

11-12-12 21:29 #

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