[Semi-OT] What programming language should I learn?
- Thread starter Golan2072
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Malenfant
Guest
I don't know why people like dissing Fortran. It's not incomprehensible at all, it's not particularly complicated, it's just a simple linear programming language of old. Sure, it's not particularly elegant, but it does what it's designed to do. Just because it's an old language doesn't invalidate its existence, use, or validity today. I couldn't care less if people programmed in Forth or Cobol or Machine Code, so long as it did the job.
It's like slagging off a 30-year old car that's still working. Sure, it's old and out of date, but it's still working.
It's like slagging off a 30-year old car that's still working. Sure, it's old and out of date, but it's still working.
Fortran does what it was designed to (scientific formulas and such) and well. It'd take more lines of code to do the same things in other languages and it's geared towards certain things under the hood. I know Fortran, though I've not used it in years. Different way of thinking in some cases (it's not as different as say LISP) but pretty cool to learn.
You know, I think we may have a possible bridge of understanding* here. Replace the word Fortran with Classic Traveller…
* not necessarily agreement, but understanding or acknowledgement between sides; I’m aiming for forum harmony here - if needed I can take this to PM
I wasn't trashing Fortran, just the concept of using it for business instead of Cobol. Needless to say, the prof that taught it, wrote it, and she had her PhD in Engineering!
Unfortunately, today it seems that colleges teach that only C++ can be considered a "real, viable" language. In fact, there are more languages today then 30 years ago.BTW, check this site out
99 Bottles of Beer
M
Malenfant
Guest
I know, I'm just a bit sensitive to it because all my programmer friends rib me for sticking with Fortran 
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.FlightCommanderSolitude
SOC-13
HyperCard was so cool! I may have built a Traveller stack with it, but I can't remember ...
Modern programmers are one-trick ponys. If they were interested in programming as an art they'd do themself a favour and take a long hard look at Fortran (and Lisp, and...) . I use F90 like some guys use perl...Originally posted by Malenfant:
I know, I'm just a bit sensitive to it because all my programmer friends rib me for sticking with Fortran
Great site, yes!Originally posted by BillDowns:
BTW, check this site out
99 Bottles of Beer
BTW I have noticed the same trend. I wonder if MaineCoon above is yonger than myself...
The misconception that C/C++ is the only "general purpose language" is very odd, and very hard to kill. Apparantly.
Be careful what judgements you make of others, and please don't try to put words into my mouth.
I also mentioned Java as a language. He wanted to know what was a good language to learn, and I suggested. I left VB off because I do not use it so cannot recommend it, although it does have some things that I can recommend AGAINST it for certain reasons that could be important to someone (cross platform support, for example).
Here is how I judge a language:
1. Cross platform support. .NET is not fully cross platform, for example. MONO is a 3rd party attempt at such.
2. Availability of resources and educational material. Many languages have very tight, semi-closed communities, and finding specific answers to questions can often take a lot of time. Some might prefer this, as it gathers everything together in one area, but it is also easy for voices to be squashed and topics to be ignored if it is unimportant to the leaders of that community. C/C++ and Java, on the other hand, have a very broad support base with many forums. The printed educational material available is quite diverse. Some might see this as spreading out the information too thinly, but the community is so more spread out because there are far more people with an interest in that language.
3. General viability in the marketplace. The number of job opportunities for LISP programmers are few and far between. Granted this is not important to most. If someone wants to learn the language for furthering their career choices, however, it can be important.
4. Ease of use for the end user of the product. Unimportant if you only want to write things for yourself, but even then, you're still the end user. Some languages don't produce standalone executables, or the executables still require effort on the part of the user to work right.
5. Availability of free/low cost development environments. Java is quite easy to get set up and going, and it's totally free. VB is as well. The learning curve is in the language, and does not start with setting up an environment. Most new users will get confused trying to get a Perl setup working on non-UNIX boxen.
6. Ability to easily interface with the core OS libraries.
Myself, I use whatever language is best suited to the task at hand that I am already set up to use.
Last I looked, you could not produce stand-alone Perl or Lisp Win32 executables that access network resources. Granted, that may have changed, but I can do almost anything I need in Java just as easily as Perl. On the other hand, I'd be hard pressed to write a game like, say, Puzzle Pirates, in Perl. (PP is written in Java)
Be careful what judgements you make of others, and please don't try to put words into my mouth.
</font>[/QUOTE]Sorry. I should have put a smily there, and more clearly marked that my ideas about C/C++ wasn't about you in particular. Those I thought about in particular aren't even here, and are quite a bit more obnoxious about their religion.
Now I see that you did mention Java. I read a bit too fast, I gather.
I don't know VB either, but it should probably go on the list of things to learn for someone that wants to work in the Microsoft arena, considering how dominant it is there.
I think we all here seems to have Fortran, in some dialect or other, in common so let's recommend it to the OP since it's common!
mbrinkhues
SOC-14 1K
From experience:
VB.NET is a nice, rugged programing language. All VB-Dialects since V4 have more in common with Pascal or Delphi and VB.NET goes Object Oriented in every aspect. It even "borrows" stuff like the package concept. The Development system actually lacks some basic stuff (i.e not auto-generation of get/set methods) but is otherwise useable.
C# is pushed by MS but not taken by the community. VB-Programmers start with the (false) believe that VB6 skills translate to VB.NET and by the time they realise they could just as well learn C#, the already know VB.NET.
JAVA is nice but there is writing a program and writing a good program in that language. It's easy to do the first but doing the later has a steep learning curve in the GUI area.
VB.NET is a nice, rugged programing language. All VB-Dialects since V4 have more in common with Pascal or Delphi and VB.NET goes Object Oriented in every aspect. It even "borrows" stuff like the package concept. The Development system actually lacks some basic stuff (i.e not auto-generation of get/set methods) but is otherwise useable.
C# is pushed by MS but not taken by the community. VB-Programmers start with the (false) believe that VB6 skills translate to VB.NET and by the time they realise they could just as well learn C#, the already know VB.NET.
JAVA is nice but there is writing a program and writing a good program in that language. It's easy to do the first but doing the later has a steep learning curve in the GUI area.
NetBeans 5.0 IDE + SWING makes it a lot easier; I wasn't much of a Java fan before, having done a few projects with it in the past. I recently went back to take a look, and was able to quickly throw together a text editor with SWING in the NetBeans 5.0 IDE using the included Matisse GUI builder. There's another high quality GUI library and IDE, Eclipse, that has IBM's backing.
