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calhoun
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 91
Location: Point Pleasant, NJ
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 Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2003 5:58 pm Post subject: Which language to learn? |
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I'm not sure if this goes in this section but here goes.
I'm very interested in doing some development myself and would like to know which language to learn (ie. python, perl, c++, ...).
Is there any advantage to one over the other? (speed, compatability, portability)
Does one work better with Gentoo?
Will the programming language depend on what app is written?
Any advice and/or helpful websites would be appreciated.
Colin |
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Zoltan
Guru
Joined: 27 Aug 2003
Posts: 394
Location: Moscow, Russia
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| Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2003 6:45 pm Post subject: Re: Which language to learn? |
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| calhoun wrote: | | I'm not sure if this goes in this section but here goes. |
It is the right section.
| calhoun wrote: | | I'm very interested in doing some development myself and would like to know which language to learn (ie. python, perl, c++, ...). |
This very much depends on the kind of development you are going to do. If you are going to hack around with linux open-source programs, C and sometimes C++ is highly recommended. If you wish web development, php, perl or zope python are the languages. Personally right now for living I write software in Java (though the list of programming languages I know and used to write in is quite long).
| calhoun wrote: | | Is there any advantage to one over the other? (speed, compatability, portability) |
This by far depends on what kind of programs you want to write. If you use Perl, Python or Java, there are inherently interpreting kind of languages (one can argue about Java, but it is an interpreter of sorts). They are supposed to work on many possible platforms, but give away the speed.
In web development interpreting languages were chosend for an important reason of being secure, that is if the perl/java/pythong implementation is secure, all other scripts and servlets written on such platform are secure. This cannot be said about C/C++ plugins since they can always contain buffer overflows and mistakes like that.
For general program development the most effecient language was always assembler, the language of writing directly the CPU commands. Since it is not really convenient C has been invented, very close to actually being translated into assembler code, this language is very human readable (that's why a lot of linux programs including kernel itself are mostly written in C... effeciency and comprehenciveness). C++ is an object oriented superset of C which some people consider as bloated and by far very ineffecient (yes I am biased).
| calhoun wrote: | | Does one work better with Gentoo? |
I am unsure about this question. Better as of "faster"? Or maybe "more secure" in terms of security vulnerabilities if you mean web sites development. Gentoo offers by far very wide field or choices. From using the "stable" version or the bleeding age of the latest development. Gentoo allows you to optimize package compilation to the last very possible compiler option, possibly loosing in stability, possibly gaining in speed.
Generally your question is too wide to answer just like the next question that I don't really understand.
| calhoun wrote: | Will the programming language depend on what app is written?
Any advice and/or helpful websites would be appreciated.
Colin |
java.sun.com though I've said before, I am biased.
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rhat
n00b
Joined: 28 Oct 2003
Posts: 64
Location: Pittsburgh
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| Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2003 2:59 pm Post subject: Programming Languages |
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It just so happens that there was a recent discussion on this: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=80487&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=
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Unne
l33t
Joined: 21 Jul 2003
Posts: 616
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| Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2003 4:46 pm Post subject: Re: Which language to learn? |
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If you know C++, you can pick up other languages fairly quickly, so it's pretty good to learn, if you really want to understand what's going on when you write and run programs. If you just want to dive in and have some fun, I'd recommend Perl or *shudder* Python, but Perl will spoil you if you ever try to use C++ later. 
| Zoltan wrote: | | C++ is an object oriented superset of C which some people consider as bloated and by far very ineffecient (yes I am biased). |
Bloated and inefficient? Maybe 10 years ago, but not by today's standards. Unless you're writing an operating system, I see no need to go down to the level of C. Maybe 40 years ago a few saved CPU cycles and a few saved bytes of memory still mattered, but today the time it takes a person to write code is much more important and many many orders of magnitude greater than the time it takes a CPU to run it. High-level languages = good. Programming in C feels like building a log cabin out of toothpicks. |
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MADcow
l33t
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Posts: 742
Location: RIT (Henrietta, New York, United States)
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| Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2003 5:16 pm Post subject: |
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for a first language, Perl would probably work well
(buy O'reilley's "Learning Perl" (aka, the llama))
perl is portable, flexible, and very fast to write.
it's fairly difficult to learn though, so i would buy and read that book if i were you
C/C++ as a second language
c/cpp is better for large projects, and cpp is very object oriented. you can also embed ASM code in c/cpp, which is useful. you can also do much more low level stuff (even without the ASM).
i wouldn't reccomend java, but most colleges will want you to do java for their compsci course...
there are free and open compilers for all of these languages.
i would reccomend:
gcc/g++ for c/c++
perl (larry wall's perl interpreter... the only good one)
and blackdown JDK for java.
if you can't afford expensive books, i can point you to good tutorials/PDF versions of books for these languages; contact me on AIM. |
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calhoun
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 91
Location: Point Pleasant, NJ
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| Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2003 5:54 pm Post subject: |
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| Thanks everyone for the replies. This will be very helpful. |
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ian!
Bodhisattva
Joined: 25 Feb 2003
Posts: 3829
Location: Essen, Germany
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| Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2003 10:48 pm Post subject: |
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Moved to 'Duplicate Threads'.
 https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=80487
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