Languages worth learning...?

Alboin · Post by **Alboin** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 1:40 pm

Trinka wrote:and it's Microsoft that is behind everything. And as we know, it knows how to push the stuff to the public.

That is a doubled edge sword. They are the main developers of the language (Correct me if I'm wrong.) so if they were to close their doors, the language would probably go with it, regardless of it's open source backing.

AndrewAPrice · Post by **AndrewAPrice** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 4:47 pm

Solar wrote:This usually means you'll find the worst (inexperienced, overexited) programmers in the communities of the latest programming languages...

[sarcasm]I declare KPL is the future of programming and will replace C++.[/sarcasm]

Smilediver · Post by **Smilediver** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 12:27 pm

Alboin wrote:That is a doubled edge sword. They are the main developers of the language (Correct me if I'm wrong.) so if they were to close their doors, the language would probably go with it, regardless of it's open source backing.

Actually, as all .Net technology, C# is public domain and was standardised by ECMA and ISO. While Microsoft is the main developer of the language itself, you can freely implement it's compilers. And it's extreamly unlikely that Microsoft would drop it's support, as it's a hudge supporter of the main income sources.

Combuster · Post by **Combuster** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 2:17 pm

Trinka wrote: And it's extreamly unlikely that Microsoft would drop it's support, as it's a hudge supporter of the main income sources.

They did drop visual basic 6 and replaced it with something incompatible. The result is that pre-.net VB is now largely dead.

AndrewAPrice · Post by **AndrewAPrice** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 5:07 pm

Combuster wrote:
Trinka wrote: And it's extreamly unlikely that Microsoft would drop it's support, as it's a hudge supporter of the main income sources.
They did drop visual basic 6 and replaced it with something incompatible. The result is that pre-.net VB is now largely dead.

They did the same with the Xbox. Almost overnight they fazed out the Xbox when the introduced the Xbox 360.

Smilediver · Post by **Smilediver** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 5:43 am

Combuster wrote:
Trinka wrote: And it's extreamly unlikely that Microsoft would drop it's support, as it's a hudge supporter of the main income sources.
They did drop visual basic 6 and replaced it with something incompatible. The result is that pre-.net VB is now largely dead.

It's not like VB 6.0 is a defacto standard, main stream programming language. Microsoft deliberately dropped it to move people over new .Net technology, which is a cash cow for them. It would be a bad move to stop supporting a language, that was primaliry built for .Net, and one of the main driving forces. Besides VB isn't dead as now there's VB.Net. And AFAIK there are even tools to automatically convert from VB6 to VB.Net code.

They did the same with the Xbox. Almost overnight they fazed out the Xbox when the introduced the Xbox 360.

You're mixing two quite different things.

jakh · Post by **jakh** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 6:29 am

hm..,
For me it seems that a language which is very close to machine level and which is more human friendly is worth learning.

So it is worth learning a language like C,Assembly() and few scripting langauges
(Perl,Python,Ruby,PHP and/or Java script).

Others in between (Java,C++,C#) wan't do much. I am pretty sure Java will disappear within another 10 years of time.

Solar · Post by **Solar** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 8:35 am

jakh wrote: So it is worth learning a language like C,Assembly() and few scripting langauges
(Perl,Python,Ruby,PHP and/or Java script).

Others in between (Java,C++,C#) wan't do much.

Depends on what you want to do. If you are into hobby OS development, or website programming, yours is a good choice. If you want to write larger applications, the "in between" languages are just the ticket.

Combuster · Post by **Combuster** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 9:56 am

Trinka wrote:
Combuster wrote:
Trinka wrote: And it's extreamly unlikely that Microsoft would drop it's support, as it's a hudge supporter of the main income sources.
They did drop visual basic 6 and replaced it with something incompatible. The result is that pre-.net VB is now largely dead.
It's not like VB 6.0 is a defacto standard, main stream programming language. Microsoft deliberately dropped it to move people over new .Net technology, which is a cash cow for them. It would be a bad move to stop supporting a language, that was primaliry built for .Net, and one of the main driving forces. Besides VB isn't dead as now there's VB.Net. And AFAIK there are even tools to automatically convert from VB6 to VB.Net code.

only some ~30% of VB6 users switched to VB.NET, because it is essentially a different language. The workings of VB.net are just like java with different keywords, rather than old GWBASIC/QBASIC with extensions. Some key things that make VB5/6 interesting have been removed which causes no end of compatibility issues. For that reason nothing but the most simple programs could be converted to .NET with the converter microsoft provided.

5% sticked with VB6, the remaining 65% moved to C++/C# .NET or stopped using microsoft produce altogether. Now microsoft has ended the 10-year support period it will only be time until VB is completely abandoned.

AJ · Post by AJ » Wed Sep 19, 2007 2:20 am

I was in exactly that position - I used VB5 for ages after .NET was released. Suddenly, I found there were things I wanted to do that weren't supported in VB5, so I moved to VB.NET and eventually C# (I now do so much in C++ that I ended up preferring the C# syntax). For about 3 years now, I haven't touched VB (my version was originally released with Visual Studio 97).

Certainly VB.NET felt like a different language - I guess they just kept the name because they used similar keywords and because there is that group of developpers who probably upgrade to each new version of VB. If they had changed the name, they would have lost even more developpers.

One curious thing I have found is that people still 'look down' on VB.NET even if they are C# programmers, even though they both compile to the same IL - seems odd to me.

Cheers,
Adam

Zacariaz · Post by **Zacariaz** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 4:02 am

jakh wrote:I am pretty sure Java will disappear within another 10 years of time.

I doubt that very much, allthough it would be a thing worth celebrating.

DeletedAccount · Post by **DeletedAccount** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 11:08 pm

Python deserves Respect!!!!!
If you are new to programming I would recomment Python as your
first programming language ... It is cool .. it's elegant .it's object oriented
with a tinge of pragmatism ... I have learnt the following languages ...
C++ , C , pascal , x86 asm , C# ,Java ,Basic , Python and some scripting ..

I use python for prototyping ... eg when you have something complex
to implement ... You can easily implement it in python .. check out
the various design strategies and later implement it in a
more efficent environment ... I learnt C++ when i was very young abt when i was 13yrs old ... At that time python was not that popular ..
Had i learnt python at that point of time .. I would have been a much
productive programmer ... Shame on me!!

Also dont learn Visual Basic .. .It's crappy and treats programmer like
a little kid ...

binutils · Post by **binutils** » Sun Oct 07, 2007 4:31 am

c, graphviz/freemind(though it is not programming language), asm(GAS/YASM), blue, erlang, lisp(sbcl, mcclim(IDE), RTL :S-expression)

Dex · Post by **Dex** » Sun Oct 07, 2007 1:38 pm

Too me, if you can not code a OS in it, then its not a programing language.
Friend of mine would say i was mad learning ASM, VB is the way to go, i would point out that, what they were learning was know differant from writing a bat file and would be useless if M$ decide to change VB in a big way.
I learnt ASM, which i can still use to code for all OS, also i found it took me very little time to learn to code asm on the ARM processor.

Alboin · Post by **Alboin** » Sun Oct 07, 2007 3:58 pm

Dex wrote:Too me, if you can not code a OS in it, then its not a programing language.
Friend of mine would say i was mad learning ASM, VB is the way to go, i would point out that, what they were learning was know differant from writing a bat file and would be useless if M$ decide to change VB in a big way.
I learnt ASM, which i can still use to code for all OS, also i found it took me very little time to learn to code asm on the ARM processor.

Strangely, I would have to agree. (I don't believe I have ever agreed with you before on any topic...)

I can't really call VB, Perl, Ruby, Lisp, and most other high level languages programming languages. They're scripting languages more than anything else. (With a few exceptions.) I'm not saying that they're not as intricate as C, for instance, or are inferior, but am suggesting that they do not compile directly to machine code, and are therefore unpredictable.

However, I think it is *very* useful to learn these languages, not for common use, but for ideas, methods, and ideologies gained through them. (Albeit, scripting languages do have their place.)

OSDev.org

Languages worth learning...?

Python Deserves respect!!!