[ale] starting programming

[Wandered Inn]

Benjamin Scherrey wrote:
> 
> Tri,
> 
>     You've stumbled on a religious issue here so watch out that you don't
> get splashed by any flames! I've looked at people make recommendations that

You're so right. :)

<snip>

>     First, I recommend that you don't learn C.... or, rather, not plain C.
> Unfortunately, the K&R book (which was recommended earlier), while clearly
> the bible for a vast number of extremely successful C programmers (I like to
> include myself in there...), is obsolete for people who want to learn a
> language for the first time. K&R C precedes ANSI C which precedes C++. C++
> is type safe (meaning the compiler will catch more errors for you before
> your program mysteriously dies- this is a good thing) and is able to more
> easily model abstractions that resemble their real-world counterparts.

I disagree.  Just an opinion.  Development in C verses C++ (generally)
would be two totally different pardigms.  OO verses structured
programming.  It may well be my problem, but I found C much easier to
learn then C++.  It may be that I was stumbling over the pardigm issue
myself, since I learned C first.  There are later versions  of K&R that
are perfectly suited to coding C.

<SNIP>

>     Interpreted languages (sometimes aka as scripting languages) assume a
> basic set of features in your environment. In other words, the language
> imposes a context which you view your problem from. As long as the context
> can efficiently model your problem then you'll likely be able to develop
> your solution with that language. Recently, languages like Perl and Java
> (Java more so than Perl, IMHO) have greatly expanded the expressive
> potential of the environments in which interpreted languages operate.

Neither Java nor Perl are interpreted languages, but this is a
completely different issue.  As I'm sure you know, Java is compiled to a
byte code, so it's not truly interpreted.  Regarding Perl, check out:

ftp://ftp.ccs.neu.edu/net/mirrors/ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/doc/manual/html/pod/perlfaq1.html#Is_it_a_Perl_program_or_a_Perl_s

Which is quite a long url, and you'll need to combine the two strings to
get there, but gives you a better definition of whether Perl is
interpreted or compiled.  Apparently neither. :)

<SNIP>

>     So... my recommendation is learning C++ and/or Java. 

<SNIP>

I would suggest that Java may well be a reasonable compromise between C
and C++.  Again, they are different paradigms, therefore there's an
issue of how well you understand the differences.  I would suspect it
would be easier for a non-programmer to learn Java then it would be for
a C programmer to learn Java as they will have to de-program their own
view of software development.

--
Until later: Geoffrey		esoteric at denali.atlnet.com

You mean you paid MONEY for Service Pack '98????