[Chester LUG] Looking to learn a language

Tue Apr 5 11:38:12 UTC 2011

If I didn't have so much invested in Perl I'd probably go Ruby. It's
nicely objected oriented and generally doesn't try to be too clever
*couch* python *couch*.

I would agree with Les, I don't think performance should be a worry with
Java now but it is massive and they abstract the hell out of everything.

I find PHP a mess but it is very powerful.

If you want Java like by more of a scripting language I've always been
meaning to look at either Scala or Judoscript. Judoscript particularly
looks interesting from a sysadmin point of view.

 Cheers,

 Dave.

On 05/04/11 10:07, Les Pritchard wrote:
> Hi Stuart,
> 
> Some interesting suggestions there. I do feel I need to stick up for
> Java here as lots of people like to criticise it (not here though I must
> add). Java is a platform (not just a language) that enables to you build
> anything from small embedded systems through desktop apps to the large
> scale enterprise web applications.
> 
> It isn't as fast as something written in C or C++, but it will still be
> faster than most of the interpreted languages out there. Plus
> compilation provides additional error checking etc. Java is strongly
> typed, which I personally prefer. I'm yet to find a reason why you may
> need weak typing - maybe it's just the way I program.
> 
> The problem with Java is that it is massive. There are libraries to do
> so much and that scares some people off. Also like C++ is takes a bit to
> get your head around it all at first, but once you get the basics and OO
> in general things like Javadoc are great.
> 
> Java is the most widely used language so as a skill it's very valuable.
> The two types of development jobs that are always out there are Java &
> PHP, so that's always a plus (please note I'm ignoring the .net jobs as
> that's normally C# and that's just really Java anyway :-) )
> 
> Like editors, everyone has their favourites and often dislikes the
> competition! I'm not saying that Java is the best for everything, but
> I've programmed in it for a long time now and it's always done the job
> really well. If I were to start from scratch I may consider going for
> C++ instead, but that would limit me slightly. Apart from that I can't
> see anything else that would be capable of what I require.
> 
> If you fancy something bleeding edge, you could always try Newspeak
> (http://bracha.org/Site/Newspeak.html), see FLOSS weekly for an
> interview with the creator by Dan.
> 
> My thoughts anyway!
> 
> Les
> 
> On 5 April 2011 08:45, Michael Crilly <mrcrilly at gmail.com
> <mailto:mrcrilly at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Perl + Catalyst or PHP + Symfony, couple with any DB back-end you want.
> 
> 
>     On 04/04/2011 22:42, Stuart Burns wrote:
>>     I knew someone would come up with some "odd" ones :)
>>
>>     TBH to my mind, it is just an exercise in seeing what I can do. My
>>     day job is all VMware and Linux infrastructure so I don't get to
>>     do any programming (well powershell for vmware automation but
>>     thats about it) I can hack perl together if I need to.
>>
>>     I can give you an example. I have what I think is a good idea for
>>     a website, but I don't currently have the skills to implement it :)
>>
>>
>>
>>     On 4 April 2011 21:35, Sebastian Arcus <shop at open-t.co.uk
>>     <mailto:shop at open-t.co.uk>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>         On 04/04/2011 08:53 PM, Richard Smedley wrote:
>>
>>             On 04/04/11 18:44, Stuart Burns wrote:
>>
>>                 I just thought I would drop an email to ask for some
>>                 advice re: programming
>>                 languages to learn. Now that I have time on my hands
>>                 (at last) I am looking
>>                 to learn  a language that can be used for both web
>>                 development as well as
>>                 locally on the PC.
>>
>>
>>             1. JavaScript.
>>                No, seriously, it is a proper language.
>>                Take a look at:
>>             http://eloquentjavascript.net/
>>                (&  you can move on to node.js afterwards :)
>>
>>
>>
>>         In that case, I suppose an option for programming local apps
>>         would be the XULrunner platform from Mozilla. It is what
>>         Firefox and Thunderbird is built on. You program the interface
>>         in XUL (which is a mark-up language, quite easy to
>>         understand), and the logic in Javascript. I found it all quite
>>         interesting, and the multiplatform aspect helps. However, few
>>         months ago when I tried it, the printing feature was a bit of
>>         a major PITA - so I started looking elsewhere. I liked most
>>         everything else though. It only has access to SQLite databases
>>         at the moment, but there was talk of implementing an ODBC
>>         driver which would allow connections to a lot of other RDBMS's
>>         though.
>>
>>         Sebastian
>>
>>
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-- 
Dr David Holden. (dh at iucr.org)