[Chester LUG] Looking to learn a language

Tue Apr 5 11:43:21 UTC 2011

I've never tried Ruby (it's visually a mess to me  - worse than complex 
Perl), but I have heard good things. I don't consider PHP to be a mess - 
I think it's down to the programmer if it's a mess; you're the one 
writing the code, so you decide if it's a mess or not. Python is lovely 
but as you imply, it does try to be overly clever about things.

I remember buying a Java book a few years back. I read a few chapters 
and developed a headache, then moved on to Python and Perl and life 
became a lot easier (basically I got things done very quickly, with ease).

Good luck with what ever you choose, Stuart :-)

On 05/04/2011 13:30, David Holden wrote:
> 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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