[Chester LUG] Looking to learn a language
Les Pritchard
les.pritchard at gmail.com
Tue Apr 5 12:30:08 UTC 2011
Perhaps there's an opportunity for us to have a meet where we give a brief
overview of our chosen language. Would be a really good chance to discuss
the differences and introduce non-developers to the basic concepts.
I know I'd be interested in seeing some of the languages mentioned in that
sort of environment.
Anyone else interested?
Les
On 5 April 2011 12:35, Michael Crilly <mrcrilly at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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> <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> <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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