[Chester LUG] Looking to learn a language
Sebastian Arcus
shop at open-t.co.uk
Tue Apr 5 12:41:47 UTC 2011
I'd certainly be interested meet/debate. Programming languages are one
of those cool things, where you are guaranteed to have eloquent debates
for hours and hours from all sides :D - as long as things don't get too
heated up.
I feel I must pitch some support for the good old C. I've been too
scared of it when in Uni - but finally managed enough courage to get
into it later on. I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, I always
found Java really elegant, but when it comes to real desktop apps, the
result never looks that elegant - only the code.
However, I found C, somehow, really logical. It's hard to describe.
Also, there are libraries to access and do almost everything in C - on
pretty much any platform - including GUI toolkits for all major OS's.
Also, I think it is telling the fact that it has been around for such a
long time and it is still striving in its way.
Another bonus is that, for the first time, when programmers write on
forums about some Linux software or library "Just go and have a look at
the header files and you will figure it out" - I finally knew what they
meant. The ability to figure out a piece of software with basic
documentation, I felt, was quite something.
But then again, it's all very personal - and on top of that, although
you can write CGI scripts in C - it's not exactly the ideal way of doing
web programming.
I'll go away now, before I stoke this fire too much :-)
Sebastian
On 04/05/2011 01:22 PM, Les Pritchard wrote:
> 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
> <mailto: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>
>>> <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>
>>>> <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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Chester mailing list
>>>> Chester at mailman.lug.org.uk <mailto:Chester at mailman.lug.org.uk> <mailto:Chester at mailman.lug.org.uk>
>>>> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/chester
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Chester mailing list
>>>> Chester at mailman.lug.org.uk <mailto:Chester at mailman.lug.org.uk> <mailto:Chester at mailman.lug.org.uk>
>>>> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/chester
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Chester mailing list
>>> Chester at mailman.lug.org.uk <mailto:Chester at mailman.lug.org.uk> <mailto:Chester at mailman.lug.org.uk>
>>> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/chester
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Chester mailing list
>>> Chester at mailman.lug.org.uk <mailto:Chester at mailman.lug.org.uk>
>>> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/chester
>
> _______________________________________________
> Chester mailing list
> Chester at mailman.lug.org.uk <mailto:Chester at mailman.lug.org.uk>
> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/chester
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Chester mailing list
> Chester at mailman.lug.org.uk
> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/chester
More information about the Chester
mailing list