[Sussex] Linux IDE's

[Thomas Adam]

On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 08:35:25PM +0100, Geoffrey Teale wrote:
> Java is much closer to C#. It looks a little like C++, sharing a
> C-style syntax, but really it's not that close in actual usage.

Other way around, please.  :) C# is _very_ much like Java.  Microsoft,
yet again capitalising off of existing tools....

> You could probably learn some basic C++ is _less_ time that Java
> because Java relies so much on it's environment (the toolset and
> packages really define the language in Java's case). 

Ummm... perhaps.  But you have to remember that C++ is a hybrid language
in many respects.  It's just an extension of C with the OO part added on
for good measure.  With Java, it's OO in the sense that you can only
work in that way.

> The difference with C++ is that you could learn a lot, a large books
> worth and then look at some real code and not understand a word. Not
> because the code was obfusticated but because it was written in a very
> different style.

But that's just semantics at the end of the day -- programming isn't
about constructs and syntax, it's about principles.  If you know how a
loop works, or what object interaction is, collaboration, inheritence,
etc, etc, then all that remains is to pick out the syntax and run... Now
I realise that within whatever language you happen to do that in,
there'll be idiosyncrases in the way they're done, but the principle is
very much the same.

> Agreed, but from a sanity point of view learning Python / C# / Java /
> Smalltalk / Scheme / a.n.other is likely to be more rewarding to the
> novice than C++, not least because they all deal with some of the more
> complex issues (like memory management) for you.

Maybe, but you're still looking at that from a viewpoint many people new
to programing won't have.  Yes, Java use GC to handle all the memory
crap, but there's a high overhead in doing so.

> How many people give up on their first segfault?

Not me.  But a segfault is either the result of poor memory management,
or bad coding... I wonder which is more prominent... :P

-- Thomas Adam

--  
"One of us is a cigar stand, and one of us is a lovely blue incandescent
guillotine" -- Stephen Malkmus, "Type Slowly" from "Brighten The Corners"