Return to “Everything & Anything”

Post

Re: What is your favourite programming language and why?

#16
I've used Java most of my life as I found it easy to start out with (a lot of low level stuff is automated, and not to forget, VMs do optimize at runtime nowadays). It still works well, especially in complex requirements I found it to be my language of choice.

For web projects, obviously it's almost impossible to avoid using JavaScript. I find myself in conflict over the latter. While I do like the flexibility of a weakly typed language at the same time I hate it. Sometimes it can make life so much easier and then it again it starts causing misery.

One thing, however, that I really miss with Java are Closures, would make my life so much easier. How many times have I implemented interfaces in dummy or anonymous classes just to get business logic into the right spot for a listener or something similar...
You cannot not communicate.
Paul Watzlawick - 1st Axiom
Post

Re: What is your favourite programming language and why?

#17
it's awesome how I don't have a clue of what you're talking about. :D

On my life's masterplan i've now written to start learning C within the year. Leading up to that will be the preparing. For instance, trying an everyman schedule, getting info on books or courses, etc.
Lastly, I notice I learn a lot better when I have a project to apply it to. So I'll be thinking of stuff to build using the things I learn.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Post

Re: What is your favourite programming language and why?

#18
I have recently become a big fan of Go, an open language coming out of Google. It has some very clever people working on it, like Rob "Unix and UTF-8" Pike and Ken "Unix and B, the predecessor of C" Thompson. I've been using it on my master's project and a bit at work, and its starting to edge out my previous love: Python.

I could go on for a while about the cool things it has. Statically verified duck typing. Very straightforward concurrency with absurdly lightweight "goroutines" (a function executing concurrently with other goroutines in the same address space...lightweight and multiplexed onto multiple OS threads by a runtime) of which there can be hundreds of thousands. Language-supported parallelism. Garbage collection with a great amount of control. Implicit interface satisfaction. Fast compilation due to its module import scheme. Left-to-right argument declarations, instead of C's unfortunate spiral declarations. Type inference. First-class closures. Multiple-value returns. Built-in slices and maps. Well-documented libraries. A foreign function interface to C with cgo (builtin) and C++ with SWIG. Perhaps most handy for me: reasonable errors and stack dumps, and it plays nicely with gdb. :)

It's not perfect, of course. It's a young language, having just recently hit 1.0.3, so some of its external libraries are immature. The runtime for coordinating parallel tasks is slated to be improved soon, though honestly it's working well enough for all my work as is. Some people are annoyed by its use of error values instead of exception handling, but I'm in the camp that finds exceptions usually bubbling all the way up the stack to crash the program anyway. I buy their argument that with error values it's clear when you're explicitly ignoring a potential error, and that makes for more robust software.

I recommend people check it out! It's got an online code runner in a sandbox you can try over here, and it gives you a nice little tour. Be advised the tour is geared toward software nerds, though.
Post

Re: What is your favourite programming language and why?

#19
Well - I have settled with C♯ as my "language of choice" and I use it for 99% of what I do. If I had a time-machine and could go back 10 years and speak to my past self, I'd tell him to focus on learning python instead of C♯ because it seems like a "nicer" language. At the stage I'm at I have invested a lot of time learning the frameworks/toolsets/practices for C♯ that it's really too late to switch to another language without a massive reinvestment of time.

Why C♯? Statically typed, single inheritance, fully OO, managed GC, sane handling of reference/value types, cross-platform (with mono), some nice syntactic constructs (such as LINQ and extension methods) and great tool/framework support. I routinely use:
  • NHibernate & Fluent NHibernate (although I hear NHibernate's "mapping by code" is maturing enough to make FNH obsolete)
  • Moq
  • NUnit
  • I'm also looking into beginning using a DI framework as of my next project. Perhaps autofac, maybe Castle.Windsor or Ninject. Not decided which yet.
My least favoured language is VBScript with PHP a close second.
Nobody suspects a Toreador …
Post

Re: What is your favourite programming language and why?

#20
ToreadorVampire wrote: I routinely use:
  • NHibernate & Fluent NHibernate (although I hear NHibernate's "mapping by code" is maturing enough to make FNH obsolete)
  • Moq
  • NUnit
  • I'm also looking into beginning using a DI framework as of my next project. Perhaps autofac, maybe Castle.Windsor or Ninject. Not decided which yet.
My least favoured language is VBScript with PHP a close second.
I've used Castle's ActiveRecord with NHibernate, and found it excellent for my purposes. The best ORM/mapping I've used so far, though I've not tried FluentNH. While doing so I played with Windsor and decided it looked potentially very useful, earmarking it for later, but I've not yet needed any IoC. It has the reputation of being slow but flexible.

Logically, I should hate PHP, but I find I keep using it! Partly because I have to, as LAMP is so common, but also because it is a quick, easy solution for simple requirements that can be forgotten afterwards. I'm weak...
Post

Re: What is your favourite programming language and why?

#21
Katorone wrote:it's awesome how I don't have a clue of what you're talking about. :D

On my life's masterplan i've now written to start learning C within the year. Leading up to that will be the preparing. For instance, trying an everyman schedule, getting info on books or courses, etc.
Lastly, I notice I learn a lot better when I have a project to apply it to. So I'll be thinking of stuff to build using the things I learn.
Learning with a real project works for best me as well ...
But you should maybe reconsider starting to learn programming with C, because C is pretty low level. It depends what you want to do with it ... if you want to start with small Games, then it's much better to start with a dynamic script-language like Javascript or Actionscript.
There are hundreds of tutorials all over the web, and with js you don't even have to install something - you can start programming right in the Browser ...

Oh and to the main topic:
I agree to my foreposters, C is good if you need power, but power is dangerous ...
Java is Ok for many ordinary things, but not more, I never loved it and never will :p
Some prof of mine said it was originally designed for microwaves ... which I don't know to be true, but it would fit :p

PHP is imo the worst language I was ever forced to work with, I truly hate it, but unfortuanetly sometimes you can't avoid it on the web - luckily Node.js is gaining support :D


For easy candy graphical stuff and Animations ... Actionscript in combination with the Adobe-Tools is still unbeaten.
The language is very well designed for its purpose ... but Javascript and HTML5 are closing up, and - in some areas very important - free of the dictatorship of one company, so I switched to Javascript!
Unfortunately, Javascript (and AS) has some heavy downsides:
0.1*0.2 = 0.020000000000000004
.... and something like this just shouldn't happen!!!
Even though it's not relevant in most cases, but still :evil:
Post

Re: What is your favourite programming language and why?

#22
I'll probably create something that helps me with my shop related tasks.

For instance, calculating product prices, figuring out how much we've sold and filtering products that aren't selling well.


Learning C will have to wait though. My shop really needs a website, and I can't find a webdesigner that fits within my budget. So, I'll have to learn some css and a server side scripting language and do it myself. :)
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Post

Re: What is your favourite programming language and why?

#23
Katorone wrote:For instance, calculating product prices, figuring out how much we've sold and filtering products that aren't selling well.
(...)So, I'll have to learn some css and a server side scripting language and do it myself. :)
Nothing better for this task like SQL or being more specific mySQL.
But there are like 100000 free shop systems out there ready for ze install!
What are you looking for in general?
Also: what are you SELLING?
Post

Re: What is your favourite programming language and why?

#24
kone wrote:Nothing better for this task like SQL or being more specific mySQL.
But there are like 100000 free shop systems out there ready for ze install!
What are you looking for in general?
Also: what are you SELLING?
I have a basic knowledge of php & mysql, css and html. But recently I've been trying out CMS systems like Joomla... I like joomla, but it doesn't sit entirely right with me.

Since 5 months my girlfriend and I run a shop selling 200+ products. Nuts, dried fruits, edible seeds, candied products, chocolate and nougat. We have a counter of 9m long filled with inox trays containing our different products. People can ask any amounts in any mix they like.

At the moment we're looking for a static-like webpage. (products can be added through a backend) so our customers can check our various info about our products. (where they come from, their caloric values, ingredients, recipes...)
When we get a feeling for what our customers want and like, we'd want to expand the site into a webshop. We'd really like a site that crosslinks a lot. In the page of a product people can click to find a list of all recipes that contain that product (eg almonds). We also have a lot of candied/chocolate products with almonds, so they should be crosslinked somehow too. At the moment I'm working on a descriptive list of all products. I'm basically describing them using tags, afterwards I was thinking of linking tags to categories to base the menu system on.

I'm not really knowledgeable in security exploits, so coding a shop myself is out of the question. But at the same time using a well known webshop cms scares me too.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Post

Re: What is your favourite programming language and why?

#25
I'm not really knowledgeable in security exploits, so coding a shop myself is out of the question. But at the same time using a well known webshop cms scares me too.
Quite a problem, isn't it :P
But face it, if you want to program a cms by yourself ... you will learn a hell lot - but before it works stable, you're probably out of business.

I mean, a static website is not such a big deal, but a webshop is a whole different level - it has to be failproof.

So your're probably much better off with a standard cms.
But I can't suggest one, because I am only using only the one, i've written by myself :P
But trust me, it was a hard struggle and I knew a bit more than you, when I started ...
Post

Re: What is your favourite programming language and why?

#26
Katorone wrote:Learning C will have to wait though. My shop really needs a website, and I can't find a webdesigner that fits within my budget. So, I'll have to learn some css and a server side scripting language and do it myself. :)
I have a basic knowledge of php & mysql, css and html. But recently I've been trying out CMS systems like Joomla... I like joomla, but it doesn't sit entirely right with me.
...
At the moment we're looking for a static-like webpage. (products can be added through a backend) so our customers can check our various info about our products. (where they come from, their caloric values, ingredients, recipes...)
When we get a feeling for what our customers want and like, we'd want to expand the site into a webshop. We'd really like a site that crosslinks a lot.
...
For instance, calculating product prices, figuring out how much we've sold and filtering products that aren't selling well.
You could kill several birds with one stone if you choose C#, as it's a good language that will teach you good habits, and is web- and database-friendly. The same habits will later be useful in C/C++ if you go there too.

At the very least you could create "smart" webpages for displaying current product information (stored in a database), including cross links, and later you could extend it to full webshop functionality when you're more familiar with the issues. While there is an infinity of cms packages out there, it sounds like a great reason to create your own solution as it will a) teach you the language and b) get it exactly as you want it, which off-the-shelf packages never quite do. Start simple and work your way up.
Post

Re: What is your favourite programming language and why?

#28
Katorone wrote:What do you think about using python instead of c# ?
I'm interested in python because it would also prove useful for programming a Raspy later.
I had some insight into web2py which will give you the full power of python on the web.
Problem is that you need a python-host to host it and installing it is not so trivial.
You can however, run it on google app engine which is quite nice but also costly when you get some thousand views.

You can see a shop built with web2py here:
http://vimeo.com/20768689
Post

Re: What is your favourite programming language and why?

#29
kone wrote:I had some insight into web2py which will give you the full power of python on the web.
Problem is that you need a python-host to host it and installing it is not so trivial.
You can however, run it on google app engine which is quite nice but also costly when you get some thousand views.

You can see a shop built with web2py here:
http://vimeo.com/20768689
That looks awesome. I had no idea frameworks were this advanced. I was thinking of having to learn javascript to perform ajax, but in that video it's already a part of the framework.
Installing and running it shouldn't be a problem. I have a dedicated server specially for these kinds of things (and running a minecraft server.).

I better start reading. :D Thanks!
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Post

Re: What is your favourite programming language and why?

#30
Katorone wrote:What do you think about using python instead of c# ?
I'm interested in python because it would also prove useful for programming a Raspy later.
I don't really know, as I've never used python for building webapps, or even for any large project. However, I do know there's a plethora of frameworks out there for both the web side and data access (e.g. Django), and indeed that video does look impressive. If it's possible to use a Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern, then it should be quite doable and maintainable. Ideally, though, you want to talk to someone who's already done it.

Online Now

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 31 guests

cron