InsideTech

Hello Danard E. Vincente here...  I'm new to programming and was just a little cureous about what programming language

is best to develop your own software: C#,C++,PHP,JAVA,Perl...  And is the LAMP (Linux,Apache,MySql,PHP)  stack required for best results

when developing your own software?  Or is it even relevant, I don't know it's probably only for web development!

And are languages like C++ Extremely difficult to get a complete understanding of it?   And is the a difference between a programming languages funtionality, and a script or sever-side script language like (PHP) ?

~Thank you

Have a great day...

If it's your own software, do it in whatever language you are most comfortable with and will best suit the needs of the software.

First of all, I haven't been in the IT field since I left the military in 1987.

The military trained me in COBOL, FORTRAN and Assembly language many many years ago (on mainframes). I've forgotten most of that over the years. Since then I've dabbled in various forms of Basic, C++, Java, Macro Assembler and I have a passing familiarity with HTML. Over the last 20 odd years, I've been more of a hardware guy than a software guy. I doubt I'd be much actual help to you here.

Each language has it's own unique strengths and weaknesses. Some are better at number crunching, others are more simplified and easier to use, and still others are more suitable for "pretty print" or setting up a fancy and impressive display. Shop around and find one that suits the application you wish to develope and that is simple enough that you can use it without having to go back to college for 4 more years, and then go to town.

Scripting languages are a far cry from programming languages. They do have their uses, but they are much more restrictive of what they will allow you to do since they are mostly black box canned routines you access through script commands.

From what I've seen, C++ seems to be an all round good general purpose language for most things. It's not so incredibly complicated that it can't be learned, and is fair at most tasks. Other people may have better, more informed opinions though, so don't just take my word for it.

 I STRONGLY suggest you avoid Macro Assembler like the plague. It is incredibly complex and requires an in depth understanding of the inner workings of a computer that very few people care to acquire, (very nearly down to the level of actual circuits and how they function), as well as the chip set (the actual instruction set is basicly hard wire coded into the processor chip so the computer knows how to act on them) and operating system you are writing it on. It's a very powerful tool and can control the most minute aspects of what your machine does right down to the bit level, but it's a royal pain in the ass to debug and get to work correctly if you make a mistake. You pretty much need to know what you want the machine to do from the machine's perspective. Almost all other languages compile into assembler, and then assemble into machine language (binary code).

To give you a better idea, there was a time back in the day when all operating systems and device drivers were written in Assembler.

I hope this helps.

There are basicly 3 types of programming languages.

1) Assembler language - Assembler languages have a 1 to 1 correspondence to machine language instructions. Not very user friendly and require a good bit of study. They are very machine specific. The code that runs on one chipset may give slightly to greatly different results when run on another chipset. You are basicly talking directly to the machine in it's own language.

2) Interpreted languages - Basic, and most forms of scripting language. These languages "compile on the fly". They actually convert to machine code at run time. These tend to be limited in scope, but very portable and very user friendly (most of the time). They also tend to be a bit slower since they go through the translation process every time they run.

3) Compiler languages - These languages are compiled once to form an object program (which is then assembled into machine code to form an executable version). Most useful languages fall into this catagory. Very portable and not machine dependant (most of the time).

I'm hardly an expert on the subject, but probably more familar with it than most people today.

I have done a bit of coding in Assembler. (it's one step up from Hex). It is very old school. Hardly anyone does it any more due to the effort involved. One thing you need to remember, I GOT OUT OF the IT industry before many of the people on this site were born and PCs were the industry standard. When Radio Shack first introduced the TRS-80, the ONLY way to write a program for it was in Hex code, until some genius created a basic interpreter for it.

I have dabbled with it, but it's been a long time. I really don't write code any more.

One nice thing about assembler, if you DO have an understanding of it, you can write small subroutines in it for specific purposes and incorporate them into C++ (and probably several other languages) code when you can't get the C++ to do precisely what you want.

Wether or not it's worth the effort is pretty much up to the individual doing the coding.

Chrisdafrenchie says ...

Assembler can take care of adressing and machine code, and fully take advanage of a RISC architecture, yet, I believe to be a lot faster than CISC at equal clock frequency.

When properly written, Assembler code is the fastest code out there, and the ONLY way to take FULL advantage of all a chips features. For most applications today, I don't think it's really necessary to have that kind of functionality though, unless you're writing code to remotely control a deep space probe or land the space shuttle or something.

Unless you're actually writing an OS or a device driver, it's probably best to leave it alone.

Assembler still has it's uses, but I wouldn't go near it unless an employer was going to shell out some seriously big bucks for it.

Quite frankly it's a good way to get a migraine.

        Thank you all FOR Adding to this LOVELY conversation!   Preadd...  Yes I do understand that script languages are not to powerful, but I personally think that as a beginner in programming languages like Javascript are great places to begin learning "High-Level" programming languages like C#/C++, and JAVA...

    I noticed that their are many similarities between C++ and Javascript in terms of some of the syntax:   for example the ALL so famous (IF...esle...esle Statement :

     >>THe syntax in Javascript:

   <html>                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

<body>

<script type="text/javascript">

var d = newDate();

var time = d.getHours();

if  (time<=12)  ||  (time>=1)

{

document.write(<b>"Good evenning Chrisdafrenchie & Preadds..."</b>);

}

else if   (time<12) 

{

document.write(<b>"It is Still the morning"</b>");

}

else

{

document.write(<b>"I have know Ideal what the time on your browser is???</b>");

}

</script>

</head>

</html>

>>>FOR C++ syntax:

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main() {

     if (x == 1) {
 

        cout << "x is 1";
 

}  

else if (x == 2) {
 

           cout << "x is 2";
 

}

else {
 

cout << "value of x unknown";
 

}

//They're some similarities in terms of the syntax, interesting....

In terms of Assembler, interpreter and complier languages I've diffiniately heard of them...  Java for example is special, because it has both interpreter an complier capabilities, using the software virtual machine I think it's called. 

So these "languages", translate our 'languages' into machine code which I'm told it the only thing a CPU/x86 can recognize and execute...I've heard a complier like the notepad++  etc... are the best options so people have a more difficult time of stilling your source sode!   Which is a problem on the WEB!   

So  I know a lil C++, (I'm just beginning to learn it) and I'm wondering if C++ is very difficult to understand, and do you see it as the best language to learn in order to develop software (i.e games or API's) that is FAST & POrtable  or backward compadible with almost all platforms (e.gOperating Systems)

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main();

{

   << cout  "Thank YOU!\n";

}

//Numeric ARRays, and the do...while & if..elseif...else Statements

//I'm not really sure if these statements are allowed to be together

//This below code produces:  "Danard E. Vincente thinks Phreadd and Chrisdafrenchie are wonderful intelligent people, you to hassan."

<?php

$i = 0  // intialization

    

$friends[0] = "Chrisdafrenchie";

$friends[1] = "Phreadd";

$author[2] = "Danard E. Vincente";

do

  {

  $i++;   // Incremented, the value of '$i' will increase once everytime loaded

  echo " $author[2] . " thinks " . $friends[1] . " and " . $friends[0] " .

are . " wonderful intelligent people, you to hassan.";

}

 /*This above code produces:  "Danard E. Vincente thinks Phreadd and Chrisdafrenchie are

wonderful intelligent people, you to hassan."  If $i is <= to 5*/

while ($i<=5);

                // the above executes only if $i is < 5 else:

  if  ($i>5)  && ($i<=10) || (time===12)

    {

     echo "You know i started writing this on a notepad, over three hours ago ^_^";

}

  elseif  ($i>10) &&  ($i<=15)  || (time>12)

    {

    echo "Good after--noooooon! Everyone";

}

else

    {

    echo "You missed out on me phrasing you for how intelligent you all are ^_^";

    echo "I'm only doing this to practice...practice..practice.  So I hope I'm not

    to annoying with my codes.";

        echo "Heck! why not show what special codes you know. So we can all learn more...";

}

/*this code would probably be shorter if i new more about functions();, but i'm

learning about them right now...so say tune!*/

?>

 P.S. Let me know if you see any mistakes $friends[0], and $friends[1]... I just thought this

would be nice to do!

// Some C++ for YOUR pleasure,

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main() {

    int a = "Thank you!";

    int b = "Thank you!";

    int c = "Thank you Very Much!";

    int result;

    a = a + b - c   // Output: Thank you! Thank you very much!

    int result = c * a    // output: Thank you Very much!Thank you!Thank you!

    return 0;

}

 // Final Output: "Thank you Very much!Thank you!Thank you!"

 

 Wowzers! Looks like I "missed" a good portion of a great conversation here! All have excellent inputs on the languages that are good to use. My understanding (from my ugrad days and military experience) is that JAVA is also an "interpretive" 4th generation language that is "compliled" on the fly rather than being compiled to begin with. (I could be wrong about that. If so, please do not hesitate to correct me.) "C" is probably traditionally the most powerful and most complicated language to understand. Just getting your brain around "Pointers" and "MALLOC" is enough to give anyone a pain in the neck (that will work its way down from there rather quickly ... HA)! C++ and J++ are excellent improvements over C and JAVA, mostly because they are OOP (Object Oriented Programming) languages. I understand that Google's renowned search engine uses a combination of C, C++ and Java to get where it goes.

As most have suggested, it all depends on what you want the software to do for you. That is something you'd have to figure out during your "software development cycle" while you're attempting to come up with the whole stack of goodies.

For a while, I was a big fan of the "Myst" games. I was looking at everything that Cyan was doing and mostly interested in HOW they were doing it. One thing I found interesting was that a friend of mine pointed out that the two brothers used a simple text program to actually write the original software for the game. I was never really clear about how the rest of program (images, etc.) worked into the program. I found it very interesting that the code was written on a simple word processor and then compiled.

No expert here. 

 Thanks, Phreadd! I can't begin to tell you how much I've forgotten over the years! HA! Thanks for the reminder. (It all comes back in a flood of memories of confused days and nights spent trying to plod through convoluted code, all the while hoping that my ignorance would never be discovered by "the powers that be" ... the professors!)

programming is lot to me.... LOL - keeping my nose not to bleed on those stuff that seems unfamiliar to me ;)

HO, I also missed good part of this ineterested debate. I will try to catch up with several posts because now I read them all, I only remembered the last ones

SkyKing5: J++ is far from being and improvement for JAVA. J++ is a Java wannabe prorgamming language created by Microsoft to attract Java developer and is was included in Microsoft Visual Studio. Not anymore, no one was using it and no one saw a really need for it.

I agree with Phreadd: you should choose the language you feel more confertable with and it will best solve your problem (do not attempt to create a simple website to pull records from a MySQL with C++, or PHP to write GUI applications (with GTK) Althouh is possible, it will make your task more daunting)

However I highle disagree with the statement that scripting languages are not too powerful. This is not true. They were created for a purpose, and for that they are very good. PHP is a POWERFUL language. No wonder is so popular. Client side code, Javascript has been also standard for years and is also very powerfull. Both have OO capabilities.

I think the stress you should be put in the PROGRAMMER instead of the programming languages he uses. All programming languages has served their purposes and have appealed to more than one prorgammer. I myself try to learn as many as I can, without getting confused. I have learn how to use different programming languages depending on the task I'm doing. Once you learn one, it's very easy to add your previous skills to a new prorgamming language. The key is the programmer, his problem solving skills. At the very end, most programming languages allow you to implement loops, hash tables, dictionaries, databas connections, etc...you just need to find out how you do the same things you already know in the language you are learning.

My prefferences:

Web development: PHP,MySQL, CSS, javascript, XML etc

Software: Visual Basic (very easy to learn and get things done fast), Java, C++, C#

/* hehe */

class HelloWorldApp {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        System.out.println("I love JAVA too!!! :)"); 

    }

}

Little late on this one, lol.

 My personal favorite is Java.

I had my programming start in 8th grade with BASIC, then moved to Visual Basic, then a little C, then finally Java and in-depth C/C++ in college. Along the way I picked up on Javascript, HTML, XML, PHP, SQL, and Oracle's form script thing.

Java by far was the easiest when it came to visuals and functionality. C++ is immensly more powerful than Java, but making a UI is well beyond me. I've asked around and heard horror stories of 1000+ lines to make a simple window. I'm sure there's some code kit out there that simplifies it.

I also recommend taking your time learning them. Don't try to learn several at a time or you'll end up like a lot of my colleages and mixing syntaxes without realizing it.

I have been cutting code one way or the other since 1968. Unlike most of the contributors I have cut many, many lines of assembler code, FORTRAN(multiple versions), C, C++, Pascal, as well as mutiple scripting languages. In these 40 years I have heard many people claim to have the ultimate computer language. I have found that there is no one language that is an ultimate solution for all things. The language that is best suited to solve a software project depends on the problem. Are you doing a GUI? Is software reusability  a big requirement. Is the hardware that the software is required to run on limited in its resources such as memory or speed? Does the OS that will provide the software platform for the project to run on have limitations or particular requirements? Once you have the projects requirements you can better answer the question what language are you going to use to implement your software design. I work primarily in real time embedded systems these days and more and more software tools like UML are being used to design software. With UML if you do your design right very little coding is done by the software engineer. Tools like UML generate the code from the design. I would say to you learn how to write clear understandable code regardless of what language you use. The most profound thing I ever read about software engineering was by the inventor of PASCAL when he gave his acceptance speech for wining the Turing award. He said , "Any  software that can not be easily understood by human beings is worthless regardless of whether or not it accomplishes its designed purpose". If you write poorly documented code chances are sooner or later you will not understand how to use it or how to alter it to upgrade it. As far as assembler being to difficult to learn or use I would say again it depends on what you are doing. Now days assembler is only used where memory space and/or execution speed require its use. Modern operating systems today are wiitten in compiled languages except where the desgner needs to do something that the compiled language can't do effectively. So where do you start you say? C, C++, and Visual Basic will do many things well and Java has its purposes. I would say in today's world that C++ and Visual Basic are good tools to learn that will give you the flexibilty to accomplish most of what you will want to do as a hobbyist. I threw in Visual Basic because it is so easy to use to design a GUI  given that you don't already have a tool to do that specific task and it is relatively easy for most people to learn fairly quickly.