So many neat discussions I missed over the last month when I haven't had time
to even visit these newsgroups.

I'll put in my 3 cents (i'm paid well, i can afford extra) and take my turn on
the soapbox...


The best language for anyone curious about programming, without paying money,
and without wanting to get into ugly technical problems, is either Python or
Oberon.  

   Oberon typically comes with an IDE (integrated development environment) that
lets you edit, compile, run, etc easily w/o typing in long weird command lines
or messing with makefiles.   It great to gain a taste of programming, in an
elegant language anyone can learn in a day, and it runs fast and on almost all
platforms of significance today.   It resembles Pascal, and was invented by the
same language designer, but is more powerful.  OTOH, it has limitations that
make it useless for serious professional software development.  Look for a book
by Mossbauer.  (If for some reason you don't want an IDE, but just a
command-line compiler, look for OOC, but I dont' recommend it for  a total
beginner.)   Look for "System 3" and "Black Box" and "Component Pascal"

  Python requires using a text editor, and reading documentation in whatever
form you can get it; there's no IDE (that I know of).  It too is elegant, and
very useful for a lot of things.  I wrote Python programs (small simple ones)
to help in modifying povray source code.  Also can be learned quick, though
maybe not as quick as Oberon.  Visit www.python.org/

Modula-3 is also a nice language. WHile a total blank-beginner could start with
it, the compiler is a huge download and it took me some cussin' & fussin' to
get it to work.   Great for professional software development, but not enough
software companies have heard of it.  One company, Positron, makes 911 call
dispatch software using mostly (or all?) Modula-3, saving lots of development
time over C/C++ techniques.  There's an operating system written entirely in
Modula-3.   Also resembles Pascal.  Visit www.m3.org/ for more.


A language that might be fun for beginners, if only there were better
documentation, is Sather.  It's recently become a GNU open source thing, so
maybe in a year I would recommend it.  Nothing like pascal.


Only if you're aiming for a career in computer programming should you consider
C or C++.  These are very big languages.  Lots of power, but no more power than
you can get in Ada-95 (not for beginners unless you have patience and a good
text) or Modula-3.  In fact, less power because flaws in the C/C++ languages
prevent the compiler and linker from making certain kinds of optimizations, but
that's  a detail.


C and C++ are unique among languages I mention here in that they are the only
ones that require the programmer to pay a lot of attention to low-level memory
allocation and release. They use pointers in many ways, and don't support text
strings directly.  You face dangers of unfreed pointers, double-free pointers,
unitialized pointers, etc.  All the other languages use garbage collection (GC)
to automatically keep the memory allocations straight.    GC used to be frowned
upon in the old days, because it used to be slow and got in the way of things,
but in the last few years the theory and technology of GC have made huge
progress.   


TCL, Perl, and the other languages I saw mentioned are fun to toy with, but
will make your head spin until you master a bunch of very geeky things like
Regular Expressions, and are best for only certain uses.  Maybe try Perl as a
2nd or 3rd language - perl programmers working for web site designers can make
great money.  

For the best collection of links for browsing on programming languages, visit
http://www.cetus-links.org/    Expect to spend all day there, they have a lot!


Have fun!

-- 
Daren Scot Wilson
dar### [at] pipelinecom 
www.newcolor.com
----
"Unless we attempt the absurd, we cannot achieve the impossible" 
                                           - A. Einstein

"Unless we attempt to get out of bed, we cannot achieve the easy"
                                           - D. Wilson

Post a reply to this message