Hi,

I think you misinterpreted my comments both of you ...

Marc Schimmler wrote:

> Jim Kress wrote:
> >
> > Being the lone FORTRAN programmer in the known POV universe I must take
> > exception to your comments about the language :b) .  Fortran 95 (yes, an
> > actual, current ANSI standard) has been thoroughly polluted with all the
> > structured, object oriented "improvements" that clutter C++ and associated
> > languages.  The Fortran 2000 ANSI standard promises to continue this
> > deconstruction of a once fine language ...
> >
> > Also, Lahey (www.lahey.com) offers a free Fortran compiler.
> >
> > So there!  :)D
> >
> > --
> > Jim
> >
>
> Hey!
>
> I'm not alone with this dinosaur! :-)
> Well your're not alone. And I use still the good ole' FORTRAN 77.
>
> Marc
> --
> Marc Schimmler

I'm learning something about f2000, I knew all right that f95 had gone some way
from the olden days.
The fortran I was talking about was indeed f77, the one with the huge amount of
legacy code.
I still think that it is a very backward language, as much as the old basic was
backward.
The reason being that it is hard to read and hard to maintain, very easy to get
lost. Not a very efficient programming language for the programmer, unless you
are prepared to do a lot of cut and paste, which does bloat your programs pretty
quickly. Try manage 8MB source code of fortran for a single application and tell
me what you think.
Well, 8MB of C is easier to read and change but that bit buggier at the same
time and some bugs can be very tricky in C.
8MB of ADA is certainly a lot easier, especially when you're talking about 32
tasks running in parallel. Even ADA83.

Of course some people hate OO, but that is only because it is too often badly
used and used for what plain straight procedural programming can do better.
That's where the design stage should have come in first. Well thought OO - that
is OO only when useful - is better than procedural, but badly thought OO can be
pretty ugly, I will admit.

Best regards & Cheers,
Al.

--
ANTI SPAM / ANTI ARROSAGE COMMERCIAL :

To answer me, please take out the Z from my address.

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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

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Hi Alain!

Your absoutly right about FORTRAN. I maintain 8MB of Fortran 77 code (a
FEM code for static, dynamic mechanical problems and CFD) and every time
I run into a problem I have to search for day to track the error down
(in most cases not mine but those of the original authors). Especially
common blocks can be nasty and more so when single and double numbers
are stored in the same block. What can happen there .....

I still think that FORTRAN is unavoidable for high computation of
numerical problems. All the high computing languages for the CRAY or NEC
I've seen were derivates of FORTRAN.

Besides I'm learning C++. I did some ADA 83/95 too and I liked it but it
is not supported like C or C++ are. 

It's still funny not to be the only one in the world that has to fight
with the limitations of FORTRAN.

Marc
-- 
Marc Schimmler

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Was talking just last weekend about Fortran with my dad and a friend of
his. They used it back in the '60s with those punch cards etc. First I've
heard he almost did programming back then, citing it to be similar to flow
charting. He was a finance manager and later became manager of the
internationl space station at Boeing before retiring.
I had visited his workplace in Florida as a kid and was shown the computer
room, what a monstrosity of archaic machines, although at the time it was
like a peek into the future for me. I did a bit of Fortran in a computing
class in high school circa '77. Strange typewriter-sized machine that used
punchcards as input and had only a orange LED display to show plots of
equations, formula, functions we gave it. We were apparently behind the
times there I think.


Marc Schimmler wrote:
> 
> Hi Alain!
> 
> Your absoutly right about FORTRAN. I maintain 8MB of Fortran 77 code (a
> FEM code for static, dynamic mechanical problems and CFD) and every time
> I run into a problem I have to search for day to track the error down
> (in most cases not mine but those of the original authors). Especially
> common blocks can be nasty and more so when single and double numbers
> are stored in the same block. What can happen there .....
> 
> I still think that FORTRAN is unavoidable for high computation of
> numerical problems. All the high computing languages for the CRAY or NEC
> I've seen were derivates of FORTRAN.
> 
> Besides I'm learning C++. I did some ADA 83/95 too and I liked it but it
> is not supported like C or C++ are.
> 
> It's still funny not to be the only one in the world that has to fight
> with the limitations of FORTRAN.
> 
> Marc
> --
> Marc Schimmler

-- 
 omniVERSE: beyond the universe
  http://members.aol.com/inversez/homepage.htm
 mailto://inversez@aol.com?Subject=PoV-News

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Bob Hughes wrote:
> 
> Was talking just last weekend about Fortran with my dad and a friend of
> his. They used it back in the '60s with those punch cards etc. First I've
> heard he almost did programming back then, citing it to be similar to flow
> charting. He was a finance manager and later became manager of the
> internationl space station at Boeing before retiring.
> I had visited his workplace in Florida as a kid and was shown the computer
> room, what a monstrosity of archaic machines, although at the time it was
> like a peek into the future for me. I did a bit of Fortran in a computing
> class in high school circa '77. Strange typewriter-sized machine that used
> punchcards as input and had only a orange LED display to show plots of
> equations, formula, functions we gave it. We were apparently behind the
> times there I think.
> 

The funny thing is that my dad started his work at a computer center in
the 60's. He worked even with the Zuse-8 (?) one of the first computers
available. I remember when I visited him at work as a child (about 18
years ago) he was already programming in FORTRAN 77. It was ultra
modern! That's what's happen when a company gets so dominant that a
change is nearly impossible.

I cite an IBM mananger many many years ago:

"I don't know how the programming language of the future will look like
but what I know is that it will be called FORTRAN!"

I hope my kids won't be condemmed to work with Windows 2000 'til the end
of their days.


All the best,

Marc 
-- 
Marc Schimmler

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Hi Rune !

I think that you - as an experienced pov-user - will later reach the
point of writing a prog which uses Direct3D-API. As far as I know, the
only languages supporting this API are C++ and Delphi. 
I never used C++, but did a lot of things in Delphi, and it's really
great !!! In the beginning, you can just click and drag simple progs
together with only a few lines of code, but you can dive deep into
WINDOWS too.
And last but not least, there are lots of samples and components on the
internet ( mostly for free).
Surely, it's not cheap, but believe me, it's worth it!

Rune S. Johansen schrieb:
> 
> I would like to come into programming.
> 
> I can program with POV-Ray language which I use to make stills, animations,
> math programs that output data as pictures or text files, and other things.
> I would like to learn a real programming language so I will be less limited
> and can work with things such as interactivity.
> Now, I don't know any programming languages or what is required to make
> programs, so what I would like to know is which programming language I
> should choose to start with.
> A description of which languages have which advantages and disadvantages
> would be appreciated.
> There's one more thing, I can't spend any money on this programming hobby, I
> guess that limits my number of choices?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Rune S. Johansen
> http://hjem.get2net.dk/rsj

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