Other Software > Developer's Corner
What's your Programming Language?
Tuxman:
For me, a real programming language is something you'll get an executable file from. Thus, Java is none either. :D
jgpaiva:
Thus, Java is none either. :D
-Tuxman (October 26, 2009, 02:48 PM)
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:) :)
MilesAhead:
"Hacking and stuff" is a little broad for a project description :) What I said was merely that of the applications I would like to write some day (because I need them and because they interest me), none is a good candidate for a beginner Python project. If you like to write server-side stuff, or command-line processing, or if your platform is Google or social networks or the web in general, then Python is probably an excellent choice. I'm just not interested in those things at all. My thing is strictly Windows desktop. (Literally. If I had come up with an idea for something like Twitter 5 years ago, I'd have abandoned it as entirely too boring. That's me.)
-tranglos (October 26, 2009, 12:44 PM)
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It is tough once spoiled with Delphi to get into doing GUI with Python. It's probably easier if you come from inline code GUI creation rather than drag & drop(although there may be some designers for it now.. I haven't messed with it in awhile.) I remember when I first tried it the thing I hated was the indentation as opposed to braces. Now that's the thing I like most about it. Seems kind of a pita to hold down the shift key just to mark the begin and end of a code block.
There is a free download ActivePython for Win32 that even has COM support. Also you can fold scripts into an exe wrapper but it's not as easily done as AutoIt3 or AHK. You have to make a script to do it. After a few runs it would be second nature I guess.
To me syntax is a big issue. I got the concept of SmallTalk, but trying to do stuff in those brackets gave me the creeps. But it helped me understand other OOP languages that stole from it. Likewise Perl is powerful, but any of those pattern substitution statements, if somebody said "will you stake me $100 that this output is not possible from any input?" I'd have to decline. After all, usually after a few days I'd discover some stuff that had no business coming out of the code I wrote considering what text was input!!
C and C++ have their appeal. But if anyone sticks a bunch of dereferenced function pointers in front of me and asks me to decode it, I'll reply "that's what parsers are for" and avoid that sadistic individual. The main pita with C++ is that '->' operator. Sure an arrow implies "pointer" but until they come up with a typewriter with an arrow key that doesn't require shift, there should have been some sense used(like some languages let you use dot even if it is really a pointer and the compiler figures it out.)
MilesAhead:
btw, the only real programming language is the one that pays me a royalty. Since that isn't happening, it's an ideal yet to be achieved. :D
CWuestefeld:
The main pita with C++ is that '->' operator. Sure an arrow implies "pointer" but until they come up with a typewriter with an arrow key that doesn't require shift, there should have been some sense used(like some languages let you use dot even if it is really a pointer and the compiler figures it out.)
-MilesAhead (October 26, 2009, 03:14 PM)
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One of my big "ah-ha" moments with C++ was understanding the whole point of references. Declaring a variable as a reference rather than a pointer lets you treat it as an actual instance of the object, rather than a pointer to it -- just what you asked for, you can use a dot rather than an arrow.
I've seen an idiom develop around this, too. By convention, if you're passed a reference to an object, then you're allowed to "use" it, but you don't "own" it. On the other hand, if you're given an actual pointer, then you are now its owner, which in particular means that you're responsible for cleaning it up when you're done with it.
On the other hand, the way that VB tries to hide pointers so that inexperienced people think they're always dealing with an actual object rather than a reference, has been the source of many programming errors that I've discovered in complex systems at work.
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