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From: users-bounces(a)lists.fedoraproject.org [mailto:users-bounces@lists.fedoraproject.org]
On Behalf Of Parshwa Murdia
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2010 6:02 PM
To: users(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
Subject: About programing, a general question
hi,
If one has to start from the scratch, from the zeroth level to do the programing, which
programing language one should start with? In the ocean of the languages, to start with is
really very typical. Can one justify it. Some say Python but again they say it is Perl
which is better every time then the Python. Some say to start with C or C++ but again some
emphasis to use Java or C#. Many say to go for .Net and VB or COBOL and some say to learn
web based programing like HTML, PHP,
ASP.Net. In this ocean who is just starting to learn
which one he should prefer?
Many say that what is the purpose of learning, then I say that to have the basic
understanding of how exactly we can handle the machines like the CPU. Not to generate the
big projects for the management processes, not even banking system but to know the basic
of programing like how to handle the machines at the first, for that purpose, for the the
scratch level purpose and for the one which is good even for Linux, what programing
language should one like me, initiate?
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To avoid religious wars....
The "best" programming language, is the one you feel most comfortable with,
obviously.
Though i was lucky enough to avoid basic, i grew up with assembly, C, plm, Pascal,
fortran, cobol, chill, all sorts of shell's, perl.
In the very old days, if you needed to sqeeze any cycle out of the cpu, you were stuck
with assembly.
Some years later, the code produced by C-compilers has been getting that good that even
modest time-critical routines for accessing hardware were do-able.
Biggest advantage was that code became hw-independant.
Each language has/had its own advantages/drawbacks. At one point in time i
"discovered" the swiss-army-knife of languages: perl. Since then nomore sh
korn,bourne, c-shell, awk or grep anymore. Though it looks like Python is replacing perl
currently.
First rush of hobby-level programmers was getting asap "some results", quality
was not relevant.
Specially with basic it is possible to produce spagetty-code. (though you can actually
produce unreadable code with any language)
When i left university, they were teaching Pascal at first-years students. It encourage
you to think about data-structures and so on.
Thoughy i understand that in this day-and-age, it has been replaced with C++ and Java.
So for really learning coding, i would suggest starting with C, and later on switch to C++
/ java.
For doing (semi-) production, it's anothert game: see my first line, but it all boils
down to the same rules.
- get to know the hardware-environment you are dealing with (extensive playing, no
production code)
- make a top-level design (what are the requirements)
- make a detailed design (how are you going to do it)
- do not re-invent the wheel (there are zillions of libraries: use them)
- work modular
- User interface? Think about multi-language
- define entry/exit conditions
- define where you check conditions
- timing or race-conditions?
- use a versioning system
- ....
So actually the programming language is the least of your concern.
Coding style and practices is all. And stick to it.
hw
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