Worst programming language?
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If I am not mistaken then Rollercoster Tycoon I was mady in assembly. Sounds like lot of work... :~ David
dnh wrote: If I am not mistaken then Rollercoster Tycoon I was mady in assembly. Sounds like lot of work... Many early games were, heck even my early work on the missile range was all assembly. It was the only way to squeeze the speed out of those machines. I did early VB Dos like user interfaces, I wrote based open source code and customized for speed. Simulated multi-tasking, UI, RS-232 asynchronous communication, and especially synchronous serial communication, you needed that extra umph from assembly. We had one guy who wrote almost entirely in assembly, I was hired because of my multi-language skills (well, and they could get me incredibly cheap and still pay me more than I was being paid), especially the ability to write in assembly. I talked them into multi-language production of products, C where C was best, Ada where Ada was required (not sure there was a best there), Assembly on specific functions that were called a lot. All my UI stuff before Windows was Assembly, I expect a lot of the first Windows code was assembly too. That was just the proper way then. Now machines are so much faster they can do so much more, that the software complexity has gotten to the point where assembly should be rare. And yet, a glance at the first shading languages for graphics systems on the last few years; we were back at assembly again. Now they are finally getting us quality high level languages again with both Cg and HLSL for OpenGL 2.0. Most things start at assembly level on computers, it just shouldn't stay there. :) _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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What is the most annoying programming language you had to use? I have a long list of bad experiences, but refined to it's worst here it is (worst in first).
- APL - imagine Lisp writen with greek letters, from right to left, with your keyboard remaped and the "operator operand1 operand2" syntax.
- Cobol - boring and dull, like filling income tax forms.
- Prolog - it only solves one kind of problem, which only university teachers care about.
- Javascript - slow, inconsistent, buggy and (worst of all) sometimes is the only choice you have.
- Fortran - another over specialized language.
- Assembly (for Motorolla, Intel 80386 & Pentium, MIPS, etc.). Some say you can write optimized code in Assembly. Nonsense. Any optimized C compiler can generate faster code than the most skilled assembly programmer. Assembly is just as boring as Cobol. Rui A. Rebelo De perto, ninguém é normal. (At a close look, no one is normal) C. Veloso
LISP. John
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I despise Pascal. My first two quarters of Baby Programmer Classes in college were taught in Pascal. Ugh, trying to do complex data types in that language, along with features like "no return statement" and "no short-circuiting in if clauses" made me want to forcibly remove my hair and go back to
C=BASIC. Then I got exposed to Ada... X| It's Pascal, only wordier! --Mike-- Visual C++ MVP :cool: LINKS~! Ericahist | 1ClickPicGrabber | CP SearchBar v2.0.2 | C++ Forum FAQI suppose you'll get a lot of this, but I LOVE Pascal, or more specifically Borland's ObjectPascal. I have found it much cleaner to write than C/C++ which seems to encourage hacky and hard to read code, in my experience. Maybe part of it is the lack of macros whcih can cause all sorts of crazy weirdness in C/C++. ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF!
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What is the most annoying programming language you had to use? I have a long list of bad experiences, but refined to it's worst here it is (worst in first).
- APL - imagine Lisp writen with greek letters, from right to left, with your keyboard remaped and the "operator operand1 operand2" syntax.
- Cobol - boring and dull, like filling income tax forms.
- Prolog - it only solves one kind of problem, which only university teachers care about.
- Javascript - slow, inconsistent, buggy and (worst of all) sometimes is the only choice you have.
- Fortran - another over specialized language.
- Assembly (for Motorolla, Intel 80386 & Pentium, MIPS, etc.). Some say you can write optimized code in Assembly. Nonsense. Any optimized C compiler can generate faster code than the most skilled assembly programmer. Assembly is just as boring as Cobol. Rui A. Rebelo De perto, ninguém é normal. (At a close look, no one is normal) C. Veloso
Worst 1. Forte's TOOL language/environment/POS IDE. Absolutely the most annoying piece of crap I've had to use. We used to call it Forte's Object Oriented Language (FOOL). 2. VB - the language is annoying as hell, feels like it was just randomly thrown together, and the editor makes me just want to scream and start bitch slapping people after using it for 5 minutes. 3. Perl. What is it about Perl that makes it seem to cool and logical when you read the examples in the book, but when you read real world code you just want to puke at the sheer unreadability of it all. 4. LISP - cool to read about, full of interesting ideas. Can't imagine actually programming anything more complex than Hello World in it. I appreciate the power, but I just have to shake my head at the syntax. Favorites (so far) 1. Hands down, IMHO, Borland's ObjectPascal. Note that I specifically mention ObejctPascal, not plain-jane Pascal. My understanding is that Borland added a number of very cool features to ObjectPascal that were not present in original Pascal. I could look at a problem, or imagine something I wanted to build, and just "think" the full pascal solution in my head. Can't really do that with C/C++, it's just too terse. 2. Objective C - kind of weird to get used to (the whole use of "[]" to indicate message passing is a bit strange), but once you do it's fun to write in. Maybe that's more due to the framework it's typically used with than the language. 3. Python. Dunno why I like it, but it's fun to use. Overrated 1. Java. Blah, Blah, Blah, whatever. It's a tool. 'nuff said. Not horrible, but not that inspiring either. 2. C#. Slight less annoying than Java. But still overrated IMHO. Honorourable Mention 1. C++. It's OK. It's annoying. It walks a fine balance between the two. But it doesn't exactly inspire either enthusiasm or loathing. It's mentally stimulating but in weird, querky, and frequently useless ways. It's kind of like the challenge of being able to wrap both feet behind your head. It's a challenge, it takes patience and discipline to stretch and train to be able to do so, but once you've put both feet behind your head you're left thinking: "Well what's next and why did want to do this in the first place?" ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned
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Worst 1. Forte's TOOL language/environment/POS IDE. Absolutely the most annoying piece of crap I've had to use. We used to call it Forte's Object Oriented Language (FOOL). 2. VB - the language is annoying as hell, feels like it was just randomly thrown together, and the editor makes me just want to scream and start bitch slapping people after using it for 5 minutes. 3. Perl. What is it about Perl that makes it seem to cool and logical when you read the examples in the book, but when you read real world code you just want to puke at the sheer unreadability of it all. 4. LISP - cool to read about, full of interesting ideas. Can't imagine actually programming anything more complex than Hello World in it. I appreciate the power, but I just have to shake my head at the syntax. Favorites (so far) 1. Hands down, IMHO, Borland's ObjectPascal. Note that I specifically mention ObejctPascal, not plain-jane Pascal. My understanding is that Borland added a number of very cool features to ObjectPascal that were not present in original Pascal. I could look at a problem, or imagine something I wanted to build, and just "think" the full pascal solution in my head. Can't really do that with C/C++, it's just too terse. 2. Objective C - kind of weird to get used to (the whole use of "[]" to indicate message passing is a bit strange), but once you do it's fun to write in. Maybe that's more due to the framework it's typically used with than the language. 3. Python. Dunno why I like it, but it's fun to use. Overrated 1. Java. Blah, Blah, Blah, whatever. It's a tool. 'nuff said. Not horrible, but not that inspiring either. 2. C#. Slight less annoying than Java. But still overrated IMHO. Honorourable Mention 1. C++. It's OK. It's annoying. It walks a fine balance between the two. But it doesn't exactly inspire either enthusiasm or loathing. It's mentally stimulating but in weird, querky, and frequently useless ways. It's kind of like the challenge of being able to wrap both feet behind your head. It's a challenge, it takes patience and discipline to stretch and train to be able to do so, but once you've put both feet behind your head you're left thinking: "Well what's next and why did want to do this in the first place?" ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned
Jim Crafton wrote: 2. Objective C Yeah, that was fun. Used to wish for a NeXTbox so i could actually use a decent framework with it... now i guess i should get a Mac. Jim Crafton wrote: 1. C++. It's OK. It's annoying. It walks a fine balance between the two. That's about how i feel. I think everyone should have to work on a collaborative C++ project at least once, just so they appreciate not having to do so afterwards. I'd suggest collaborative VB development instead, but that would be just cruel.
You must be careful in the forest Broken glass and rusty nails If you're to bring back something for us I have bullets for sale...
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dnh wrote: If I am not mistaken then Rollercoster Tycoon I was mady in assembly. Sounds like lot of work... Many early games were, heck even my early work on the missile range was all assembly. It was the only way to squeeze the speed out of those machines. I did early VB Dos like user interfaces, I wrote based open source code and customized for speed. Simulated multi-tasking, UI, RS-232 asynchronous communication, and especially synchronous serial communication, you needed that extra umph from assembly. We had one guy who wrote almost entirely in assembly, I was hired because of my multi-language skills (well, and they could get me incredibly cheap and still pay me more than I was being paid), especially the ability to write in assembly. I talked them into multi-language production of products, C where C was best, Ada where Ada was required (not sure there was a best there), Assembly on specific functions that were called a lot. All my UI stuff before Windows was Assembly, I expect a lot of the first Windows code was assembly too. That was just the proper way then. Now machines are so much faster they can do so much more, that the software complexity has gotten to the point where assembly should be rare. And yet, a glance at the first shading languages for graphics systems on the last few years; we were back at assembly again. Now they are finally getting us quality high level languages again with both Cg and HLSL for OpenGL 2.0. Most things start at assembly level on computers, it just shouldn't stay there. :) _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
Ahh the good old days. When optimization really meant something. I bet there aren't too many of us around any longer that remember the venerable Ralph Brown's Interrupt List, much to my surprise I stumbled across it a few months ago, still going strong even in this day and age.
"A preoccupation with the next world pretty clearly signals an inability to cope credibly with this one."
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Rui A. Rebelo wrote: Any optimized C compiler can generate faster code than the most skilled assembly programmer. Not quite true.... However, to write an entire program in assembly to save 5-10% is really not worth it. But you can easily get half your savings by hand-optimizing the most called modules. But then there is the problem of re-use, assembly is extremely difficult to maintain, and the presence of can kill ports, bugs in them can waste valuable man hours. I can optimize code better than the Intel, Borland or Microsoft compilers, haven't tried any others; but more importantly, I cannot find long term value in doing so anymore. When we were doing DOS programs, the efficiency of assembly far outweighed the compilers of that time. Now, the compilers have closed the gap, and the complexity of systems makes assembly undesireable. But it is still faster, just not worth the time. Rui A. Rebelo wrote: Assembly is just as boring as Cobol. Having done both, I agree. _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
I checked the assembly code made by 2 optimizing compilers (MIPS and Kai ). I saw things no programmer would have courage to try like taking advantage of pipelining or antecipating the calls to the floating point unit so the operations would be ready on time, etc. I got convinced that one optimized compiler can control things that no human should try (eg.:registry allocation through 500 lines of code). I agree on what you say about the old DOS times. I programmed 80386 assembler then. But, believe me, some compilers have become insanelly smart. Rui A. Rebelo De perto, ninguém é normal. (At a close look, no one is normal) C. Veloso
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LISP. John
Yeah. That was bad too. Some interesting ideas (lambda expressions, closures) lost in a sea of parenthesis, recursion, CAR, CDR and other stupid commands. Rui A. Rebelo De perto, ninguém é normal. (At a close look, no one is normal) C. Veloso
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Worst 1. Forte's TOOL language/environment/POS IDE. Absolutely the most annoying piece of crap I've had to use. We used to call it Forte's Object Oriented Language (FOOL). 2. VB - the language is annoying as hell, feels like it was just randomly thrown together, and the editor makes me just want to scream and start bitch slapping people after using it for 5 minutes. 3. Perl. What is it about Perl that makes it seem to cool and logical when you read the examples in the book, but when you read real world code you just want to puke at the sheer unreadability of it all. 4. LISP - cool to read about, full of interesting ideas. Can't imagine actually programming anything more complex than Hello World in it. I appreciate the power, but I just have to shake my head at the syntax. Favorites (so far) 1. Hands down, IMHO, Borland's ObjectPascal. Note that I specifically mention ObejctPascal, not plain-jane Pascal. My understanding is that Borland added a number of very cool features to ObjectPascal that were not present in original Pascal. I could look at a problem, or imagine something I wanted to build, and just "think" the full pascal solution in my head. Can't really do that with C/C++, it's just too terse. 2. Objective C - kind of weird to get used to (the whole use of "[]" to indicate message passing is a bit strange), but once you do it's fun to write in. Maybe that's more due to the framework it's typically used with than the language. 3. Python. Dunno why I like it, but it's fun to use. Overrated 1. Java. Blah, Blah, Blah, whatever. It's a tool. 'nuff said. Not horrible, but not that inspiring either. 2. C#. Slight less annoying than Java. But still overrated IMHO. Honorourable Mention 1. C++. It's OK. It's annoying. It walks a fine balance between the two. But it doesn't exactly inspire either enthusiasm or loathing. It's mentally stimulating but in weird, querky, and frequently useless ways. It's kind of like the challenge of being able to wrap both feet behind your head. It's a challenge, it takes patience and discipline to stretch and train to be able to do so, but once you've put both feet behind your head you're left thinking: "Well what's next and why did want to do this in the first place?" ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned
Python is nice, better than Perl, I agree. Pascal was one the first languages I liked, but betrayed it for C. Agree on Lisp, C++, Java & C#. Rui A. Rebelo De perto, ninguém é normal. (At a close look, no one is normal) C. Veloso
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SQL. It's not structured. It's not just for queries. It's not a language. To prove it, the "language" addition was called "PL-SQL". Hmmm. Programming Language-Structured Query Language". Yup. That makes sense. Jeesh. Programmers and their acronyms. ;P Marc My website
Latest Articles: Object Comparer String HelpersI think the problem is that SQL was just abused. Can't think (and don't know) of something much better to tell the DBMS what to do and let it decide how. Rui A. Rebelo De perto, ninguém é normal. (At a close look, no one is normal) C. Veloso
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Ahh the good old days. When optimization really meant something. I bet there aren't too many of us around any longer that remember the venerable Ralph Brown's Interrupt List, much to my surprise I stumbled across it a few months ago, still going strong even in this day and age.
"A preoccupation with the next world pretty clearly signals an inability to cope credibly with this one."
Dude!! I wrote a TSR that popped up a assembly code reference manual for the chips I coded for. That list was the source of the famous InDos flag. Ahhhhh I remember it well. One project for the MOD in the UK was a simulator that required 3 sound blaster cards running at the same time spitting out 6 channels of sound. It was hell getting it working but it rocked when it did. :)
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COBOL was horrid, Pascal the best I've used - though hpl came very close to "best" in its day. It was not popular with programmers because it used lower case letters, and all previous languages used caps exclusively. APL, Lisp, C++ are all terrible languages, completely indecipherable by anyone but an expert. Prolog had its own problems, but I suspect that most of them are really mine, being unable to think in predicate logic terms. Of the BASICs, GDBASIC was the worst. It was written internally at General Dynamics, and all library routines were numbered, not named. To program an oscilliscope we had to do something like CALL 1022(5,20,1024). Without the most current xeroxed copy of the 300-page+ manual it was hopeless - there was no change control used on the systems programming group and they changed them whenever they felt like it without telling anyone. FORTRAN was fun, logical, and powerful. Ada just plain sucked. ALGOL taught APL how to be weird. I was nominally in charge of the development of the latest version of ATLAS - the US DoD answer to GDBASIC - but I was happy to let someone else take responsibility and the design lead on that baby. There has never been a less appropriate way to program a computer. There have been so many bad languages - it's really hard to choose a "worst." C# is at least decently readable, even though it takes 15 years to learn the libraries. I think I'm going to like it.:-D As far as assembly being boring is concerned - if you've ever had to program a missile guidance control test program with only 512 bytes of memory available to store and execute your program, boring would not be the word you'd choose for the experience. It is sometimes absolutely necessary to use assembly, and when it is, it is always an intellectual challenge of the first order.;P "...putting all your eggs in one basket along with your bowling ball and gym clothes only gets you scrambled eggs and an extra laundry day... " - Jeffry J. Brickley
Roger Wright wrote: it is always an intellectual challenge of the first order. A bit like getting a VB program to do something useful then?:doh:
I know you can't become if you only say what you would have done and you'll miss a million miles of fun." - Len Work hard, play hard. Don't forget who you are and don't forget where you're from. Do all these things well and you won't have to wonder where you are going.
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COBOL was horrid, Pascal the best I've used - though hpl came very close to "best" in its day. It was not popular with programmers because it used lower case letters, and all previous languages used caps exclusively. APL, Lisp, C++ are all terrible languages, completely indecipherable by anyone but an expert. Prolog had its own problems, but I suspect that most of them are really mine, being unable to think in predicate logic terms. Of the BASICs, GDBASIC was the worst. It was written internally at General Dynamics, and all library routines were numbered, not named. To program an oscilliscope we had to do something like CALL 1022(5,20,1024). Without the most current xeroxed copy of the 300-page+ manual it was hopeless - there was no change control used on the systems programming group and they changed them whenever they felt like it without telling anyone. FORTRAN was fun, logical, and powerful. Ada just plain sucked. ALGOL taught APL how to be weird. I was nominally in charge of the development of the latest version of ATLAS - the US DoD answer to GDBASIC - but I was happy to let someone else take responsibility and the design lead on that baby. There has never been a less appropriate way to program a computer. There have been so many bad languages - it's really hard to choose a "worst." C# is at least decently readable, even though it takes 15 years to learn the libraries. I think I'm going to like it.:-D As far as assembly being boring is concerned - if you've ever had to program a missile guidance control test program with only 512 bytes of memory available to store and execute your program, boring would not be the word you'd choose for the experience. It is sometimes absolutely necessary to use assembly, and when it is, it is always an intellectual challenge of the first order.;P "...putting all your eggs in one basket along with your bowling ball and gym clothes only gets you scrambled eggs and an extra laundry day... " - Jeffry J. Brickley
Roger Wright wrote: As far as assembly being boring is concerned - if you've ever had to program a missile guidance control test program with only 512 bytes of memory available to store and execute your program, boring would not be the word you'd choose for the experience. You don't even have to be on Guidance... tracking and test support, and the bloody thing desides to turn around midflight and as range safety tries to decide when to blow the thing up, with an "Instaneous Impact prediction" routine that updates one time per second and has to hold for two updates away from populated areas... and you are ground zero.... your heart pumping blood faster as the missile grows in your camera that tracks at 60 per.... The first thing you do after you survive the experience, is write an IIP that updates at 30per in any way you can. Ironically, range safety still doesn't have it, but ordinance recovery does, and it forced the range to write a faster IIP to compete with mine. :D But I definately would not call the experience boring. _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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Of the ones i've had to use, VB is the worst. None of the "seat-of-your-pants" fun of regular BASIC (VBScript gets this right at least), with all the baggage that years of trying to stay backwards compatible brings. For every other language i've used, no matter how bizarre, there was a state of mind you could put yourself in where it all made sense, and each solution was clear. Programming in VB is like trying to think like a schizophrenic person, while trying to stay sane and sober. Next on the list would be C++.
You must be careful in the forest Broken glass and rusty nails If you're to bring back something for us I have bullets for sale...
I've been working with C# coded by VB developers, and have dealt with C++ splattered on the screen from the grubby fists of another VB guru. There is a state of mind for VB it just takes an ice pick to get there.
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
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Roger Wright wrote: As far as assembly being boring is concerned - if you've ever had to program a missile guidance control test program with only 512 bytes of memory available to store and execute your program, boring would not be the word you'd choose for the experience. You don't even have to be on Guidance... tracking and test support, and the bloody thing desides to turn around midflight and as range safety tries to decide when to blow the thing up, with an "Instaneous Impact prediction" routine that updates one time per second and has to hold for two updates away from populated areas... and you are ground zero.... your heart pumping blood faster as the missile grows in your camera that tracks at 60 per.... The first thing you do after you survive the experience, is write an IIP that updates at 30per in any way you can. Ironically, range safety still doesn't have it, but ordinance recovery does, and it forced the range to write a faster IIP to compete with mine. :D But I definately would not call the experience boring. _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote: an "Instaneous Impact prediction" routine that updates one time per second Who in hell wrote that moronic spec? Fire the dummy, immediately, before he/she gets all of your team killed! If a bird does a turnabout, it should be instantly killed - that can be programmed internally, and should be.:mad: "...putting all your eggs in one basket along with your bowling ball and gym clothes only gets you scrambled eggs and an extra laundry day... " - Jeffry J. Brickley
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I checked the assembly code made by 2 optimizing compilers (MIPS and Kai ). I saw things no programmer would have courage to try like taking advantage of pipelining or antecipating the calls to the floating point unit so the operations would be ready on time, etc. I got convinced that one optimized compiler can control things that no human should try (eg.:registry allocation through 500 lines of code). I agree on what you say about the old DOS times. I programmed 80386 assembler then. But, believe me, some compilers have become insanelly smart. Rui A. Rebelo De perto, ninguém é normal. (At a close look, no one is normal) C. Veloso
Rui A. Rebelo wrote: I checked the assembly code made by 2 optimizing compilers (MIPS and Kai ). I saw things no programmer would have courage to try like taking advantage of pipelining or antecipating the calls to the floating point unit so the operations would be ready on time, etc. I got convinced that one optimized compiler can control things that no human should try (eg.:registry allocation through 500 lines of code). Perhaps... but then when they actually taught assembly language on old PDP-11 for robotic control, they would use the clock speed as a timer by requiring you to code your entire routine including wait statements so that it cycled exactly per spec. anticipating an opening in the floating point coprocessor and various other pipeline operations is exactly what assembly programming was originally about. That was why it took so long to write. If you wrote standard itterative, non-interesting code, the assembly wouldn't be worth a darn. As I said, compilers have learned all the same tricks of a good assembly programmer, though like the race to beat the human chess player, it's either close or time for the compiler to win. I think the human still has the edge, but not on efficiency. I still think I could match and beat any compiler, but it would take me days or weeks and the compiler seconds. There just is no reason to try for that minor percent. In the old days assembly gap was four to ten times faster than the first optimizing compilers, now the edge is down to 5 to 10% max. That's just not worth the extra time anymore. _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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Ahh the good old days. When optimization really meant something. I bet there aren't too many of us around any longer that remember the venerable Ralph Brown's Interrupt List, much to my surprise I stumbled across it a few months ago, still going strong even in this day and age.
"A preoccupation with the next world pretty clearly signals an inability to cope credibly with this one."
John Cardinal wrote: Ralph Brown's Interrupt List There used to be a copy on my shelf. It's now in our ancient technology shelf, along with quad processor GPU workstation boards that are slower than a Geforce 256, and 35Mb RLL hard drives. :) _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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Roger Wright wrote: it is always an intellectual challenge of the first order. A bit like getting a VB program to do something useful then?:doh:
I know you can't become if you only say what you would have done and you'll miss a million miles of fun." - Len Work hard, play hard. Don't forget who you are and don't forget where you're from. Do all these things well and you won't have to wonder where you are going.
I've written quite a few VB utilities intended to do specific tasks for people who do not like or use computers very much. IMHO, there is no better language available for doing this. If you want to do something simple, and add a nice GUI for the user to interact with, there is no better solution than VB. C++ is the favorite among this crowd, but it sucks at making simple solutions for simple problems. VB has a legitimate place in the pantheon of programming languages, tiny though that place may be. When the job calls for something quick and easy, VB is worth a look. VB is quite useful when used properly, though I have to admit that many companies try to make it reach beyond its logical limits. Don't denigrate the language just because it's popular to pick on it here. Instead, try looking at the many ways it may be useful to you. VB really does have a place in our world, and if you don't stress it beyond its inherent capabilities, it does a great job. "...putting all your eggs in one basket along with your bowling ball and gym clothes only gets you scrambled eggs and an extra laundry day... " - Jeffry J. Brickley
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Jeffry J. Brickley wrote: an "Instaneous Impact prediction" routine that updates one time per second Who in hell wrote that moronic spec? Fire the dummy, immediately, before he/she gets all of your team killed! If a bird does a turnabout, it should be instantly killed - that can be programmed internally, and should be.:mad: "...putting all your eggs in one basket along with your bowling ball and gym clothes only gets you scrambled eggs and an extra laundry day... " - Jeffry J. Brickley
Roger Wright wrote: Who in hell wrote that moronic spec? Fire the dummy, immediately, before he/she gets all of your team killed! If a bird does a turnabout, it should be instantly killed - that can be programmed internally, and should be. The problem is that the impulse explosion can send fragments into populated areas if the bird is too low. I understand the problem, however... they had the wrong tool, to use such a rule they would need much faster updates -- by the time they see where it will be its already changing course for somewhere else. That is assuming the bird is spinning wild. When it broke a second stablizer it actually smoothed out and headed down towards one of our camera locations (manned), which gave safety time to get an IIP lock and blow it. It did send fragments raining down, but the vans were well shielded for that at least. They have better tools now, though I still have arguments against it. For low altitude it is useless, it uses a single altitude for the intended target location for the IIP, a flat plane. Any moron with a map (or google earth) can see we do not have a flat location here. Mine adjusts for altitude of estimated location instantly and constantly. Which is why it is going in other ranges. I am waiting for the general to see the software running in one of two other ranges, soon three, and "maybe" several more if we get the new bid. Then he will ask "how do we get that at White sands?" and some secretary will email back an answer 48 hours later sending him to a building on his own base that is used more in other ranges than his own. Then someone will get chewed out. And if it turns out to be me again, I'll go work for the FAA or something. :) _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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RPG : By far, the greatest language I've ever used for doing reports. You can write a very complex, multi-break report in a few lines of code with RPG that takes 50-100 in C/C++. Unfortunately, many hundreds of thousands of managers across the midrange IT landscape didn't care to note the "Report" in "Report Program Generator" and decided that it could also be used for interactive applications :sigh: Cheers, Tom Archer - Visual C++ MVP Archer Consulting Group "So look up ahead at times to come, despair is not for us. We have a world and more to see, while this remains behind." - James N. Rowe
That has been a big probem for me too, languages being used outside their range. Worst example - LabVIEW, an instrument control language being used for intreactive applications :sigh: The tigress is here :-D