which language to start with

Christian Graus

Amar Chaudhary wrote:

actually i don't have any choice and he had gone through few hundred of options

ROTFL - just what you need.

Amar Chaudhary wrote:

es i will implement that cause it is easier to learn when there few things distracting

Great. That was obvious to me when I taught myself C++, but nowadays, people mostly laugh at me for suggesting it.

Christian Graus - C++ MVP 'Why don't we jump on a fad that hasn't already been widely discredited ?' - Dilbert

El Corazon

Amar Chaudhary wrote:

high-level programming language in widespread use today

because it is still used in AI, even more than Prolog even though Prolog was "supposed" to be better, plus it is used in script interpreters for a couple of professional programs which will remain nameless.... It's fun, when you have the right mindset (I think people call me insane when I say things like that), otherwise, it's difficult. :) Personally I find LISP, Forth, Prolog and a few other odd languages intriguing, but I am computer multi-lingual.... Now if only I could learn Spanish.... :rolleyes:

_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)

Scott Dorman

Christian Graus wrote:

Amar Chaudhary wrote: es i will implement that cause it is easier to learn when there few things distracting Great. That was obvious to me when I taught myself C++, but nowadays, people mostly laugh at me for suggesting it.

Perhaps the most important way to learn a new language. Programming GUI's may be the more "glamorous" thing to do, but it distracts you from actually learning how to do things in the language. It's relatively easy to learn that you must attach an event handler to a button (something most of the IDEs do for you anyway) in order to get it to actually do something...it's much harder to learn how to get it to actually do that "something".

----------------------------- In just two days, tomorrow will be yesterday.

Amar Chaudhary

sounds cool a must look :):)

it is good to be important but it is more important to be good

123 0

Okay, here's the post you've all been waiting for. Why not Plain English? Your dad will be writing simple programs with it the first day, and won't have to change languages even when he wants to write significant applications like page editors and compilers later on. And we can pretty much guarantee that the syntax he learns - whoops! already knows - won't be obsolete in several years. Besides, as we've mentioned numerous times before, our product was developed with the beginner (as well as the professional) specifically in mind. It's small. Fast. Friendly. Inexpensive. Easy to install. Remarkably simple yet surprisingly deep. And now, to sweeten the pot, let me propose a test. We'll supply a copy of Plain English at no charge, and you set your dad up with some kind of C# environment. After a week or two with each, we ask him what he thinks and post his thoughts here on CodeProject. What do you say - no, let me take that back. What does he say to this offer?

Christian Graus

Scott Dorman wrote:

It's relatively easy to learn that you must attach an event handler to a button (something most of the IDEs do for you anyway) in order to get it to actually do something...it's much harder to learn how to get it to actually do that "something".

EXactly. I hate to say it ( because it's somewhat of a cliche ), but it's true that on MSDN, the VB.NET forums in particular are full of people who won't be told that they need to go back and learn to code, because they made something pretty using drag and drop in the IDE. Then there was the guy who blasted MS in those forums for making VB too hard. And the guy who asked for a drag and drop interface for C++, so he could program C++, too.

Christian Graus - C++ MVP 'Why don't we jump on a fad that hasn't already been widely discredited ?' - Dilbert

El Corazon

The Grand Negus wrote:

And we can pretty much guarantee that the syntax he learns - whoops! already knows - won't be obsolete in several years.

Sorry, the man looses again! Thank you for playing, better luck next time! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_change[^] Step right up, next person to try for the cupie doll!

_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)

Chris Austin

Python. It has a clean syntax, lots of flexability and, lots of portability.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. - -Lazarus Long, Time Enough For Love

Christian Graus

Hey, I have a question. Reading this made me actually go and look at your site. I downloaded your demo program, which claims to 'paint in the style of *some artist*'. Now, to be fair, you do provide the source, so it's easy for someone to look through and see what it does. But, it is NOT a painting program. It's an image filter, combined with downloading images from google image search. The however many lines of code work because of image processing code in the background library. Given the ability to not count code I'd write as a framework, I could do this in a similar number of lines in C#. It's also obvious from reading the code ( at least to me ), that the language has it's own strict rules of grammar, making it not that much different from, say, VB.NET. To handle an event (refresh): Show everything. Could I instead type Make sure you draw everything if there's a call to do so because that would also be a 'plain english' way of writing it. I'm just wondering if you factor in to your recommendation that you're recommending another language, with it's own rules of grammar and syntax, and with far less support than the more mainstream languages ? This looks to me like a nice toy for programmers to play with, not something I'd recommend to a beginner, who is then at your personal mercy ( I don't see any PE communities online ? ) Just curious...

Christian Graus - C++ MVP 'Why don't we jump on a fad that hasn't already been widely discredited ?' - Dilbert

123 0

It's a relative thing, Jeffry; be reasonable. I'm able to read English language books written hundreds of years ago; a C# compiler won't compile C++ code written last week. The bulk of English grammar is not going to significantly change in the lifetime of Amar's dad, but C# will almost certainly not compile with whatever Microsoft offers as a development system twenty years from now. Or ten. Or five. One of the reasons we chose English for our compiler is that we knew the development of the PAL would be a decades-long undertaking and we didn't want to have to worry about constantly reworking our code during those years.

Christian Graus

Yeah, Python is actually kinda cool. At least, that's my recollection.

Christian Graus - C++ MVP 'Why don't we jump on a fad that hasn't already been widely discredited ?' - Dilbert

El Corazon

PaulC1972 wrote:

I am hoping my post will summon The Grand Troll for some entertainment

That's some pretty powerful magic you have! worked right on schedule!

_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)

David Stone

And what better place to learn C# on the console than Inside C#[^], by our very own Tom Archer. :)

Oh geez... the forum keeps spinning... you'll take care o f it i'm sure, c'ause ... yeah, i neede this. *cough* anyway good job finding the bug.
-Shog9 on...a Firefox bug.

CodeGuy

+1

Paul Conrad

The Grand Negus wrote:

C# compiler won't compile C++ code written last week

Duh! They are two different languages.

The Grand Negus wrote:

C# will almost certainly not compile with whatever Microsoft offers as a development system twenty years from now. Or ten. Or five.

Only if it is C# and they are still supporting in the future.

If you try to write that in English, I might be able to understand more than a fraction of it. - Guffa

Paul Conrad

:laugh::laugh::laugh:

If you try to write that in English, I might be able to understand more than a fraction of it. - Guffa

Christian Graus

Well, in fact, Microsoft didn't get Tom to write a book for C# 2005, so that book, while it was good at the time, is now out of date.

Christian Graus - C++ MVP 'Why don't we jump on a fad that hasn't already been widely discredited ?' - Dilbert

El Corazon

The Grand Negus wrote:

The bulk of English grammar is not going to significantly change in the lifetime of Amar's dad

True, but the feeling that it is changing is a powerful demotivator. With each generation the gap in language grows and you have a great deal of frustration even over something as "common" as the English language. Now if you had made a Latin compiler, at least that wouldn't change. High level languages are chosen for several reasons, the least of which is an irrelevant pipe dream completely unrelated to the compiler (a movie), the primary reasons are specifically to limit change to thematic concepts so the underlying architecture can change at will. As functional capability is added the language changes, but slowly. This is actually a good thing. With English, the frustration is already there, with generation gaps changing words, plus you still have to learn YOUR interpretation of the syntax of a PE compiler, not his. Which will be frustrating still. As I said before when you employ a full version of a lexical analysis so that the computer truly understands speech, then you have something more. Until then a dog learning to sit has more social importance than your syntaxical version of the PE compiler. And amazingly enough, is actually closer to HAL than your compiler. :rolleyes: -- modified at 16:10 Wednesday 29th November, 2006

_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)

Member 96

C#, definitely. C++ is dying despite what people are inevitably going to say in reaction to that statement they know in their hearts it's true.

Dan Neely

Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:

Sorry, the man looses again! Thank you for playing, better luck next time! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language\_change\[^\]

If possible, find a copy of L. Sprague deCamp's essay "English for hte Time Traveller". Even though it's a bit dated (the 'now' neologism examples are 50 or 60 yearrs old), it's by far the best consise example of how the English language has changed over the last few hundred years.

-- Rules of thumb should not be taken for the whole hand.