Favorite programming languages?

[Jason78]

VBA is a programming language in every sense of the word :)

It's turing complete, I'll give it that.

I find it unwieldy though.  Have you tried writing a multi-threaded app in VB?

[Plu (OP)]

There's no such fucking thing!  

Don't tell my boss or he'll stop giving me my salary at the end of the month!  :shock:

I find it unwieldy though. Have you tried writing a multi-threaded app in VB?

I've never programmed in VB myself, actually.

[caseagainstfaith]

But to answer the OP's question.  It would have to be something like C.  I find it an elegant language to express code in.

C "elegant"??? WFT? C is utter shit as far as elegance.  C# or Java are C-like languages that have some elegance to them, and are so by pulling out the most complete shit parts of C. (I'm looking at you, macros)

Pascal is verbose.  But, far better as far as elegance.

My primary programming languages of choice are Delphi (Pascal based) and C#.

[caseagainstfaith]

ADA and Eiffel, what little I know of them, seem "elegant".  Oxygene, a .NET Pascal flavored language looks nice.  But, I haven't really used them, so, I can't give any real professional opinion of them.

[Lao Tou]

Most of my work over the last decade has been programming in SQL. I started out as a VB programmer (5 & 6), moved to Active Server Pages, then renounced the Dark Side (ASP) and went to SQL. A year ago I took a class on C#, and this year I took another. C# is a much better programming language than Visual Basic was, and now as my antique VB apps crash and burn I find myself looking for ways to rewrite them in C#. BTW, my VB and C# apps are UIs for the SQL code that does the actual work.

I am first and foremost a SQL programmer.

[SGOS]

I started out as a VB A year ago I took a class on C#, and this year I took another. C# is a much better programming language than Visual Basic was

As BASIC began to go the way of the dinosaurs, I decided I too must move on.  Now BASIC always came with the machines.  In the old Apples, I think it may have been part of the hardware.  In PCs with Windows, it came as part of the software included in Windows.  It was free.

Anyway, it turned out that Visual Basic I had to send for.  It may have cost about $100, but I thought what the Hell, since I wanted to continue programming.  Now there was a cute little tutorial that came with VB and it did some pretty cool stuff, and it wasn't hard to catch on, but for the life of me, it didn't explain how to save anything I wrote.  I confess, I didn't work too hard trying to figure this out, but Microsoft was quick to tell me I could get Professional VB for $1500, and that's where I lost interest in the whole thing.  I guess my programming days were naturally coming to an end.   I decided I'd just buy some games.

[SGOS]

I've poked around in and tinkered with the files in Microsoft Flight Simulator.  Some of the stuff is buried in places I can't find, and probably wouldn't understand, but you can change characteristics of the planes in each individual airplane folder.  Of all things, this information comes in a simple notepad file.  It's just data, not actual source code, but I always wondered about that.  Apparently some programming somewhere gets information from these notepad textfiles.  Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Obviously, I'm so far out of the loop now, I probably should just keep my mouth shut, but I just had to ask.

[Plu (OP)]

Yeah, that's one of the basic approaches to programming lots of things that are very similar in actions but different in properties (ie; different planes all do the same basic thing but each has a different size, speed, rotate speed, etc)

You build the code to work with an external data source, so that you only write code to fly a plane once, and then just point it to the right location to determine which visual model to use, how fast it flies and turns, etc.

The fun part about putting all that stuff in text files is that users can add their own stuff or change the existing ones (which is a simple form of what's called 'modding games'; players changing their own game for fun)

You see this in lots of games because it's an easy way to add a huge amount of replay value when people from around the world start adding new units and scenarios to games.

[SGOS]

[SGOS]

This is where my time is going now.  Flight Simulator airports are generic and boring.  Just the same buildings over and over again whether it's in Turkey or the back woods of Colorado, and there's no place to go with a sea plane.  Sure, you can land on the water.  Big deal.  Eventually you begin to ask yourself why.

I used what I guess you would call a type of cad draw program to create this destination.  This is my first attempt, a sawmill on the Chandalar River in Alaska.  The program, called FSDS, was fairly popular up through FS9, and there were quite a few of us in the Flight Sim community uploading freeware to the net.  But in the last and final update, FSX closed off the community from tinkering with the program (how you talked about modding games).  It can be done, but it's much harder.  As a result many people have uninstalled FSX and gone back to FS9, and most of the user designed stuff, especially scenery, is still devoted to FS9.

FSDS has been "updated" (kind of) to work in FSX, but the cad draw program is pretty hinky and a lot of problems have to be corrected by trial error, and it starts getting especially glitchy with Windows 7.  I had to go to the Net and find some workarounds.  

I've created 5 more of these destinations around Fairbanks, Alaska so far.  The old uploaders of scenery seem to be gone now.  I used to communicate with a bunch of them.  I think they got discouraged by Microsoft making the flight simulator less open.  I'm not sure if I'll upload stuff again. I may just make the stuff for my personal use.

[viocjit]

I haven't preference. If you want a dynamic website you can use ASP , PHP or Perl etc... Personally I think that you must choice between PHP and Perl like all tools to use these languages are open source.

If you want make a video game for PC you can use C or C++ etc... If you want program with your calculator TI (Texas Instrument) you can use Ti-Basic or ASM X86.

[Plu (OP)]

[GurrenLagann]

I suppose I'd have to go with the 1st programming language I ever learned, PHP, since I'm more familiar with it than I am with other languages I've delved into over the last several years.

[Jason78]

It just struck me as odd, but when I think about it, there's nothing special about data that says it has to be kept as a super special file type associated with a particular language.

What'll really bake your noodle is that executable code is data.  It can be processed and modified by executing code.  While it's executing.

Self modifying code

Less weird are programs thats output are themselves.  Some programmers have way too much time on their hands.

[SGOS]

It just struck me as odd, but when I think about it, there's nothing special about data that says it has to be kept as a super special file type associated with a particular language.

What'll really bake your noodle is that executable code is data.  It can be processed and modified by executing code.  While it's executing.

That explains some things I've wondered about:

Use as camouflage[edit]

Self-modifying code was used to hide copy protection instructions in 1980s disk-based programs for platforms such as IBM PC and Apple II. For example, on an IBM PC (or compatible), the floppy disk drive access instruction 'int 0x13' would not appear in the executable program's image but it would be written into the executable's memory image after the program started executing.

Self-modifying code is also sometimes used by programs that do not want to reveal their presence, such as computer viruses and some shellcodes. Viruses and shellcodes that use self-modifying code mostly do this in combination with polymorphic code. Modifying a piece of running code is also used in certain attacks, such as buffer overflows.