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Favorite programming languages?

Started by Plu, June 21, 2013, 09:03:47 AM

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Jason78

Quote from: "Plu"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?
Winner of WitchSabrinas Best Advice Award 2012


We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real
tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. -Plato

Plu

QuoteThere'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:

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

I've never programmed in VB myself, actually.

caseagainstfaith

Quote from: "Jason78"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#.
Please visit my site at http://www.caseagainstfaith.com  featuring critiques of Lee Strobel and other apologetics.

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.
Please visit my site at http://www.caseagainstfaith.com  featuring critiques of Lee Strobel and other apologetics.

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.
Recovering Baptist

"My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilization, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can\'t prove it, but you can\'t disprove it either."
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SGOS

Quote from: "Lao Tou"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

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

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.  It's just keyboard characters stored in a fairly rigid format.  All the programming needs to do is get it's hands on it.  A bit of data like "125" doesn't suddenly have no meaning if it's saved from a Microsoft Word file to a Note Pad text file.  It's still "125".  If the program is written to access such files, I guess it wouldn't make any difference where or how it's stored.

This thread is interesting.  Almost makes me want to get involved in programming again, although I've got so many other things to do with my computer, I'm not sure I'm up for going through the learning curves of programming again.  Nor do I have a special need right now.  I've become an end user of programs, rather than a creator of them.

Incidentally, after computers started becoming part of the system, I signed up for a really basic two day introductory course taught by a knowledgeable high school teacher.  I was absolutely confounded by the computer environment.  I'd never touched a computer before.  I kept wondering where things went, and how do I get it back?  Why is this stuff stored in a file?  And why do they even call it a file?  

Part of the problem was that the class was overcrowded, and while I probably could have sorted out the thing with a minimum of help, I could get no personal attention to get myself started.  The teacher seemed like he was always in a rush to get away from me, and didn't have time to answer a couple of crucial questions to get me going.

In utter defeat, I did not return to class after lunch.  I can't tell you how unlike me that is.  The whole process seemed futile.  It felt like I had reached beyond my intellectual limits, like part of my brain, the part that understands computers must be defective or missing.

Not wanting to be outwitted by a machine, I eventually signed up for a real course at the Jr. College.  It was a course in BASIC of all things.  Hell, at the time, I couldn't have even used a word processor, but with just a little help, I caught on and found the experience breathtaking.  That seems like an odd description, but it's actually very accurate.

I eventually became the go to guy when someone had a problem with their computer where I worked.  I don't know if that says something good about me, or how bad the rest of the people I worked with were.  No, it was actually a point of pride.

Even now, having a grasp of what programming is, you guys still amaze me.  It still amazes me that people can tell a machine what to do and get a response.  I'm not sure why, because it's exactly what this whole thing is about.  But learning to program was different from any other learning experience I ever went through.  Fascinating.

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

I'm currently building videogames in Lua using the open source LÖVE 2d games framework. Which is a lot of fun :)

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.
Which means that to me the offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can\'t give way, is the offer of something not worth having.
[...]
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Jason78

Quote from: "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.

Self modifying code

Less weird are programs thats output are themselves.  Some programmers have way too much time on their hands.
Winner of WitchSabrinas Best Advice Award 2012


We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real
tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. -Plato

SGOS

Quote from: "Jason78"
Quote from: "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:

QuoteUse 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.