Best Programming Language

[Flandrien]

I have been programming with something called 'Progress' for years now.
It is specialised at relational databases.

[Adalbertus]

Asher, I guessed that. But Waterloo has a nice connotation also.

Chegitz, I guess C# is again an attempt of Micro$oft to control the (this time) compiler market by providing again something slightly incompatible.

Jon, as long as they have some sort of backwards compatibility, the thing is necessarily screwed. I have the strong impression that with all the effort put into optimizing and debugging original FORTRAN you could have designed two or three much better languages. The only merit of FORTRAN is being the first. Making FORTRAN into something which has been achieved by Pascal, Algol, or C thirty years ago is simply wasted energy.

[Adagio]

I only know two different languages:

Visual Basic: I like it, but I really doubt it's the best

Java: I don't like it. I have only been working with it, for a couple of weeks though. At the moment we haven't been working with graphical interface, and because of the lack of graphic, I get the feeling it's useless...can't wait til we begin such...

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
have you or anyone looked at modern fortran?

I learned FORTRAN 77 and FORTRAN 90, and they're both crap compared to OO. Imperative programming's a dinosaur. (IIRC, FORTRAN 77 still made you line everything up in column 8. )

[Urban Ranger]

Those are procedural languages. (Not column 8, either, it's column 7, with column 6 being the continuation character).

Anyhow, there is no one best language, I thought all geeks know this by now. It's like asking whether a screwdriver or a hammer is a better tool.

The language should fit the task on hand, thus previous attempts in developing programmming languages to end all other programming languages ended up in failures: PL/1 being the first and Ada being the second.

If you write software for microcontrollers, you use assembly, full stop. C is a nice system level programming language but it has been widely misused, creating software with almost untracable bugs.

Neither C++ nor C# are real high level programming languages. What's worse, C# is yet another MS attempt in the "embrace, extend, extinguish" department. Real high level programming languages are ones such as Smalltalk, Java, Pascal, Oberon, Prolog, and APL.

Fortran is unsurprassed if you need number crunching. It is the only programming language with a built-in complex number data type IIRC.

Lisp is great for doing symbolic stuff, and Snobol excels in string manipulation.

So you must fit your tool to the task on hand, as always.

Glonk,

I thought you don't like operator overloads?


Jon,

Fortran is up to 2000 now? Cool.


Che,

Tickle? Eek.


Adalbertus,

Not anymore AFAIK. Changing the value of constants, that is.

[Pekka]

I like Java. I'm quite new to programming, so I don't know about C etc. I'm moving into them when I get my Java rolling smoothly. I'm not experienced with other so it's hard for me to say, but at least Java is quite simple and fairly gentle to newbies like me.
I've also been doing some stuff with Python, I absolutely love it.
I'm hoping to get better, and I'm learning almost religiously. If I skip a day without learning something, I actually feel bad . Have...to...keep...moving....
It was quite a shock how addicting this is!

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Fortran is unsurprassed if you need number crunching. It is the only programming language with a built-in complex number data type IIRC.

Mathematica's got one, but unfortunately it's only interpreted.

[Urban Ranger]

Pekka,

OOP (object oriented programming) is a lot easier for newbies to handle than those who have been doing procedural programming for some time. It's actually more natural to think OO but old habits die hard


loin,

Mathematica is a stranger to me

[Adalbertus]

Those are procedural languages.

FORTRAN77 smelled a bit like a procedural language, FORTRAN90 seems to be one, more or less, but 20 years too late.
I successfully changed 2 into 3 or 4 on FORTRAN77 when I attended the numerical mathematics course in 1991. So it probably changed only with FORTRAN90, which to me looks like a revived dinosaur. If you can try this, I'd be curious to know.

It's like asking whether a screwdriver or a hammer is a better tool

I'd always opt for the screwdriver. Much more potential for unconventional use.

You're right, there are languages which fit one purpose better than others. On the other hand, C, Pascal, Basic, Modula-2, and Algol are quite equivalent. C has a slightly better support for bit fiddling, Basic for Spaghetti code, Modula-2 for modular programming (what C tries to imitate with the preprocessor), and Algol for people who read backwards, but most of the code can be translated 1:1. The choice between these languages is mainly a matter of taste, and non-technical issues, such as support, existing libraries etc. - FORTRAN77 already would have problems with recursions, which was a major drawback, IMO. So here we are dealing with different screwdrivers.
I see real differences to languages like OOP languages, Lisp, Prolog. So these are the things I would compare to hammer, saw etc.

P.S. I once looked into Cobol and had only the impression "weird". It seems or seemed to have been widely used in business applications. Is there someone who can point out the essentials of this language?

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Mathematica is a stranger to me

It's a bit like a hybrid of APL and LISP (and some procedural loops thrown in for lazy programmers or for people who like to write legible code), but with some extremely powerful mathematics functions built into it. (F'rinstance, if you want to solve PDE's then you've usually got to write your own program for it, but you can solve ODE's with Mathematica's built-in functions.)

[Pekka]

Urban Ranger, I bet you know what you're talking about.
About a year ago when I got interested about learning how to program, I did lots of research what language to use as a first one. I have no regrets. I'm still interested to learn C, C++, but I won't run into it just yet, I want to develop my skills in Java first. I think it's better to be good at one language, than know 6 different languages little.
Besides, it should be easier to learn new languages when you know the basics and have some experience with other language anyway. I found it easy to start with Python when I had experience with Java. It was just a matter of days when I got to the same level with Python, that it took my almost 5 months with Java.
But I'm still a bit newbie, eager to learn more and put my skills in use some day .

I greet you oh big Gurus!

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Adalbertus
You're right, there are languages which fit one purpose better than others. On the other hand, C, Pascal, Basic, Modula-2, and Algol are quite equivalent. C has a slightly better support for bit fiddling, Basic for Spaghetti code, Modula-2 for modular programming (what C tries to imitate with the preprocessor), and Algol for people who read backwards, but most of the code can be translated 1:1. The choice between these languages is mainly a matter of taste, and non-technical issues, such as support, existing libraries etc. - FORTRAN77 already would have problems with recursions, which was a major drawback, IMO.

Mostly that way, but there are also other factors such as speed, reusability (e.g. Modula-2's modules), type checking, pointer arithematic (the question is, why do you want to do it?), etc. And Algol is Algol

Still, Fortran is the number one choice for scientific computing.

Originally posted by Adalbertus
P.S. I once looked into Cobol and had only the impression "weird". It seems or seemed to have been widely used in business applications. Is there someone who can point out the essentials of this language?

Data processing. It is very good at opening a file or a bunch of files, read some stuff from them, and produce some output, such as reports or other files. It's used for applications such as payroll before the advent of modern databases. Okay, it is still used for those applications. For what it is designed to do COBOL is decent.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Pekka
About a year ago when I got interested about learning how to program, I did lots of research what language to use as a first one. I have no regrets. I'm still interested to learn C, C++, but I won't run into it just yet, I want to develop my skills in Java first. I think it's better to be good at one language, than know 6 different languages little.

That's true. The fundamental thing is not how to write the actual code, but how to derive the algorithm to solve your current task. That is 90% of the work. Doing the acutal coding is just the finishing touch.

The problem most people have with programming is they dive right in to start writing code, without going through a detailed analysis and design stage. This way it is extremely easy to overlook the borderline cases that cause crashes and bugs. Borderline cases are things such as when the program is expecting an input but is getting null, or the input is different from expected.

Originally posted by Pekka
Besides, it should be easier to learn new languages when you know the basics and have some experience with other language anyway. I found it easy to start with Python when I had experience with Java. It was just a matter of days when I got to the same level with Python, that it took my almost 5 months with Java.
But I'm still a bit newbie, eager to learn more and put my skills in use some day .

That's because they are both OOP languages. You'll have problems with languages in other categories (other than procedural) such as logic programming. APL is also odd for most people

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by loinburger
It's a bit like a hybrid of APL and LISP (and some procedural loops thrown in for lazy programmers or for people who like to write legible code), but with some extremely powerful mathematics functions built into it. (F'rinstance, if you want to solve PDE's then you've usually got to write your own program for it, but you can solve ODE's with Mathematica's built-in functions.)

Can it also handle symbolic stuff or is it limited to numerical calculations?

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Can it also handle symbolic stuff

Yup. That's the LISP-ish aspect of it--its functional programming aspect is more reminiscent of APL, IMO.