Programming advice please

[loinburger]

I'm a big fan of static typing, so PHP's ridiculous typing/coercion rules are enough to keep me away.

I'm currently learning Coq, which is at the opposite end of the spectrum from PHP - Coq requires you to use its type system to prove that all of your programs terminate (which can make it a bit difficult to write some types of programs, however I'm not planning on writing those types of programs in Coq)

[BlackCat]

I don't get why people whine about PHP. If you don't like it, there's plenty of other options.

If your boss says "here is a dozen of php webservices based on Z39.50/oracle, please convert them to Solr/postgres still in php", then you don't have "other options"

[Pekka]

Python, python, python. After that add on to your arsenal by need, depending on what you really do. Python will suffice for lots of things with great libraries available.

[Aeson]

If your boss says "here is a dozen of php webservices based on Z39.50/oracle, please convert them to Solr/postgres still in php", then you don't have "other options"

There's still some options there

[Aeson]

I think Python isn't the right place to start given the only application he's mentioned is games.

[loinburger]

Yeah, Java or C# would be a better place to start, then later on he can transition to C++/Objective-C/Swift if need be - if he's targeting the desktop then C# would probably be a better choice, whereas if he's targeting mobile phones then Java would be better (Swift is pretty similar to Java, the biggest difference I think is that Swift uses a reference counting garbage collector while Java uses a tracing garbage collector, so circular references in Swift either need to be avoided or else they need to be broken up with weak references)

[DaShi]

You'll never be happy using someone else's language. I suggest writing your own.

[loinburger]

Some schmuck made his own language called ParaSail for parallel programming - parallel programming is difficult, so he wrote ParaSail in order to make sequential programming so difficult that programmers would be forced to make their algorithms parallel instead.

[Lorizael]

Here's a question for programmer people. What would you suggest learning if you're interested in computational simulation (as in physics/astrophysics/cosmology)? I don't think anyone here actually does that... but I figure computer people might know people who do.

[loinburger]

Matlab, which costs money. Scilab and Octave are free alternatives, I don't know enough about them to provide a recommendation as to which to try first.

[loinburger]

Julia is another (newer) modeling and simulation language I've seen discussed. I've used Matlab and its graphics utilities are easy to use, presumably the same holds true for Scilab and Octave; Julia is a lot faster than Matlab/Scilab/Octave (Julia is compiled, the other three are mostly interpreted), but I don't know anything about its graphics utilities. Julia's being newer also means that you'd have more difficulty finding packages for it, e.g. if you want to model a solar system then chances are good that you could google some Matlab code and adapt it to Scilab/Octave whereas you might have to roll your own in Julia.

[onodera]

Julia's been designed to resemble Matlab to simplify porting existing Matlab scripts.

Octave is slow af. You think Ruby's slow? Octave's much slower than Ruby.

[kentonio]

If you just want to play with making games, Unreal Engine 4 is currently probably your best entry point. You can build whole games just using the visual scripting system without having the learn real code syntax. It'd also ease you into a real programming language afterwards, as you'd be learning about how variables and classes and suchlike work. There's also a vast array of tutorials and guides on the internet, plus many forums where people are happy to answer questions.

Oh and its free of course.

[Lorizael]

Julia is another (newer) modeling and simulation language I've seen discussed. I've used Matlab and its graphics utilities are easy to use, presumably the same holds true for Scilab and Octave; Julia is a lot faster than Matlab/Scilab/Octave (Julia is compiled, the other three are mostly interpreted), but I don't know anything about its graphics utilities. Julia's being newer also means that you'd have more difficulty finding packages for it, e.g. if you want to model a solar system then chances are good that you could google some Matlab code and adapt it to Scilab/Octave whereas you might have to roll your own in Julia.

Cool. Matlab is free for me as long as I can continue to convince them I'm a UMD student. I've been using Matlab for awhile now, but mostly for data processing/graphing. I've heard of Octave but haven't used it. Several of my classmates hate Matlab and think Python is clearly superior, but I'm not sure what they're basing this opinion on.

[Aeson]

I'd go with Unity over UE4. Mainly for the amount of tools/assets available, as well as the general usefulness of C#/Javascript vs UE4's scripting or difficulty of C++.

Try both out and see what suits you best.