What is your most prefered programming language?

[Suneet]

I noticed in this: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=15704 thread that someone was having trouble getting a button to open a window with Visual C++. With Visual Basic, we wouldn't even have to think about a simple thing like that. I've never used C++ (Otherwise, I only use JavaScript/ActionScript), but unless your program is running fast fourier transformations, doesn't Visual Basic seem to be a better choice for building Windows apps? Speed isn't*that* important here, as the stuff you're doing isn't that intense.

Go Flash MX! Coding in binary? /me shakes head

[rbayer]

Originally posted by Suneet
With Visual Basic, we wouldn't even have to think about a simple thing like that.

Yes, you would. When you're first learning any language simple things like that can be a pain--it took me three hours to figure out how to delete an entry from a tree view control when I first started.

As for VB versus VC++ in general, my biggest gripe with VB is that it has zero portability. If you write your C++ code correctly, you can very easily separate the MS specific portions from the core functions, making it much easier to port to other systems. RoboEmu only took a day-and-a-half to port to Linux because of this. If I had written it in VB, I would have had to start from scratch. On the other hand, VB does some things amazingly quickly and easily. At some point, I'll sit down and learn it a little better.

[seanwitte]

VB doesn't have built-in thread support and does not support inheritance. This is aggravating sometimes because it has partial support of interfaces. The only way I know of doing asynchronous processing with VB is to compile the forked portion into an ActiveX exe and use callbacks or events.

The .NET framework changes everything. There is no reason at all to code in managed C++, as far as I can tell. There is no runtime execution speed difference between managed C++, C#, and VB.NET. You can pick whichever you feel comfortable with and not be penalized.

[Patrik]

The whole .Net architecture is a scary idea. It is generally working towards one thing, subscription based licenses. They want you to pay them so ammount of money per month to use office and of course this is not going to be a steady amount it will probably increase and will cost you even more.

The reason C# is about the same speed as C++ is because they both go through the same optimizer so of course they are about the same speed. It probably works the same as the GNU compilers work (Gnu FORTRAN and Gnu C produce similar results) But as someone stated they're both much slower than the 6.0 counterparts. FYI, compiled VB code has in general just been calls to the ol' VBRUNXXX.DLL and so it was never all that fast because it was jumping around in library calls. I think newer versions may actually compile but it's still at a high enough that the functions are very unoptimized.

Assembly is in general faster than compilers since most compilers are about a generation behind in generating optimized code (like the current generation of compilers can only generate optimized code for the P3 (except of course in the case of the Intel compiler which is usually ahead of the general compilers). Of course P4 has been out for a while now and this may not be so much the case anymore, but back in the day...

Best OOP: Objective C a more thoughtful hack than C++ IMHO and yes neither of them are new languages they're really just hacks that live ontop of C
Best Parser: Perl
Best Web: PHP
Best IDE: Project Builder from Mac OS X DK
Best for Games: C (C++ has too much overhead)
Best OS: Linux, leaning towards OS X
Best FPGA Programming: Viva

And of course Scheme and Lisp deserve mention, especially the MIT implementation of scheme. I did a Crypto course this semester and except for the parsing algo's used for the classic crypto systems I worked almost entirely in scheme. Scheme gets a lot of power of smart recursion, weak data typing, and from arbitrary data types. I think if you can program in this and an interative language well then you'll be a much more well rounded programmer.

Patrik

[Adam Shapiro]

I guess my 1st choice would have to be VB since I have used it the longest (continuously). I do, though, enjoy working in C++ though it is definately a much harder language. Of course, Flash is always fun but not too powerful...

[yaman]

I think your choices aren't very extensive... you also forgot the most important one:

It depends on the situation.

Next time, don't forget PHP, Perl, Python, C, and all our personal favorites... assembly....


*rolls eyes*
No, I do not know asssembly.


Edit: Oh yeah and I forgot to mention, Java is evil and should be obliterated from the face of the earth. Thank you.

[rwaliany]

Originally posted by yaman


Edit: Oh yeah and I forgot to mention, Java is evil and should be obliterated from the face of the earth. Thank you.

Java has a slower run time and takes up more resources
therefore
Java = Time * Resources
Time = Money
Resources = Money
Java = Money * Money
Java = Money^2
Money is the square root of all evil
therefore money = evil^1/2
money^2 = evil^2/2
furthermore
java = EVIL

Yeah, theres not enough choices...

Order of prefeference....C, C++, PHP, HTML STUFF, Flash, Perl, ASP, JavaSCRIPT, PBASIC(pbasic even comes before java), Java (eww), VB (then vb the evil limited language, you can't use semi-colons!!!! And it brings up like 3 message boxes if you start coding in C for one second.)

Operating System: Linux > windows
^ greater than sign

I hate java, although my java game (AP CMPSCI) (beat up Mr. Lund) is quite fun...

[Adam Shapiro]

I agree with your java theory. Java has a tendency to ruin the best coders... I would rather stick with the standards (Perl, PHP, etc.)...

[Mongoose]

That java theory was actually first used for girls:
Girls = time * money...
Java is really slow and takes up a lot of resources on my computer; I remember bringing up the task manager and seeing that java.exe took 30 MB of RAM, which was by far the largest consumer of resources. I think I'll consider Java more seriously when they get it faster and more compact. I've been working Perl a lot lately and I've got to say that I'm spoiled by not having to declare anything except for #!/usr/bin/perl. But the pattern matching works like magic and I think it really is a practical language for extraction and reports.

[rwaliany]

Originally posted by Mongoose
That java theory was actually first used for girls:
Girls = time * money...

Hehe, so. It still works.

[KrazyKarl]

COME ON EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


GO TI-BASIC

[Matt Leese]

Originally posted by Adam Shapiro
I agree with your java theory. Java has a tendency to ruin the best coders... I would rather stick with the standards (Perl, PHP, etc.)...

Perhaps you have a completely different idea of "standards" than I do. PHP isn't really a programming language. It's much more a scripting language (you don't tend to write programs in PHP, you write dynamic web pages with it; yes it is possible to write programs in PHP). Perl is also mostly a scripting language in that you tend to use it to automate tasks (again, not always; it's used more as a programming language than PHP).

I have no idea why you'd say Java ruins the best coders. Java is fairly good at teaching Object-Oriented Programming which is really a must when using structured design.

Matt

[Brandon Martus]

Originally posted by Matt Leese
Java is fairly good at teaching Object-Oriented Programming which is really a must when using structured design.

I agree, and evidently so do many colleges & universities. A lot of them start out teaching Java in their intro classes.

[LBK Rules]

You forgot Visual Basic 6. (Not .NET)

[jeremy562]

QBasic? Do people still use that? I know I did quite a bit, but after I learned some stuff that was actually useful, I haven't touched it!

My lang of choice is C++, and ASP or PHP for web scripting, depending on what the server is. I'm not a huge fan of Java, but J2EE is a pretty nice set of technologies.

I'm strongly against applets, however. The web was meant to be thin client! You can do just about anything with simple HTML/JS/CSS.