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You haven't seen my game reviews yet... they are even longer than that

Lol, if I wasn't lazy and my right mouse button was working... I'd have to post a 5000 word essay!

I did everything a Professional programmer despises! I went for GML to C and C++, almost directly (I then learned FreeBASIC and LibertyBASIC) PHP is the biggest mess of a scripting language I've ever seen and the lack of dummy tutorials for the IDE's I've learned for all of these languages really frustrates me.

RexHunter99 wrote:Lol, if I wasn't lazy and my right mouse button was working... I'd have to post a 5000 word essay!

Draco's updates still pwns everyone in terms of length.

Back to topic...(As if I care, )

DL, what's your views on HLA(High Level Assembly)?

Never worked with it so I can't really say much about.

ok, my 2 cents.

("procedural" doesn't mean much, all languages are/can be procedural these days. same for "object-oriented")

- compiled code (or almost) for desktop and network applications: delphi, if you respect yourself; java, if you want to get a job fast; c/c++/c#, if you think you're a tough guy.
- scripting, for lots of text file parsing and/or web programming: perl.
- scripting, for web programming: php.
- if you want to do web programming you'll need a lot of javascript too.

programming is an art because it involves a lot of modeling (abstraction) of reality. thus, you develop data structures from elementary data types, and algorithms to interact with that data. pick any language you wish to start with, you'll learn more later on. for application programming i would suggest a visual programming environment such as delphi (turbo delphi and the lazarus/fpc look-alike are free) or visual basic or visual studio (free). for web programming just get a decent text editor such as notepad++ and an interpreter for your programming language, they are all free.

good luck.

good lord, could it really be another oldster? might Slug's plan be kicking some backsides to get people to return to Jurassic park? be wary of how you tread Troodon... the foodchain has regrettably shifted a bit *checks for compy attack* and some of these guys will post before you can blink... also it's well worth reading up on some of the events that have happened of late

Troodon wrote:- compiled code (or almost) for desktop and network applications: delphi, if you respect yourself; java, if you want to get a job fast; c/c++/c#, if you think you're a tough guy.
- scripting, for lots of text file parsing and/or web programming: perl.
- scripting, for web programming: php.
- if you want to do web programming you'll need a lot of javascript too.

Hey welcome, bro.

You forgot Assembly, for Big Red's...

I'm astonished to see somebody mention Delphi. Not to say it's a bad language or anything but at all the places I've been so far you had to look hard to find somebody doing Delphi. That said it's also hard to find people doing SmallTalk ( like I can do ) .

Now about your statement, it's not fully correct. "procedural" and "object oriented" are programming paradigms. It indicates how programs are developed. Of course you can drive Python as an OO language but by design its a procedural one. You can also drive C in OO way ( using the unholy construct of "handlers" ) but at heart it's a procedural language. Hence the idea is to classify a language after the main programming paradigm used. Therefore C is procedural, C++ a hybrid ( not a pure OO ), Python is procedural ( OO is hacked using dictionaries ), PHP procedural ( although in the later version they added a hybrid approach similar to C++ ) and SmallTalk OO. So it's not to "declassify" languages in any way it's about knowing what a language is strong in. Somebody misusing C for doing heavily OO programming is as bad as somebody using SmallTalk to do heavily procedural programming. Hence this is also why Java is cumbersome for certain algorithms which are heavily procedural in nature but it's strong for for algorithms based on OO principles.

Dragonlord wrote:using dictionaries ), PHP procedural ( although in the later version they added a hybrid approach similar to C++ ) and SmallTalk OO. So it's not to "declassify" languages in any way it's about knowing what a language is strong in. Somebody misusing C for doing heavily OO programming is as bad as somebody using SmallTalk to do heavily procedural programming. Hence this is also why Java is cumbersome for certain algorithms which are heavily procedural in nature but it's strong for for algorithms based on OO principles.

Awesome, man, you know Smalltalk? Lol, it's like visiting the Programmer's Museum's oldest OO languages section.

Put simple... who doesn't know SmallTalk can't be a hacker. It's the mother of the object oriented programming paradigm. Seeing all the cranked up pseudo-OO languages nowadays you need to know the original ( or pure ) design to understand what OO really is. Many don't which is one of the reasons why many programs nowadays are crappy and buggy.

There is a difference between a trend and main stream. Chris wants to learn programming and that's not the same as becoming a hot shot software developer over night, one needs error-proof tools to learn fast and Delphi is just perfect for that purpose. Switching to C thereafter shouldn't be a problem for him, if that's what he wants.

There are dozens of scripting languages out there, and what do they use them for? Software installation, configuration and system administration, mainly. Tell you what, I have this friend who is a senior NASA software scientist at JPL in Pasadena and he and his High Performance Computing team develop software in Fortran (the "new" Fortran, with pointers and such) and also does a few "interfaces" every now and then in Python on Mac OSX. He also "likes" Ruby but that's it. In the financial industry they use Java a lot these days, specifically J2EE, but why? I have lots of friends who are professional software developers and their answer is, "because it scales up well". Have you ever run a Java program on a desktop? Noticed how slow it is compared to a compiled program? The memory limitations on Windows? In the banking industry they don't seem to care but in gaming they do.

So, for a desktop application you need a GUI-based, compiled program. What are your options? C/C++ and Delphi. They teach you C in school because some think it's cool, but it's not, at least not compared to Delphi. Yes, C is powerful, it was originally created for writing operating systems, but you almost have to do C for a living to avoid its pitfalls. Have you written a program in Delphi 2007 for Win32? It's incredibly easy to use and versatile.

My advice, for learning try Delphi, it's more intuitive and as fast as Visual C. And you can develop OpenGL games in Delphi just as well as you can do it in C, check these out: http://www.glscene.org and http://www.glscene.com. Also, have a look at this: http://www.marcocantu.com/papers/Cult.htm. Delphi may be to C what Mac OSX is to Windows but that only makes it more interesting.

But the most important thing to do, as a software developer, is to also specialize in a field other than programming. You will fare better if you have the background required to understand what your employer is talking about.

Dragonlord wrote:I'm astonished to see somebody mention Delphi. Not to say it's a bad language or anything but at all the places I've been so far you had to look hard to find somebody doing Delphi. That said it's also hard to find people doing SmallTalk ( like I can do ) .

lol They are teaching Delphi in high schools here now. I didn't learn it because they changed the curriculum, I learned Visual Basic instead. They are not that different from each other.

Uhm...



I know a couple of those

Delphi is basically just an OO version of Borland's Pascal. I haven't really used it, but as such, it shouldn't be that different from C++ (keeping in mind that Pascal wasn't so different from C). A little more user-friendly, maybe...

From what I've gathered and heard, Delphi is a slower form of C++ (Not too slow, just slower)