Re: [gentoo-dev] Programming advice wanted?

[Olivier Crête]

Hi,

I've been following this thread for a while and I'm wondering wtf is
that doing on gentoo-dev? But I suppose I have to throw in my 2 cents
too..

First, my recommendation is Python and asm. Python, because it has all
the nice concepts of modern programming languages, a clean syntax
(unlike Perl) and help give good habits. One could also learn Ada, as it
has all kind of good "learning" properties, but its a pain to use and
not very popular, so I wouldn't recommend it. 

I second the people who has proposed asm. And its not really hard, asm
is actually pretty easy, each instruction does just one thing. No
complex operator overloading like C++ so you dont know how many millions
of instructions are executed for a simple +. I would even go as far as
recommending x86 asm, which is one of the most complex kind, but its the
ubiquitous architectures (and with amd64, it looks like its going to
stay that way for a while). From asm, move up to C or other compiled
languages is pretty easy. 

On Mon, 2004-03-22 at 22:58, Marc Giger wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 12:36:20 -0800 (PST)
> Dennis Allison <allison@×××××××××××××××.edu> wrote:
> > I don't want to start a flame war, but after an initial love affair I
> > dont't much like Java.  It's not a "better C++", it's a "different
> > C++". I
> More or less. Java = tidied up C++ what the syntax concerns.

I have to disagree here... C++ is not just a OO language like Java, its
a "multi-paradigm" langage (to quote Stroustrup). One of the important
things that C++ does well and that Java lacks is generic programming
(templates in C++), its one of the most powerful aspects of C++ ones
they have been mastered. But I heard that JDK 1.5 would add genericity.

Also, Python is very nice for generic programming, but in python its so
natural that you dont even notice you are doing it.

-- 
Olivier Crête
tester@g.o
Gentoo Developer