Here is a poll we put together to better understand the nature of the OSNews readers. Please tell us about the level of experience you got with programming.Note: The Poll is now closed. Thank you for participating.
Poll: Can you Use Programming Languages?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Sadly enough you didn’t put Eiffel on your list.
But then again, there are a few others missing, too.
> Sadly enough you didn’t put Eiffel on your list.
Be serious, I can’t put all 100 languages in such small poll. I just include a very small subset of well known languages, only just to explain and give an idea what kind of languages are relevant for each option of the poll.
Well, since I’m mainly a graphics guy, all I can do is write some Perl and PHP. The sheer quantity of things you have to deal with in order to write GUI software for a certain operating system seems just too intimidating. Gonna stick to pencil and paper, I think. .-)
So, I visit OSNews, because I want to learn more about my options. So far, it taught me well.
I still find it hard to believe that people can’t program. Most of the 1st world can’t, how do they do anything?
I have been following your site for quite some time and my conclusion is that most of your readers are unrealistic and uncommercial linux geeks. I apologize for being a bit too prosaic but these people are completely impossible to deal with. I work as an IT manager for big banking corporation and I hire and fire at least ten of these guys in a month. I find them shortsighted and stupid I must say. Take the input, for example, by Sebastian N. How small is the world of these guys! It never ceases to amaze me.
Voilà, I said it! I just hope that someday, these programmers will realize that it all runs on money and it all must provide services and it should not satisfy petty egos. Well, it is of course IT.
Keep up the good work osnews. The way you present the IT world should teach the guys who read your site something but I personally believe that they are helpless.
People like me will keep on hiring and firing ten of these guys in a month.
Well i agree with you to a certain extent, but it is possible to survive without money (i know im a student).
There is no need to attack these people just because they believe differently to you.
yep can’t program anything I just like computeres
Nicholas B. wrote:
[quote]
I have been following your site for quite some time and my conclusion is that most of your readers are unrealistic and uncommercial linux geeks. I apologize for being a bit too prosaic but these people are completely impossible to deal with. I work as an IT manager for big banking corporation and I hire and fire at least ten of these guys in a month. I find them shortsighted and stupid I must say. Take the input, for example, by Sebastian N. How small is the world of these guys! It never ceases to amaze me.
[/quote]
Nicholas,
I was simply trolling a bit, as I pointed out in my posting myself. But you shouldn’t be generalizing too much, esp. not try to put people you don’t even know into cupboards they don’t fit. Actually I do my development mostly on Windows, and the time it saves my company to do my work in Eiffel is just tremendous. Maybe you should take a look at http://www.eiffel.com .
But then again, you’re probably as sad and helpless in the world of your opinion as those “Linux geeks” you refer to, so it doesn’t matter anyway, and I’m in no mood for a flame war.
Re: Eugenia’s comment: I know that of course, I was merely trying to troll a bit. 😉
Maybe you should reconsider your hiring procedures.
It’s not their fault if you hire the wrong people 😉
Have to agree with Serge there, if you’re wasting the huge overheads and disruption involved in hiring new staff then I’d have to review your position within the company.
But flaming aside, I read OS news regularly as a keen developer to see new innovations in the linux/windows/be world. I’m not prejudiced towards any particular OS, they all have their place for me.
I work as an IT manager for big banking corporation and I hire and fire at least ten of these guys in a month. I find them shortsighted and stupid I must say. Take the input, for example, by Sebastian N. How small is the world of these guys! It never ceases to amaze me.
You wouldn’t happen to have pointy hair by any chance?
I did quite a bit of programming at the age of 10, mostly BASIC on my c64 actually. (Database, Games, Mathematics software). BASIC was a very easy to learn and understand language even for a 10 year old. Some years later, in 1989 I bought myself an Amiga and started writing software with AMOS, a powerful yet simply to learn (BASIC like) programming language. Thousands of good quality software titles were developed by the Amiga community with this great language, many can be found on Aminet. http://www.aminet.net/
If you have an AMOS related website you can join my AMOS webring: http://v.webring.com/hub?ring=amoscoder
Another powerful and fun language to use on the Amiga is Blitz Basic, alot of great commercial software titles were written with this language, like i.e. a smash hit like Worms: Director’s Cut or professional painting software like Perfect Paint.
Programming for AMOS and Blitz Basic is fun, you can download several packages from here: http://www.back2roots.org/Tools/Dev/
If you have no computing experience at all, I would recommend starting with Easy AMOS.
Of course if you don’t own an Amiga you would need to use an emulator. Take a look at my WinUAE tutorial for getting AmigaOS to run on your PC:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1561
Note that many PD software found within my tutorial were actually written with AMOS or Blitz Basic!
The fun factor was very important for me, nowadays most programming languages mostly lack imagination, and programming big software titles is often just too boring for my liking.
> If you have no computing experience at all, I would
> recommend starting with Easy AMOS.
I meant no programming experience.
If you have no previous programming experience, I would argue that C is just as easy to learn as any BASIC is. If you move on to a lower level language from BASIC you’ll pretty much have to unlearn everything anyway, so its probably better just to dive on into C with a good book.
Nicholas B. wrote:
I just hope that someday, these programmers will realize that it all runs on money and it all must provide services and it should not satisfy petty egos.
Though I largly agree with your post I can’t do anything but also tell parts of the other sides story.
Thanks to all IT-chief and marketing staff hypeing it is today almost blody impossible to market a product that is not written in either C, C++ or Java. Other programming languages might verry well fit the product development infinitelly better, but the mere thought of suggesting something not mainstream could get you fired since these languages have NO MARKETING ADVANTAGES.
I’ve actually seen a satisfied customer switch product when he found out that the application they’d successfully been using for three years when he realized that it was written using Common Lisp.
IMNSHO it is people like you who have to make other people understand that different languages are good for different applications.
BTW, there are plans to create similar easy to learn languages for the AmigaDE. I think it would be great to be able to write such software for your cellphone or PDA, using similar programming languages.
Think about the heydays of the c64, when people bought magazines and typed over all the programming command to acquire a new game, IMO those were great days. Imagine being able to do something similar for color cellphones or PDAs as well. That would be very cool IMO.
I would find it interesting how many OSNews readers are
dev-pro’s. How many earn their money with software-development.
Maybe the next poll…
Ralf.
I find this poll a bit insulting. Does it implies that people who do PHP/ASP aren’t “real” programmers ?
PHP is not a toy language, you can do complex and advanced stuff with it, not just some boring poll-system/blog/news-portal. PHP can and is used for entreprise-level applications, with complex object-oriented architecture and all the stuff you usually find in big Java systems.
I’ve done lots of different stuff, from a toy OS written in x86 assembler to Windows applications in Delphi and C to e-commerce apps in PHP and frankly I don’t see why PHP woulnd’t be a “real” language.
Oh and HTML is NOT a programming language, it’s a document description language. Try to do a “if .. then .. else” in HTML…
Actually I was suggesting AMOS, which is far more powerful, instead of plain BASIC.
I was talking about fun ways of programming, not what a software company nowadays expects from programmers. Then I would either suggest Java, C++ or C, no doubt about that. But there are many much cooler languages out there, for example the E programming language by Wouter van Oortmessen: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=169
Where as I, as a programmer, run my own business. So, lets weigh it up:
1) Me, a programmer/system integrator, owning own business and making a tidy income.
2) You, employed, can be fired at any minute, needing to constantly pocket-piss upwards, sidewards and downwards to ensure that your position isn’t filled by some BBS wizz kid just out of University.
I’ve seen your type come and go, and when I mean go, not the usual out the door, normally the “thrown out the 2nd story window by fellow employees” go caused by your arrogant stuck-up attitude.
Your attitude reminds me of a MS sales rep I met at one of the IT shows in New Zealand who had the old, “I represent Microsoft and you’re going to resell for us whether you like it or not”, he found out that the reason I avoided him for the whole day was the fact that none of my products I sold were from Microsoft, nor did I recommend any of them.
“I have been following your site for quite some time and my conclusion is that most of your readers are unrealistic and uncommercial linux geeks. I apologize for being a bit too prosaic but these people are completely impossible to deal with. I work as an IT manager for big banking corporation and I hire and fire at least ten of these guys in a month. I find them shortsighted and stupid I must say. Take the input, for example, by Sebastian N. How small is the world of these guys! It never ceases to amaze me.
Voilà, I said it! I just hope that someday, these programmers will realize that it all runs on money and it all must provide services and it should not satisfy petty egos. Well, it is of course IT.
Keep up the good work osnews. The way you present the IT world should teach the guys who read your site something but I personally believe that they are helpless.
People like me will keep on hiring and firing ten of these guys in a month.”
So Nicholas please do enlighten me as to which company you work for since i cannot fathom what company would hire such a it manager.
I have worked as a project leader before and I have found that the open source crowd has the _most_ competent coders, and if you know a bit about management and basic leadership methodology you also know howto get people to sing the same song as yourself.
The issues you adressed are such that you would notice them at the job interview _not_ afterwards.
its an atitude problem not an issue pertaining to whether or not they are operating system fetischists.
And most coders do know what makes the world turn, and they work their hineys of to earn the bread.
please refrain from feeble comments such as the one you wrote as they say more about your character than about the people you choose to hire..
cheers
Robert
HeeeHeeee!
Is it language bashing time yet?
Who put Objective-C in there?
Steve Jobs just wants to be different right?
Let him do all his coding with his own private language.
Get that POS outta there!
ciao
yc
“…I work as an IT manager for big banking corporation…”
It never ceases to amaze me when someone who is in management would let slip such a faux pas as your above sentence fragment points out. Perhaps you skipped both charm and grammar school, and headed straight to Arrogance 101? That’s how most PHB get the job these days right?
It’s certainly not because they possess programming ability, linux experience, or are generally a nice person, as most of the linux people I personally know are.
Maybe you should take a hard look at your hiring criteria, the job requirements, and the workplace you administer, and save your big banking corporation some hard earned money (certainly not by you) over the long run, and try to pin down where the hiring cycle flaws are.
An excess of 10 people coming and going on a monthly basis is sure to make you look bad anyhow. Not that your image could go any lower anyhow, but I just thought I’d point that out in a non-programmatical way for your busy brain to figure out.
Have a nice day.
-Chris Simmons,
Avid BeOS User.
The BeOSJournal.
…you didn’t get any option on a Commodore Pet. Since that was the last thing I wrote any code for, at school, aged 16 for ‘O’levels in 1982 I was honest and chose the last option.
BTW
Staff turnover costs a lot of money so if you’re *really* changing them on a monthly basis you’re not doing your job properly. Alternatively you could just be poking the readership with a stick and see how many bite.
I think this should have been what kind of job you do rather that “are you a programmer?” Programmers, Software Developpers, Software Engineers, Software Architects, students in Computer Science or Engineering or Biology (to name a few), sysadmins and geeks, are all related to disigning, integrating, testing and/or programming in a certain way.
All people related to one or more area above, did or are doing some programming (scripting is a form of programming too) for some reasons. So you’re poll doesn’t really give you the real portrait of your audience.
Just my $0.02 cents
something like
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
I totally agree with the others who said change your hiring procedures if you keep getting awful employees.
Did you forgot this languages?
Delphi/Kylix is NOT a language….
What’s the use of the pool anyway ?!
Be serious, I can’t put all 100 languages in such small poll.
No, but you could’ve easily put in “I program, but in none of the languages/types listed.”
I just include a very small subset of well known languages, only just to explain and give an idea what kind of languages are relevant for each option of the poll.
Yes, but your less than optimal world-view has prevented you from covering certain types of languages. Where is the option for rapid-application-development languages (VB, et. al.). Where is the option for program extension scripting? (e.g. MaxScript to extend 3Ds Max, MEL to extend Maya, etc…). You completely ignored databases.
There are plenty of types of programming experiences that can’t be classified by your C++, PHP, or NOTHING options in the poll.
Whatever results you get from this will be spurious and untrustworthy. You’ve closed the door on too many types of programming because the offered choices are much too specific and the poll has an elitist air to it (You either program in C/C++, or you aren’t a programmer).
This poll implies that we all have to be programmers or if not, it’s because we can’t 🙂 I did a little bit of coding for fun (light stuff, BASIC for old Sinclair Spectrum, Pascal in the university, FoxPro and a little VB), but I never worked as a programmer. I still like computers and all the stuff related and like reading this site. I guess there are a lot of people in my situation.
The list of languages in the poll should be irrelevent. In my opinion, programming is a way of thinking not knowledge of a language. A programmer should be able to write software in most languages with a very small learning curve (per language).
Just my $0.02
Where is the option for rapid-application-development languages (VB, et. al.). Where is the option for program extension scripting? (e.g. MaxScript to extend 3Ds Max, MEL to extend Maya, etc…).
Almost any huge app can be scripted today…. that’s advanced usage, I guess… not programming.. writing a VBA macro to turn your word document into all caps doesn’t make you a programmer.
You completely ignored databases.
SQL is just how you interact with your database, the same way you type commands into a unix shell or a dos prompt.
There are plenty of types of programming experiences that can’t be classified by your C++, PHP, or NOTHING options in the poll.
She probably meant that you’re either serious about writing components and applications, or you dabble in programming to make some of your content dynamic, or you don’t need to mess with any of that.
/*
“You either program in C/C++, or you aren’t a programmer).”
*/
And that, my friends, is the truth…; well said, Anonymous 🙂
Sorry folks, I really believe that Basic is destroying the thinking potential of one or another…
About the poll, I think is fun, even that it could be done more interesting. Maybe one idea would be to see how many are programmers and how many network administrators here…
The list of languages in the poll should be irrelevent. In my opinion, programming is a way of thinking not knowledge of a language. A programmer should be able to write software in most languages with a very small learning curve (per language).
RIGHT
But a lot of people thing that they’re whereas they aren’t!
Ask them i.e. about different sorting algorithmns and a datastructe for a tree!
And let them implement it in C, Java, C++,Pascal,l or even ASM!
-a
Its always
Are you people serious? You can’t recognize a troll like Nicholas when you see one?
Yah…he’s an IT manager at a major banking firm. And I’ve got moon rocks for sale in my basement.
Wise up, people. Sheesh.
Take a look at his IP. ABM Amro is a bank here in the netherlands, a major one at that.
The only way his ip would be that is if he were viewing OSNews.com from a computer at one of the branches. Additionally, there are terminals at each branch that allow public viewing, but they’re locked down hard, running NT, and routed through a proxy server that uses a whitelist. I know, as I tried to hack them. 😉
The only people at ABN Amro who have a computer able to go online when they please are executive types, so he is at least a PHB. As to his claims of hiring and firing, well, that’s debatable.
I also did some rudimentary searching for the name ‘Nicholas B.” online via google.nl and google.com and found some interesting matches.
Nicholas, if you’re reading this, and live near Rotterdam, let me know via my email. I would love to have a face-to-face conversation about the joys of being a programmer, versus the mundane hell that is (obviously from your pained writing style) working in management.
Good day.
-Chris Simmons,
Avid BeOS User.
The BeOSJournal.
…but I’m not gonna whine about it. For crying out loud, she put “etc” in the list. Dear Eugenia: I think it’s a good poll.
But that’s not gonna stop me from plugging Modula-2 & Oberon anyway. ;-P
(I’d plug Eiffel but someone else already did.)
>Voilà, I said it! I just hope that someday, these programmers
>will realize that it all runs on money and it all must >provide services and it should not satisfy petty egos. Well,
>it is of course IT.
Actually this site has a good bit of anti-linux sentiment batted about. It seems that every single new article on this site has someone making the very same sort of bust on people that use Linux.
Linux are all kids playing around. Linux sucks because the desktop is not as good as Windows/Mac/BE whatever.
I keep saying that Linux started out as one geek’s project to get a *Nix like environment on x86 hardware since he did not like Minix. There is a serious place for a geeky unix-like OS in the world. There is BSD and Linux and if you want to learn Unix-like commands or you are already using Unix at work and don’t like the compromises of Cygwin then Linux is a good choice. If you want everything to work like Windows then it is a bad choice.
Finally, people who contribute to OpenSource projects for the most part have real jobs — IBM, RedHat, even some Sun folks, SuSE and many other companies. They do these projects many times in the free time for their own ego, to give something back to the community, or sometimes just for the fun of it.
The giving back to the community part sounds silly. However, there are very few Unix houses that do not make extensive use of GNU tools. Giving a little bit back is something done not out of charity but out of regard for all the good use they have gotten out of these tools.
If the big corps went away with their IT departments in hand, then most contributors to linux would vanish too. Those corporate jobs give them the leisure of being able to do projects in their spare time.
PERL 😀
can’t wait for perl 6
btw…Great poll Eugenia
I am an RPG/400 and COBOL/400 programmer, 9 years straight, on the best server known to man: AS/400s!
HL Assembler for real work and Perl for fun.
Both on OS/390.
Anything “basic” cannot be called a programming language.
Ok I’m going to say it. The only programming language I know is VB. I learned it on my own and would say that I am probably at an intermediate level. I have been looking for an other language to learn that is more cross platform. I kind of like Python, but I can’t find a good mullti platform RAD tool for it. No jokes please about VB, I am not a programmer just a geek that like to write simple programs that do the things I want in a way that makes since to me. The only reason I still have windows is because it is the only thing I can write anything for. I am thinking of moving to Amgia or MorphOS. Hope they have a good VM like tool.
> Linux are all kids playing around. Linux sucks
> because the desktop is not as good as
> Windows/Mac/BE whatever.
No, I think that’s not true, Linux is nice, well, sort of…
But Linux users are not nice at all (or it’s just me that I don’t like them); because of their arogance and superiority in computing skills they claim they have… Because of this attitude, because of their ignorance in everything that is past windows 95, I started to tell them linux sucks…
oh, this is a programming thread… there’s nothing better than C/C++… 🙂
I’m surprised I haven’t seen more plugs for functional programming languages on here. I’ve really started liking CMUCL and the ML family of languages(SML/O’Caml) lately. I believe that the comment about not being a real programmer if you don’t write in C/C++ was taken out of context, but I would like to remind everyone that Lisp predates C by 20 years, and it’s still widely used today. Also, don’t forget Ruby! I use it for all of my database/web programming(mod_ruby) these days, and it’s simply beautiful. Python isn’t bad either… After 4 straight years of Perl coding, I’ll say it’s a kludge for anything beyond simple scripting.
Please tell us about the level of experience you got with programming.
I’d rather tell you about the experiences I have with programming languages.
8)=
On a similar note, did everyone see that Yahoo’s moving to PHP and C++ (http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/02/10/29/2052239.shtml?ti…)?
Very cool for us web developers (PHP Rocks!).
It’s too bad though that there’s so many people who assume that if you don’t code in C or one of it’s varients, then you’re not really a programmer (mainly Linux folk!). C’s ok for many things, but I would say that after dabbling in a few (ahem) “professional” languages, that Delphi’s a lot easier to get started in.
For most apps it’s quite capable, and if you need some custom dll’s or whatever, than you can go down into the basement and ask your Linux buddies to help. 8)=
VB’s also a pretty capable package (Cool your jets C Lovers -I’m certainly not saying it’s as robust or capable as C), but I like Delphi because you can create stand alone apps. Last I knew, VB still requires you to have certain VB-specific files on the system running the app.
If you’re doing any heavy Access work though (I like to use Access as a GUI front end for a more robust database backend
sometimes) VB can be a lifesaver. Very easy to create what you need. The downside is VB’s speed though -Much slower than a C or even a Delphi app most of the time it seems (IMHO).
My God.
People complining about a poll. Guess some people think that forums are a place to bitch and moan, regardless of the topic. I mean it’s not like this is about something important like MacOS X on intel or whether or not Redhat should be boycotted cuz they tweaked a GUI. I mean those are really important. 😉
“””I’ve really started liking CMUCL and the ML family of languages(SML/O’Caml) lately. “””
I’m glad I’m not the only one!
Recently, I’ve started using SML quite heavily. Honestly, it’s so nice once you get used to it, I find it hard to go back to writing Scheme/Common Lisp (in fact I’m in the process of porting my code from scheme -> SML); I’d much rather let the type-checker catch most of my errors.
“Greenspun’s Tenth Rule of Programming: any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.”
– Phil Greenspun
On a side note:
I’m keeping my eye on these as they develop: Moby [think O’caml with a slightly less neurotic spec] ( http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~jhr/moby/index.html ) and Arc ( http://www.paulgraham.com/arc.html )
>>>
I work as an IT manager for big banking corporation and I hire and fire at least ten of these guys in a month. I find them shortsighted and stupid I must say.
>>>
Sorry, that doesn’t sound believable. How can you hire and fire at least 10 IT people every single month? Even if you are a head hunter or running an employment agency , that still doesn’t sound believable. Unless, of course, hiring
Anyway, if you really do this, your hiring process/procedure must be extemely shoddy and incompetent. Somebody should start crosschecking how you spend company time. Maybe it is you who are being extremely “shortsighted and stupid”.
Hey Eugenia, can we do a two step poll? This was a good first question, but then could we break it down further? I’d be interested to group people into buckets by language semantic.
For example –
High Level: Java, C#, VB, etc…
Med Level: C++, Objective C, etc…
Low Level: C, etc…
Who needs a lanugage anyway: MIPS, x86 ASM, etc…
Specialty: Fortran, Forth, Cobol, etc…
If an IT manager hires and fires so many people….obviously he’s not a very good IT Manager. But then again… having worked with a larg bank (I was with one of the world’s largest consulting firms at the time…guess?)… I’m not surprised this guy still has a job. Big companies and esp. banks are slow to move… but I’d watch your back ’cause your performance isn’t too good there, chief!
Okay… how about “Haskell”?!?!?!? <grin> I worked with a developer on a java project and he wanted to make everything like Haskell.
L8R!
I happen to know that someone was recently fired at abnamro for being an incompetent jerk who built VB applications largely by cutting and pasting someone else’s code. I also know that there is a significant and vibrant unix faction and there is Linux research section. IDS insiders are seemingly unaware of the carnage you are apparently wreaking, as they didn’t know that ten of their colleagues were being fired every month. They also seem unaware of a manager called Nicholas B. I suspect you are in fact a bored little troll who’s been goofing off on a shared internet account (apparently the most common way used to get around abnamro internet use policy).
For example, I wrote Fortran code and CALL macros on Unisys Clearpath IX (OS2200) mainframes and C code under Solaris at my prior job, I currently write COBOL on Unisys A-series (MCP) mainframe hardware, and I also write stuff in Perl, C, and REXX under both OS/2 and Linux at home.
That doesn’t include the Java (via NetBeans 3.3.2) stuff I’m starting to play with at home, or the dozen or so other languages and platforms that I’ve used previously.
Do people really feel a need to toss people into arbitrary categories?
it would be dumb to learn basic now adays. it does not conform to structured programming, VB is as close as you can get…however, VB is not an easy to learn language (at least compaired to other languages like python IMHO, and C or C++ is jsut as easy.)
> Anything “basic” cannot be called a programming
> language.
Of course BASIC is also a programming language, but just like with different operating systems, each language has different advantages and/or disadvantages.
For example Low Level Assembler programming often makes sense with regard to performance, but there are many examples where optimal performance doesn’t really matter that much, or isn’t a pleasant experience in the case of x86 assembler programming.
IMO operating systems should however need to be optimised for performance and efficiency as much as possible, because all software running on top would else need to sacrifice performance, as well as sharing too much of the available memory resources with the OS.
Sadly this is nowadays not the case, IMO none of the current mainstream OSes can be called efficient or offering good overall performance.
“Who needs a language anyway”
That’s right! x86 assembly was one of the first languages I learned (at age 12, just after learning GWBASIC), so it feels most comfortable to me. No fluffy abstractions here! Though don’t get me wrong, I use and love C/Java/Perl as well in their own ways.
<quote>because of their ignorance in everything that is past windows 95, I started to tell them linux sucks…
oh, this is a programming thread… there’s nothing better than C/C++… :-)</quote>
It is true that many linux users knowledge of windows stops at Windows 95/NT 4.0. XP is much better and 2000 is not as nasty as NT4.
However, I have found many helpful linux users. The problem many people I have seen posting comments to mailing list is the fact that they are posting newbie questions to development mailing lists instead of the users mailing lists of their app or OS.
I have met some very nice people that use linux and some very nasty people as well. It is one of the main problems of the influx of desktop users to the community. Quite frankly, many old time linux users do not really customize their desktop environments if they use them at all and they had their ignorance through rudeness.
User lists are the best way to get answers after you have looked at the FAQs. I have found IRC though some people swear by it to be completely useless in this regard. Most of those folks are just completely rude.
jext is a good one…it is a java editor that has an embeded python interpretor and hylghting. perfect for crossplatform development.
I’m a programmer, but I don’t believe the poll can give meaningful answers. It makes non-programmers feel “uncool,” so they’ll vote that they know how to code even if they’ve only written 5 lines of C in their lives.
Note that if you’ve written 5 lines of Lisp, you may know how to code, but don’t feel like it.
Well, I’m a fairly tipical brazilian “unrealistic and uncommercial Linux geek”, but I respect other people’s opinions. I think this forum is too agressive (to all sides), so most of the time I just lurk around.
I know a bunch of languages, but I use mainly C and python.
Makes me wonder what kind of IT Manager he is if he needs to hire and fire so many geeks a month (Hint: a pretty bad/sad one for sure). Nicholas, better shape up or you may find yourself fired. Unless of course you’re a nephew/son of someone higher up, which would not surprise me at all. You obviously lack basic interpersonal skills which is one of the most important things a good IT manager should possess.
-fooks
I just programming in Perl, PHP and JavaScript. I am thinking about to learn either (or both) Ruby or Python to improvement my OOP in Perl and PHP.
We have had a few arguments left and right for languages missing so I thought I would add some I miss:
SML, already mentioned, fantastic more or less functional strictly typed language with type inference, beautiful.
Haskell, strictly functional language similar to SML in all but lazy evaluation.
Lisp and Scheme, classics that never go out of style
Prolog, logic programming is extremely powerful. Unfortunately horribly inefficient.
Smalltalk, _the_ OO language, things dont get more OO than this.
Ocaml, back to the ML’s, an ML-like language with object orientated constructs. Extremely efficient.
Icon, the new SNOBOL, excellent for string processing without looking like line-noise (!)
Erlang, functional lisp/prolog/ml blend with distributed computing primitives, very cool but somewhat messy.
Dylan, object-oriented somewhat functional looking language developed by Apple once upon a time.
Self, object-oriented language based around prototype objects, very pretty but on the dynamic side of things. Owned by Sun and somewhat dropped in favor of Java, still available though.
Hope I inspire someone to check out some of the more interesting languages and not just sticking to the ancient mistakes like C and *shudder* C++
“Note that if you’ve written 5 lines of Lisp, you may know how to code, but don’t feel like it.
”
lol!
Having written some little AutoLISP (is that a real language?) scripts, I can identify with this!
😉
Jus reading all these commments sums up who I am, and its funny although we’ve got loads of programming languages people still think one is better than the other, to be honest in my opinion I think u need to have different OS’s and programming languages readily at your disposal. I love BeOS, simply for its speed, I use Windows because of circumstance e.g. Uni, & Work, I’ve got Solaris, and finally just got hold of RedHat…but then again i like VB because it runs on my P200Mhz 32Mb RAM, without any problems, I tried using Forte/java and even Jbuilder2 but no luck!! Which seriously puts me off, but at College, we’ve got P4 2.0Ghz, with 256MB RAM, and Java is just amazing compared to VB, regarding stuff like CORBA & RMI.
BeOS is the best OS never to fruit, why becuase I installed it on a P66Mhz, 16Mb RAM, and it still boots faster than W2K or RedHat on a P4!! I think to be a serious developer u need access to all OS’s – lets face it, it is fun!!
Peace.
I’ve been reading all of these past responses to this poll that say to add this language and that. Realistically there are too many languages and styles to satisfy people. So what if you categorized the way you program? As I can see it there are just a few ways people program: Imperative, Functional, Combined, Other. I don’t really know what falls into the other category, but I’m sure some language does. So here’s my suggestion for a new poll:
When you sit down to program how do you do it?
1. Imperatively
2. Functionally
3. Combined (Imperative/Functional)
4. Something else
There’s my addition to this unending stream of complaints…
“”””I’ve really started liking CMUCL and the ML family of languages(SML/O’Caml) lately. “””
I’m glad I’m not the only one!
Recently, I’ve started using SML quite heavily.”
Cool, I’ve started using O’Caml myself. A really incredible language.
I program very functionally, if the language allows it. Here’s the famous Backus Turing Award Lecture (the guy who invented Fortran pretty much gets all candid).
http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs242/readings/backus.pdf
I really hate hate hate languages like Java that don’t try to be accommodating. (C# seems to be polite though.) That’s why it’s terrible to work on a Java project where they ban Jython and then reimplement buggy, bloated versions of it.
Well, I’ve been coding (as a hobby) in VB6 for a few years. I’ve written a few apps for myself that I use almost daily and find extremely useful, and I even got paid for writing one app at work as a frontend for an Access database they were using
But VB6 is going the way of the dodo, so I am looking to switch to something else. I’d like to find something that I could program desktop/GUI apps with as I am doing now, as well as do some low-level stuff like programming a NES emulator, just for fun, or interracting with the hardware on an OS level.
The only language that seems to fit into this role is C++, which I have made several attemps at learning and find it impossible. Though I can do some stuff with OOP such as building classes and operator overloading, but the little idiosyncrasies (such as having to use ios::fixed in order to keep ‘cout << setprecision’ from outputting in scientific notation) is so frustrating and aggrevating, I sometimes sit and wonder why somebody hasn’t replaced this dinasour language with something more workable. And C isn’t much better either. Hell, you could probably write an 800 page book entitled ‘One million ways to f**k up using the printf function.’
We sometimes take it very serious every word that is said.
This poll was something for fun, not something based on statistics.
There are hundreds of programming languages. You can get your job done with any of them, if it fits.
We should accept critics and try to learn with them. And try to be better people above all.
“””The only language that seems to fit into this role is C++, which I have made several attemps at learning and find it impossible…”””
C++ is somewhat regarded as the necessary evil of programming languages (needs to be “OO” yet still needs to maintain backwards compatibility with C code). The spec is gargantuan and somewhat ambiguious; leading to portability problems sometimes….
“””And C isn’t much better either. Hell, you could probably write an 800 page book entitled ‘One million ways to f**k up using the printf function.’ “””
That’s what Lint is for. However, that still won’t keep you from screwing up managing memory.
However, that still won’t keep you from screwing up managing memory.
That’s what Purify is for
C++ is a downright cool language once you’ve used it for awhile. Yes, it’s lowlevel and requires a lot of precision to make it do what you want it to. However, it’s this precision that makes it usable for stuff like systems programming, where you only want the program to do exactly what you want it to. That said, if you really want to learn C++, it would be worth it to do it the way introductory programming classes do it: make a series of small projects that concentrate on learning one thing at a time. The language itself is very large, and trying to understand it all at once is probably hopeless. But you only need a small subset of C++ to complete any given task. After you learn the languages in all its little pieces, then you can go back and try to integrate everything you’ve learned. Once you’ve done that, you’ll realize the reason for its complexity: it allows you to choose the best programming approach for a given task (generic, procedural, object-oriented) without having to learn an entirely seperate programming language for each style. Also, try and learn the STL as soon as possible. It’s syntax can be hairy at times, but once you’ve understood it, it’s quite beautiful. In particular, it almost entirely removes the need for explicit memory management. My first big STL project was a scientific simulation (which involved a lot of different data structures), and I was totally floored when I found that not only did the STL relieve me from managing memory (there was not a single new or delete anywhere in the program) but it was fast enough that it wasn’t a bottleneck in the program. IMHO, the STL is one of C++’s strongest points, and not even Java has a comparably powerful (and synactically clean) data-structure library. Lastly, if certain aspects of the language bother your, read something like Stroustrup’s “Design and Evolution of C++.” In this book, he explains the rationale for many of C++’s supposedly quirky features.
Hot tip for beginners: Python is pretty easy to learn and very consistant. wxWindows isn’t the greatest UI but it’s pretty functional when you get the hang of it and it work pretty well in Python.
“Hey Eugenia, can we do a two step poll? This was a good first question, but then could we break it down further? I’d be interested to group people into buckets by language semantic.
For example –
High Level: Java, C#, VB, etc…
Med Level: C++, Objective C, etc…
Low Level: C, etc…
Who needs a lanugage anyway: MIPS, x86 ASM, etc…
Specialty: Fortran, Forth, Cobol, etc…”
You might want to rethink your categories. Why are Obj-C, C++ midlevel languges? or more over, why do you call C a low level language.
It seems they should be on the same tier.
PureBasic is my favorite language (with inline/direct asm).
Where with C you need 70 lines of code to do some windows and buttons, with PureBasic you need 7…
PureBasic’s output is asm and the programs are really quick because of that. (nasm/fasm is used to compile)
You can do GUI applications, games or whatever you want.
The compiler is available for Windows/Linux/Amiga.
OK, it’s not freeware, but for $59 bucks you get FOREVER free updates and compiler for tree OS.
Everybody should work with the language that fits his needs.
Nicholas reminds me of my boss when I was a teenager working at a supermarket earning a bit of extra cash. The person who ran the day to day operations was the son of the manager. Anyway, to cut a long story sort, HE accused me of something. Everyone, from the area supervisors to the employees found him to be a 100% certified asshole.
I tried to speak nicely, and civily to him, like an adult, in the end, I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and punched the guys lights out. Went past the managers (his fathers) office, who looked outside his door, and I said to him, “want a job done right, do it yourself”. Never fired after they found out who I WAS and who my FAMILY members were, esp. in the noisy little union he has so much problems with.
Whats the golden rule? anyone who screws ME over, I’ll screw YOU over 100 times over. Now this supermarket has gone belly up. I worked for an IT firm for several years, after I earnt a Bachelor of Information Technology, funny enough, after I left an “anonymous” tip led the company to be raided by the BSA and the police for piracy. Again, you treat me like a piece of dirt, it will come back to haunt you later.
/*
“You either program in C/C++, or you aren’t a programmer.”
*/
I want to reiterate the very important point that what was mentioned by anon earlier; *it’s not about the language*.
If the purpose of this poll was to find the percentage of programmers in the population of readers, it should have asked “Are you a programmer?” and the available options should have been “Yes” and “No”. No more, no less.
It happens from time to time that people ask me “what language(s)?” when they find out I’m a programmer. I generally answer “the right one for the job” or words to that effect.
I answered “I can program” (“I can use programming languages”) and that is true.
But it’s been 10+ years since I programmed for the last time. Although still involved in IT, I just outgrew programming.
OTOH, I’m thinking about helping some open|free project in my hobby hours, just for the kicks.
However, I’m perfectly aware of my human limitations — and 10 years leads to a lot of rust.
This site pro-Linux? Yeah, right.
“Arrogant”, “zealot”, “simple|narrow-minded”, “obsessed” etc.: what do we gain from such name calling?
I’m about as uncool as it gets. Musician/studio owner. My only programming experience is with the much maligned BASIC, and the last time was in 1983, on my high school’s Apple II.
Still using computers for recording now (all hard disk). Mac and PC’s. No programming, though, too busy.
I find OS news incredibly helpful and informative, it has saved my ass more than once. Thanks, Eugenia!
I would like to see a more complex poll where people can only check say objc if they’ve really writen a objc project that was more than 1000 lines long.
Maybe it would read like this-
Language Largest Indepentdent Project
c None, 100+ lines, 1000+ Lines 10000+ lines
c++ …
…
…
…
…
I just think too many people here downloaded and compiled a sample boot loader and now call them selves c kernel hackers….
sorry-
Jon
http://www.magicsoftware.com
13 operations, platform and DB independence.
Used it for 5 years professionally, hated it at first, you have to forget everything you already knew about programming. It’s not procedural or object orientated.
I started aged 11 with BASIC on a CBM Plus/4 in 1988, 68k ASM on the Amiga in 1989, x86 ASM and Turbo Pascal/Turbo C in 1993. Magic and PL/SQL in 1997.
Nik
I can’t believe no one mentioned the programming/scripting language on the TI83 (a graphical calculator)! I had hours of fun with that. I wrote some really cool stuff with that. A bunch of my friends even played the Minesweeper I wrote for a while.
Ok, so it’s a slow language and not a very powerful one, but it sure gave me something to do during a boring lesson!
(Yes, they already used graphical calculators when I went to highschool.. which is about six months ago 🙂
My names sakes comment was a troll and an obvious one at that but..
I know someone working in IT at ABN-AMRO and they have a hiring freeze on so how exactly is he getting 10 geeks a month?
Secondly it would not surprise me if he was an IT manager there given that they are giving out programming tasks to people with no programming experience whatsoever.
Yes it is quite true that geeks are not often the most commercially minded people but what does that matter if an engineer is good? You judge people on their ability to do their job not on their opinions in a forum.
If everyone was commerially minded there probably wouldn’t be forums or computers to input comments with.
“”I still find it hard to believe that people can’t program. Most of the 1st world can’t, how do they do anything””
Typical western arrogance
There is a huge portion of the ‘1st world’ that qualifies as third.
If this sounds like rubbish, consider the state of the road system from New Jersey to New York !
I’ve seen roads in the ghettos of South Africa that would put them to shame.