Excuse me if this particular topic has already been covered.

I read an article recently on OSNews talking about the "best hobbyist language", and I'm wondering what the users on this forum have to say. Near as I can tell, the preferred language is Python.

Even though I don't have much experience beyond what I'm doing in school, I find C/C++ to be overkill for most projects. I'm sure there's better languages out there for small projects, especially OSS. I do know the language you choose depends on what your designing, so what languages do you recommend and what projects are they best at?

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Common Sense v2.0-Striving to make the world a little bit smarter.

That's like asking, "What's your favorite movie?" Now, some people can answer without hesitation. I, on the other hand find that it depends entirely on my mood. ("African Queen", "E.T.", "Blazing Saddles", "Woman on Top",...)

What's my favorite programming language: whatever gets the job done. Unlike my taste in movies, I try not to let emotion enter into my decision. For some reason, some people think of "Quick-and-dirty ==> Basic", "Real Programming ==> C", "Truly Elitest Quasi-Object-Oriented ==> C++", "Esoteric Real Object-Oriented-Programming ==> Smalltalk", etc., etc. To each his own, I say.

For the many small throw-away utilities that I use in my everyday work and fun stuff, good old C does it for me. Quick-and-dirty C is easier for me to contemplate and quicker for me to implement than BASIC, Java, Python, Awk, Sed, Perl, etc., etc. But, that's just me. (I have used most of them at one time or another, but not very much.)

I have lots of old DSP programs done in FORTRAN (my first language after IBM650 Assembly Language), and instead of porting them to C, I use Gnu g77. Sometimes I just like to take a nostalgic trip back in time and look in awe at the incredible flexibility of good old FORTRAN Format statements. (Kind of like seeing "Casablanca" for the umpteenth time; when I'm in a certain mood that's really heaven.)

I am currently working on a project using a PIC12F629 (very low-end ---cheap--- processor). Every microsecond counts (a little real-time humor here), so PIC Assembly is the only way to go. For hobbyists who don't like to get dirt under their fingernails and who want to use C on their low-end microcontrollers, I say, "go for it." But when you run out of program memory and microseconds, I will say, "welcome to my world."


A memorable quote:

"My favorite programming language is solder."

---Robert A Pease (Really really really high level hardware design guru for National Semi. Kind of like the McGyver of analog circuits. A little scratching with pencil and paper, a couple of op-amps, and: Behold! An elevator control system that outperforms a multi-tens-of-thousands-of-dollars fuzzy logic based design running on a minicomputer.)

How's that for not answering your question?

(Actually I did answer the question. The answer is: "It depends.")

Regards

Dave

Yeah, that's pretty much what I thought :-). I'm mostly curious if certain languages are better one a type of job than others. Maybe a better way of phrasing it is: why are the so many blasted languages?

I know that certain languages were created for a given purpose (FORTRAN for science-oriented apps, COBOL for business, etc.), but w/ OOP being the big buzzword, many languages seem to have the same feature set and are relatively "generic". So how does a person differentiate between languages?

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Common Sense v2.0-Striving to make the world a little bit smarter.

Well, I think I've used enough board bandwidth on this barely topical topic, so instead of giving my "in a nutshell" views and opinions, I am going to suggest that you go to google (or your other favorite search engine) and do a search on "comparative+programming+languages" (Whatever happened to Algol, anyhow?)

An interesting topic for lots of people; maximum snoozeville for others. Your Mileage May Vary.

Regards,

Dave

Well, it depends on what you understand by OOP - it is said that C++ isn't really an Object Oriented Programming language, but an Object-based one.
This is mostly because it still has "primary data types" like int, float etc. that aren't really objects. Also, it doesn't have a single rooted hierarchy (not all objects are derived from a base class).
All of these (and some more) are the features brought in by Java and then C#.
These languages are much easier to use than C++, since you don't have to deal with pointers and do the memory management yourself. This is all done by their very own God-bless it's soul Garbage Colector.

Unfortunately, this is perfectly true. This easy-to-use do-the-dirty-job-for-you programming languages generate code that brings a speed and memory penalty unacceptable on some hardware (not to mention the Virtual Machines you need to install in order for their halfy-generated code to run).
So, yes, it depends
BTW, my favourite used to be Java (along with Visual C of course) , but since C# came along, I have a new love

Regards,
Luci

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"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new."
Einstein

I myself prefer c++ because (at least to me) it presents the greatest challenge. I've noticed a couple of references to C# is this a typo or is this some "new" form of C?

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C# is MS's answer to what's after C++, just in a different fashion. It's also partially aimed at competing w/ Java. As far as I know, Java is a single language designed to be run anywhere. C# (and .NET) are desigÃÍMP/ØÃäÑ8aºó÷%se whatever language you want, but you can only run on Windows. Kinda like opposite sides of a coin.

I'm sure there's more to it, but that's what I remember reading when C# was first coming out. C# has many of the same features of Java (no pointers, garbage collection, etc.) but can only be used on Windows.

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Common Sense v2.0-Striving to make the world a little bit smarter.

Not true. Code produced by the .NET Framework can be run on *nix, Mac OS, as far as you have a Virtual Machine to run on this systems. Microsoft doesn't develop VM's for this OS's , but gave the right to other companies to do so (that's a first ). Search for "Mono .NET" on google and you might be surprised!
I worked extensivily with Java and it's server-side companion JSP, and I must say now I prefer C# (no typo ).I't's a matter of opinion, I guess - both languages have the same basic capabilities, with a plus from C# in properties, attributes,etc. and some design issues. It is said that MS stoll the concept from Sun (and I think it's true), but as far as we have a *better* programming language on our hands, I don't care!


Like dave stated earlier, each language has it's target. There are some projects that you can't use pr. like Java, C# etc. for. But for others.... Try creating an ftp client. Do you know how much time it would take to do it in .NET 2005? A microsecond (not really, but close enough). However, I dealed with a project for a special device that used a primitive C interpreter. I didn't have anything else to work with, so I did it in C. Do you know what was the error I serched for like crazy for 2 days? I used [b]double[/d] and it didn't know what that was. (it was very undocumented and had a *very* primitive compiler - the error it barked out was "C exception" ) .
Of course I couldn't use Visual C for this, as much as I would have wanted.
Basic idea: just uese the language that better suits the job, in the minimum time required (if Java would be better suited, but you only know Visual C, maybe you shouldn't take the time to learn it for a little program that runs in VS pretty well).

Enough chating

Best regards,
Luci

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My favorite programming language is C++. In my opinion, it just doesn't get any better than C++.

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I think this thread is interesting, so don't hold back.

I am a wannabe programmer, I have 2 books. 1 on C++ and the other on Java. I haven't even read half the pages of either and now, after reading this thread, I am almost convinced I need a book on C#!