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Re: which language for programming


From: Doug Wellington
Subject: Re: which language for programming
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 12:23:43 -0700

Simple---because with VB and/or AppleScript you are tying yourself to
one platform, or at any rate biasing yourself heavily.

Ah...  I look at that as a different problem than "communicating with
others".  I didn't think we were talking about portability.  I think
that when you start talking about cross-platform portability, the core
language isn't as important as the graphics library is...

Additionally, there's the question of what you want to do.  If you want
to learn *programming*, I think VB is considered a bad environment.

Heck, LOTS of things have been considered bad.  Isn't there a famous
article somewhere titled something to the effect of "C Shell
Programming Considered Harmful"?  Ah yes, here it is:

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/csh-whynot/

Heehee...  And I know plenty of people who still write csh scripts...
(And isn't VB still the most used programming language in the world?)

All the more reason to make sure that when you learn, you learn
to *program*, not to be trapped by one language, one platform or one
implementation.

Agreed.  Different languages for different problem sets...

Your beginning language should therefore be something that opens your
horizons instead of restricting them.

Well, here's where I disagree, if only in the sense that some
languages have such open horizons that a beginning programmer could be
overwhelmed...  That's where "bad environments" like VB and
AppleScript can help.  :)

I think the earlier poster who suggested going straight for Scheme may
have a point.  Not only is it the core language for working with
Lilypond, but it's a Lisp dialect, and Lisp is both the grandaddy of
programming and the most flexible language there is.

Were you around when Stallman was trying to push Scheme as the one
true GNU scripting language?  (As for "flexible", how about we define
the problem set first?)

:)

Doug




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