Choosing a new language

Choosing a new language

[Rico Secada]

Hi. 

First let me start by saying, please don't let this become a
flame-thing.

Second, I need some advice.

I am a 35 year old programmer, who program in C/C++, PHP and Bourne
Shell almost daily.

I am currently going to start focusing on becoming more skilled at a
few key languages, rather than knowing many (which I do on a more
superficial level). 

My key languages are C, PHP and SH (Bourne Shell), and I have stopped
using C++ because I find that its a C-hack rather than a good design
choice. 

I have made the following decision:

To study Ada and use it instead of C++. I come from a Pascal background
and I love the Ada syntax and wide area of usage. I am also attracted
to Ada because of its usage in the industry.

Now I have three more languages that I am very attracted to, but I
prefer to focus on just one of them:

Python, Haskell and Lisp.

I have been doing some reading and some coding, and I am mainly
attracted towards Lisp because of its ability to "fix a
running program".

But I find that Haskell is a more powerful language. Yet again Python
has a huge user base and many libraries, and it is implemented
everywhere, where Haskell and Lisp on the other hand hasn't. 

I like the syntax of all three, and I have gotten beyond the
"confusion" stage of Lisp parentheses, so they don't bother me at all.

I need advice from people who have been coding in all three, and who
can share some views and experiences.

Please, if you don't know ALL three by deep experience, don't respond to
this thread!

Thanks and best regards!

Rico.

Re: Choosing a new language

[Joachim Durchholz]

I don't know all three languages, but I know you won't get a useful 
answer unless you say what purpose you want to learn any of these 
languages for. To expand your mental scope? To improve your CV? To use 
as a new workhorse for your daily work? If it's the latter: what kind of 
work do you do?

Regards,
Jo

Re: Choosing a new language

[smallpond]

On Dec 28, 12:15 pm, Joachim Durchholz <j...@durchholz.org> wrote:
> : what kind of work do you do?
>

Trolling

Re: Choosing a new language

[John Nagle]

Rico Secada wrote:
> Hi. 
> 
> First let me start by saying, please don't let this become a
> flame-thing.
> 
> Second, I need some advice.
> 
> I am a 35 year old programmer, who program in C/C++, PHP and Bourne
> Shell almost daily.
> 
> I am currently going to start focusing on becoming more skilled at a
> few key languages, rather than knowing many (which I do on a more
> superficial level). 
> 
> My key languages are C, PHP and SH (Bourne Shell), and I have stopped
> using C++ because I find that its a C-hack rather than a good design
> choice. 
> 
> I have made the following decision:
> 
> To study Ada and use it instead of C++. I come from a Pascal background
> and I love the Ada syntax and wide area of usage. I am also attracted
> to Ada because of its usage in the industry.
> 
> Now I have three more languages that I am very attracted to, but I
> prefer to focus on just one of them:
> 
> Python, Haskell and Lisp.

    I've used every language mentioned except Haskell.

    I'm somewhat fed up with C++ myself.  I've used it for years; I've
written large systems in it, and I have to face that it has a fundamental
problem.  C++ is the only major language with hiding but without memory safety.
C has neither hiding or safety; Java and Ada have both hiding and safety.
No language since C++ repeats that mistake.

    Ada has its advantages, but outside the DoD world, it's more or less
dead.  If you have a security clearance and are interested in real
time avionics programming, maybe.

    LISP has a cult problem.  It's not used much any more, even in the
AI community.  LISP users tend to be too wierd.  The language itself
is OK, but few commercial applications use it.  Viamall, which became
Yahoo Store, is one of the very few major commercial LISP apps.
I've written about 20,000 lines of LISP, but I'll never use it again.

    Actually, the ability to "fix a running program" isn't that useful
in real life.  It's more cool than useful.  Editing a program from
a break was more important back when computers were slower and just
rerunning from the beginning was expensive.

    Python suffers from a slow implementation. Numbers vary, but
10x to 60x slower than C is typical.  The language is quite
powerful, but is held back by the CPython implementation, the
lack of a language standard independent of any implementation,
and a clunky mechanism for linking to external non-Python libraries.
There's no fundamental reason that Python couldn't be made to run at least
as fast as Java, but with the language spec tied to CPython, the
other implementations are always playing catch-up and run far behind the
CPython implementation.

     As languages, C# and Java are reasonably good.  They tend to come
with too much excess baggage in the form of frameworks, run-time systems,
and packagers, but as languages they're fast, safe, and expressive.

     Can't speak for Haskell.

					John Nagle

Re: Choosing a new language

[George Neuner]

On Fri, 28 Dec 2007 12:54:57 -0800, John Nagle <nagle@animats.com>
wrote:

>    Actually, the ability to "fix a running program" [in Lisp] isn't
>that useful in real life.  It's more cool than useful.  Editing a 
>program from a break was more important back when computers were slower
>and just rerunning from the beginning was expensive.

Speak for yourself.

The ability to patch a running program is very useful for certain
types of embedded applications.  Not every program having high
availability requirements can be restarted quickly, or can be
implemented reasonably using multiple servers or processes to allow
rolling restarts.

I worked with real time programs that required external machinery to
operate and several minutes to reinitialize and recover from a cold
restart.  Debugging non-trivial code changes could take hours or days
without the ability to hot patch and continue.  I know not everyone
works in RT, but I can't possibly be alone in developing applications
that are hard to restart effectively.

That all said, online compilation such as in Lisp is only one of
several ways of replacing running code.  Whether it is the best way is
open for debate.

George
--
for email reply remove "/" from address

Re: Choosing a new language

[Joachim Durchholz]

George Neuner schrieb:
> I know not everyone
> works in RT, but I can't possibly be alone in developing applications
> that are hard to restart effectively.

Indeed. An additional case is interactive applications where setting up 
the situation to be tested requires several time-consuming steps.

Regards,
Jo

Re: Choosing a new language

[Paul Rubin]

Joachim Durchholz <jo@durchholz.org> writes:
> Indeed. An additional case is interactive applications where setting
> up the situation to be tested requires several time-consuming steps.

At least for web development, there are a lot of automated tools that
mimic user input, just for this purpose.

Re: Choosing a new language

[Joachim Durchholz]

Paul Rubin schrieb:
> Joachim Durchholz <jo@durchholz.org> writes:
>> Indeed. An additional case is interactive applications where setting
>> up the situation to be tested requires several time-consuming steps.
> 
> At least for web development, there are a lot of automated tools that
> mimic user input, just for this purpose.

Yes, but it still takes time to run to the point you want.
Plus you'd need to integrate such a tool with the debugger.
Plus you'd need to record the user actions, save them somewhere, and 
recall them.

None of that is rocket science, of course, but I have yet to see such a 
thing. (It would be nice to have it though.)

However, for web applications, I found a far easier variant: I just 
reload the page being debugged. (I have to make sure that the backend is 
in the same state when reloading, but that's usually easy to accomplish.)
So web pages are one area where code modification during debugging is 
less important.

Desktop programs with a large internal state are an entirely different 
kettle of fish, of course.

Regards,
Jo

Re: Choosing a new language

[John Thingstad]

Pￜ Sat, 29 Dec 2007 19:16:09 +0100, skrev Joachim Durchholz  
<jo@durchholz.org>:


> However, for web applications, I found a far easier variant: I just  
> reload the page being debugged. (I have to make sure that the backend is  
> in the same state when reloading, but that's usually easy to accomplish.)
> So web pages are one area where code modification during debugging is  
> less important.
>

Haveyou looked at selenium?

I quote:

Selenium is a test tool for web applications. Selenium tests run directly  
in a browser, just as real users do. And they run in Internet Explorer,  
Mozilla and Firefox on Windows, Linux, and Macintosh. No other test tool  
covers such a wide array of platforms.
Browser compatibility testing. Test your application to see if it works  
correctly on different browsers and operating systems. The same script can  
run on any Selenium platform.
System functional testing. Create regression tests to verify application  
functionality and user acceptance.

There is also a Lisp interface cl-selesium though I can't find the code on  
the net now.

--------------
John Thingstad

Re: Choosing a new language

[Joachim Durchholz]

John Thingstad schrieb:
> Skrev Joachim Durchholz <jo@durchholz.org>:
> 
>> However, for web applications, I found a far easier variant: I just 
>> reload the page being debugged. (I have to make sure that the backend 
>> is in the same state when reloading, but that's usually easy to 
>> accomplish.)
>> So web pages are one area where code modification during debugging is 
>> less important.
> 
> Haveyou looked at selenium?

Yes. I couldn't get it to work.
I think it's more regression testing than debugging though. If that's 
correct, it's less pertinent to this subthread (which is already well 
off-topic already).

Regards,
Jo

Re: Choosing a new language

[Stephen Leake]

George Neuner <gneuner2/@/comcast.net> writes:

> On Fri, 28 Dec 2007 12:54:57 -0800, John Nagle <nagle@animats.com>
> wrote:
>
>>    Actually, the ability to "fix a running program" [in Lisp] isn't
>>that useful in real life.  It's more cool than useful.  Editing a 
>>program from a break was more important back when computers were slower
>>and just rerunning from the beginning was expensive.
>
> Speak for yourself.
>
> The ability to patch a running program is very useful for certain
> types of embedded applications.  Not every program having high
> availability requirements can be restarted quickly, or can be
> implemented reasonably using multiple servers or processes to allow
> rolling restarts.

And in applications like IDEs, dynamically loaded functions are very
important. Improving Emacs is vastly easier because Emacs Lisp is
interpreted. You can make a small change to a function and quickly
determine its effect. That's one reason (among many others :) I have
not switched to GPS (which is written in Ada).

-- 
-- Stephe

Re: Choosing a new language

[Gary Scott]

Rico Secada wrote:
> Hi. 
> 
> First let me start by saying, please don't let this become a
> flame-thing.
> 
> Second, I need some advice.
> 
> I am a 35 year old programmer, who program in C/C++, PHP and Bourne
> Shell almost daily.
> 
> I am currently going to start focusing on becoming more skilled at a
> few key languages, rather than knowing many (which I do on a more
> superficial level). 
> 
> My key languages are C, PHP and SH (Bourne Shell), and I have stopped
> using C++ because I find that its a C-hack rather than a good design
> choice. 
> 
> I have made the following decision:
> 
> To study Ada and use it instead of C++. I come from a Pascal background
> and I love the Ada syntax and wide area of usage. I am also attracted
> to Ada because of its usage in the industry.
> 
> Now I have three more languages that I am very attracted to, but I
> prefer to focus on just one of them:
> 
> Python, Haskell and Lisp.
> 
> I have been doing some reading and some coding, and I am mainly
> attracted towards Lisp because of its ability to "fix a
> running program".
> 
> But I find that Haskell is a more powerful language. Yet again Python
> has a huge user base and many libraries, and it is implemented
> everywhere, where Haskell and Lisp on the other hand hasn't. 
> 
> I like the syntax of all three, and I have gotten beyond the
> "confusion" stage of Lisp parentheses, so they don't bother me at all.
> 
> I need advice from people who have been coding in all three, and who
> can share some views and experiences.
> 
> Please, if you don't know ALL three by deep experience, don't respond to
> this thread!
> 
> Thanks and best regards!
> 
> Rico.
And the good old standbys Fortran 95/2003 and REXX.

-- 

Gary Scott
mailto:garylscott@sbcglobal dot net

Fortran Library:  http://www.fortranlib.com

Support the Original G95 Project:  http://www.g95.org
-OR-
Support the GNU GFortran Project:  http://gcc.gnu.org/fortran/index.html

If you want to do the impossible, don't hire an expert because he knows 
it can't be done.

-- Henry Ford

Re: Choosing a new language

[george.priv]

On Dec 28, 10:23 am, Rico Secada <coolz...@it.dk> wrote:
> Hi.
>
> First let me start by saying, please don't let this become a
> flame-thing.
>
> Second, I need some advice.
>
> I am a 35 year old programmer, who program in C/C++, PHP and Bourne
> Shell almost daily.
>
> I am currently going to start focusing on becoming more skilled at a
> few key languages, rather than knowing many (which I do on a more
> superficial level).
>
> My key languages are C, PHP and SH (Bourne Shell), and I have stopped
> using C++ because I find that its a C-hack rather than a good design
> choice.
>
> I have made the following decision:
>
> To study Ada and use it instead of C++. I come from a Pascal background
> and I love the Ada syntax and wide area of usage. I am also attracted
> to Ada because of its usage in the industry.
>
> Now I have three more languages that I am very attracted to, but I
> prefer to focus on just one of them:
>
> Python, Haskell and Lisp.
>
> I have been doing some reading and some coding, and I am mainly
> attracted towards Lisp because of its ability to "fix a
> running program".
>
> But I find that Haskell is a more powerful language. Yet again Python
> has a huge user base and many libraries, and it is implemented
> everywhere, where Haskell and Lisp on the other hand hasn't.
>
> I like the syntax of all three, and I have gotten beyond the
> "confusion" stage of Lisp parentheses, so they don't bother me at all.
>
> I need advice from people who have been coding in all three, and who
> can share some views and experiences.
>
> Please, if you don't know ALL three by deep experience, don't respond to
> this thread!
>
> Thanks and best regards!
>
> Rico.

Can't say much about others but my experience with C, C++ (20 years),
C# and Ada so far:

C is too primitive, too much labor. I use C only on embedded platforms
with limited availability of other languages.
C++ for the years of use I have identified the following trouble
spots:
  - Templates not always instantiate the way you think they should
  - Lack of typing restrictions: typedef is a bad joke
  - #define/ #ifdef should not be part of any high level language
  - no support for concurrency even simple threads

C#/Java are pretty good except for reliance on garbage collection.
Try the application that goes through 10Mb per second data crunch and
witness the hick ups.

Ada: in my first project.  To summarize experience so far
  - More complex takes longer to learn
  - Takes some paradigm shift from pointers, callbacks to tasks/
message/rendezvous mentality
  - Some keywords seem to be redundant
  - Takes more time to think through data structures, interfaces and
tasks
  - That can in turn result in better code
  - Anything having to do with life safety better be coded in Ada

George

Re: Choosing a new language

[byte8bits]

On Dec 28, 10:23 am, Rico Secada <coolz...@it.dk> wrote:

> I am a 35 year old programmer, who program in C/C++, PHP and Bourne
> Shell almost daily.
>
> I am currently going to start focusing on becoming more skilled at a
> few key languages...

Python and Ruby. They are the future of programming and are here and
useful today. Both excellent languages... similar yet different. I use
both for general purpose programming (I do not do Web development
mostly systems programming). You can do things in minutes with them
that would take days in Java or C++. You can write very portable code
in either language (Windows, Linux, BSD, Mac, Solaris, etc.)

Ada is airline/dod blessed. Hardly used elsewhere. Best of luck in
finding skilled, affordable Ada programmers outside of major cities.
The others you mentioned are research projects of math and CS (applied
math professors)... and are not generally applicable to real-world
problems. Interesting projects though.

Best of luck,
Brad

Re: Choosing a new language

[Samuel Tardieu]

>>>>> "Brad" == byte8bits  <byte8bits@gmail.com> writes:

Brad> Best of luck in finding skilled, affordable Ada programmers
Brad> outside of major cities.

Which is why it may be a good idea to learn it and earn a lot of $$$ :)

Re: Choosing a new language

[Rico Secada]

On Sat, 29 Dec 2007 23:56:12 +0100
Samuel Tardieu <sam@rfc1149.net> wrote:

> >>>>> "Brad" == byte8bits  <byte8bits@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> Brad> Best of luck in finding skilled, affordable Ada programmers
> Brad> outside of major cities.
> 
> Which is why it may be a good idea to learn it and earn a lot of $$
> $ :)

I have yet to see a job offering in which Ada is wanted, atleast in my
country there is none.

Re: Choosing a new language

[Pascal Obry]

Rico Secada a �crit :
> I have yet to see a job offering in which Ada is wanted, atleast in my
> country there is none.

I have yet to see a project finishing on-time, on budget and not full of
bugs, at least in my country there is none.

No so far from reality :)

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|              http://www.obry.net
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"
--|
--| gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net --recv-key C1082595

Re: Choosing a new language

[Jacob Sparre Andersen]

Rico Secada wrote:

> I have yet to see a job offering in which Ada is wanted, at least in
> my country there is none.

Even if the companies don't announce it, there are companies in
Denmark using Ada.  Those I know of are Terma, ABB Automation and
Nokia.  But I can't remember any of these companies actually
announcing that they need Ada programmers.

Greetings,

Jacob
-- 
"I've got _plenty_ of common sense!"
"I just choose to ignore it."

Re: Choosing a new language

[George Neuner]

On Fri, 28 Dec 2007 22:07:12 -0800 (PST), byte8bits@gmail.com wrote:

>Ada is airline/dod blessed.

Airline blessed maybe.  The DOD revoked its Ada only edict because
they couldn't find enough Ada programmers.  AFAIK, Ada is still the
preferred language, but it is not required.

George
--
for email reply remove "/" from address

Re: Choosing a new language

[kevin cline]

On Dec 30 2007, 10:38 pm, George Neuner <gneuner2/@/comcast.net>
wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Dec 2007 22:07:12 -0800 (PST), byte8b...@gmail.com wrote:
> >Ada is airline/dod blessed.
>
> Airline blessed maybe.  The DOD revoked its Ada only edict because
> they couldn't find enough Ada programmers.  AFAIK, Ada is still the
> preferred language, but it is not required.

As if there were such a thing as an 'Ada programmer'.  Any decent
programmer
should be productive in Ada long before their security clearance is
approved.
The real problem the DoD has is that defense work is not attractive to
the best and brightest.

Re: Choosing a new language

[Tim Roberts]

kevin  cline <kevin.cline@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>As if there were such a thing as an 'Ada programmer'.  Any decent
>programmer should be productive in Ada long before their security 
>clearance is approved.

That's only true because the security clearance process has become so
complicated.  Ada is not a trivial language by any means.  Even an
experienced C programmer is going to find enough sharp edges to send him
back to the reference manuals on a regular basis. 

>The real problem the DoD has is that defense work is not attractive to
>the best and brightest.

Bull crap.  You don't HEAR about them because of that same security
clearance issue, but some of the most complicated and certainly some of the
LARGEST computing systems in the world come out of the DoD.  You don't
create reliable large systems using a corral full of bright-eyed college
new hires.
-- 
Tim Roberts, timr@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

Re: Choosing a new language

[kevin cline]

On Jan 3, 1:32 am, Tim Roberts <t...@probo.com> wrote:
> kevin cline<kevin.cl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> >As if there were such a thing as an 'Ada programmer'.  Any decent
> >programmer should be productive in Ada long before their security
> >clearance is approved.
>
> That's only true because the security clearance process has become so
> complicated.  Ada is not a trivial language by any means.  Even an
> experienced C programmer is going to find enough sharp edges to send him
> back to the reference manuals on a regular basis.
>
> >The real problem the DoD has is that defense work is not attractive to
> >the best and brightest.
>
> Bull crap.  You don't HEAR about them because of that same security
> clearance issue, but some of the most complicated and certainly some of the
> LARGEST computing systems in the world come out of the DoD.  You don't
> create reliable large systems using a corral full of bright-eyed college
> new hires.

I didn't say anything about what the DoD built, or attempted to
build.  I meant that
the most talented young programmers find companies like Google and
Amazon or other
startups more attractive than defense work.  I worked at a Defense
software startup
in Dallas for ten years.  I know how it worked.  Organizations like
Texas Instruments D-Seg hired a lot of new graduates, mostly from
second-tier midwestern
public schools, and put them to work writing defense systems.

With cost-plus contracting, companies bill the DoD by the hour, making
a fixed fee for
each hour charged.  As long as a programmer has the necessary
credentials, their productivity
makes no difference to the company's income.  Once the contract has
been won, labor saving
suggestions have no value.  I know of at least one case where a very
talented programmer
realized that several man-years of manual effort could easily be
automated, but his suggestion was
rejected because it would have left a dozen cut-and-paste programmers
with no work.

With that sort of grind-it-out project management, talented people who
came
to Dallas to work for TI or E-Systems didn't tend to stay in defense
very long.
Many were cherry-picked by the growing telecomm industry, where a
talented developer
could make a huge difference to the bottom line.

Re: Choosing a new language

[bearophileHUGS]

It's not easy to answer this question, and the choice of language is
quite influenced by what's your use of it.

Python/Ruby and Java (and C#, sometimes, on Windows) are often a safe
bet today (for work purposes too), they have lot of libraries and they
are efficient enough for their purposes. But despite being flexible
those two pairs of languages have different purposes.

Haskell is a good language, it has much less libraries and today its
speed is comparable to Python/Psyco one, it may require some time to
adapt your mind tuned to older language to its nearly-pure functional
style. Today I don't think it's a language for newbies. In the future
maybe it will become more useful for work too.

Bye,
bearophile

Re: Choosing a new language

[Achim Schneider]

Rico Secada <coolzone@it.dk> wrote:

> 
> Second, I need some advice.
> 
http://www.nondot.org/sabre/Mirrored/AdvProgLangDesign/

Learn, or better said understand, those and then choose wisely.

Lisp throws lambda calculus right into your face, which is a good
thing. Scheme might be the better choice, it's lexically scoped:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/
There are also video lectures with people with funny hats speaking wise
words.

For lisp, (and also a good read if you go for scheme, same with the
wizard book above the different way round), the book of choice is
http://www.paulgraham.com/acl.html

Python is Yet Another Scripting Language, borrowing concepts from more
advanced languages. You might want to go for the real thing instead,
although it's certainly nice.

Haskell is to scheme what a basketball basket is to a trash bin. It's
typed strictly and pure, but with some effort you will also be able to
throw your trash through the basket as well as find a trash bin big
enough for your ball
. 
-- 
(c) this sig last receiving data processing entity. Inspect headers for
past copyright information. All rights reserved. Unauthorised copying,
hiring, renting, public performance and/or broadcasting of this
signature prohibited. 

Re: Choosing a new language

[Arnaud Delobelle]

On Dec 29, 3:11 pm, Achim Schneider <bars...@web.de> wrote:
[...]
> Lisp throws lambda calculus right into your face, which is a good
> thing. Scheme might be the better choice, it's lexically scoped:http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/
> There are also video lectures with people with funny hats speaking wise
> words.

Common Lisp has lexical scoping as well (although defvar allows you to
declare dynamically scoped variables).

--
Arnaud

Re: Choosing a new language

[John Thingstad]

Pￜ Sat, 29 Dec 2007 18:58:30 +0100, skrev Arnaud Delobelle  
<arnodel@googlemail.com>:

> On Dec 29, 3:11ï¿œpm, Achim Schneider <bars...@web.de> wrote:
> [...]
>> Lisp throws lambda calculus right into your face, which is a good
>> thing. Scheme might be the better choice, it's lexically  
>> scoped:http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/
>> There are also video lectures with people with funny hats speaking wise
>> words.
>
> Common Lisp has lexical scoping as well (although defvar allows you to
> declare dynamically scoped variables).
>
> --
> Arnaud
>

More precisely defvar, defparameter, progv  and (declare (special var))  
create variables with dynamic scope.
let and let* do as you said use a lexical scope. (unless you use a declare  
as above)


--------------
John Thingstad

Re: Choosing a new language

[j.khaldi]

> Python, Haskell and Lisp.
>
> I have been doing some reading and some coding, and I am mainly
> attracted towards Lisp because of its ability to "fix a
> running program".
Why not Erlang then?
http://www.erlang.org