anat0l
Enthusiast
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2006
- Posts
- 11,669
Hello again 
If you're not a programmer or have no idea about programming / IT, best to stop reading now...
...as some of you know, I finished a B Inf Tech at university and haven't really been exercising those programming skills well since I graduated. It doesn't seem likely that any of my duties in the immediate future will put them to the test, but I'd like to get back into the programming space even for my own personal interest.
At uni my choice of language was Java (supposing it still is), which I used to develop, test and compile on the Eclipse IDE platform. Great language (cross platform, strong typing & contracting, no need for pointers like the C series of languages) but several key cons:
So for the people in the know here, I'm just wondering what would be a good language to try my hand / get into? The word on the street seems to be C#, Python or Ruby. I'd preferably like to develop GUI applications that can be run on Windows (as a minimum, but unless you write for the web or in C and Java, very little chance on going cross-platform on the same programming project). Of course, to program in such languages needs at minimum an IDE (apart from trusty Notepad) and a compiler. If either of these components could be had free of charge, that would be good (for example I'm looking at C# on Visual Studio Express, which seems to simplify GUI creation and event handling through the ability to directly create Windows Forms (although the code generated will be necessarily horrible)). Preference is for OO languages; I have some experience with functional (viz. Scheme) but no experience (read: I terribly suck) in logical languages (e.g. Prolog).
Did I mention I hate Visual Basic?
So... any suggestions from the academy?
If you're not a programmer or have no idea about programming / IT, best to stop reading now......as some of you know, I finished a B Inf Tech at university and haven't really been exercising those programming skills well since I graduated. It doesn't seem likely that any of my duties in the immediate future will put them to the test, but I'd like to get back into the programming space even for my own personal interest.
At uni my choice of language was Java (supposing it still is), which I used to develop, test and compile on the Eclipse IDE platform. Great language (cross platform, strong typing & contracting, no need for pointers like the C series of languages) but several key cons:
- Running Java applications required runtime to be installed on target environment - annoying for end user.
- Although most test metrics seem to report contrary, I find some Java applications to be horrendously slow compared to those written in other languages (like C# or C++, though I guess those comparisons are pretty obvious).
- Swing is a real PITA to program with. In fact, multi-threaded programming which is necessary for Java GUIs really sends me around the bend at times.
So for the people in the know here, I'm just wondering what would be a good language to try my hand / get into? The word on the street seems to be C#, Python or Ruby. I'd preferably like to develop GUI applications that can be run on Windows (as a minimum, but unless you write for the web or in C and Java, very little chance on going cross-platform on the same programming project). Of course, to program in such languages needs at minimum an IDE (apart from trusty Notepad) and a compiler. If either of these components could be had free of charge, that would be good (for example I'm looking at C# on Visual Studio Express, which seems to simplify GUI creation and event handling through the ability to directly create Windows Forms (although the code generated will be necessarily horrible)). Preference is for OO languages; I have some experience with functional (viz. Scheme) but no experience (read: I terribly suck) in logical languages (e.g. Prolog).
Did I mention I hate Visual Basic?
So... any suggestions from the academy?
