Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

Best first language, high level or low level?

Options
2»

Comments

  • Options
    #32
    rsynnott
    Registered Users Posts: 4,003 ✭✭✭rsynnott


    MrPinK wrote:
    I'd disagree. Assembly is programming in it's most basic form. All of the niceties such as variables, while loops, etc. are stripped away, and you really get to know the guts of program logic. You learn a lot more from it than just how the current implementation of computers work. In fact, I'd say it's even better to learn something other than x86 (maybe MIPS, DLX or ARM), which is a really bad and over-the-hill instruction set.

    ARM is nice. Yep, it's a good idea to do some assembly as a learning exercise; maybe even better to do it on an odd platform so you won't be tempted to use it in the real world (we used 68k at college).
    Rob.


  • Options
    #33
    enno
    Registered Users Posts: 26 ✭enno


    Different languages expose different specific aspects of programming. Assembly emphasises the significance of data storage and of the particular instruction set. With a good macro processor, or just suitably "clever" expressive notation, assembly can even become a "high-level" language. See Columbia University's 36-bit computing pages (http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/dec20.html) for some amazingly compact assembly code.

    Some programming "languages" emphasis text transformations: TECO; macro processors, whether pre-processors for other languages (assembly, C) or stand-alone (m4); stylesheets (CSS, XSL); SNOBOL.

    LISP and Prolog require a certain mindset to appreciate. For some reason, I've never managed to get my head around COBOL.

    Best left to just one particular, but recent, day of the year is Intercal. Enjoy at
    http://www.catb.org/~esr/intercal/


  • Options
    #34
    rsynnott
    Registered Users Posts: 4,003 ✭✭✭rsynnott


    enno wrote:
    Some programming "languages" emphasis text transformations: TECO;
    Argh! Yuk! Make it go away!
    enno wrote:
    Best left to just one particular, but recent, day of the year is Intercal. Enjoy at
    http://www.catb.org/~esr/intercal/

    Ah, DO COME FROM PLEASE ;) Still not as bad as TECO tho.


  • Options
    #35
    bonkey
    Registered Users Posts: 15,443 ✭✭✭✭bonkey


    Ah yes...the good ol' "my language of choice is better than your language if choice" threads.

    It warms the cockles of my heart to see how many of you guys slam massively-widespread languages as being junk. Keep it up. The more people you discourage from ever going near them, the less competition I'll have in my later years when I stop trying to keep up with the youngsters in learning/using whatever the language-of-the-week is.

    There is no best first language, neither high nor low level, just as there is no best language. Different languages will suit different peoples' methods of learning differently and fit better or worse with various mindsets, just as they suit different problems differently.

    What you ultimately end up programming for a career will ultimately play a major role in what you end up recommending to others as "the right path". But before you recommend it, consider...if you were working in a completely different field of IT...would this still be the language you recommended?

    As an aside...I had a discussion with someone involved in one of the bank's recruitment drive. The biggest problem they faced was no longer that you had university grads thinking their degree made them all-powahful, leet programmers, but rather that the majority of good graduates were turning their noses up at "non-sexy" languages and "non-sexy" platforms.

    TBH...if you're asking or thining about "the best language", and you're not couching the question in terms of a specific problem (and "learning to program" is not specific), then you're already on the wrong track.

    jc


Advertisement