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macOS Your favorite programming language
- Thread starter Bill McEnaney
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Last I knew, Professor Michael Feldman was still teaching Ada 95 to his students, and Boeing was still writing autopilot software in it.
I believe Feldman was the author of the book I had when I learned Ada.
Supposedly, Boeing recruited heavily from my university, which was one of the supposed reasons my university taught Ada. I don't know of a single person hired by Boeing, though. Eventually, my university figured out that no one was really using Ada and switched over to Java.
Whatever the client asks me to use.
From C, Awk and Sed (yes, they are full programming laguages - if you only use them for scripting you're missing 50% of the languages), Korn Shell, Borne Shell, PHP5, PL/SQL, LINC (an old Unisys 4GL) aka EAE, all to earn my bread and butter.
To C, PHP5, MySQL on the Mac for hobbies.
My favourite of all time ..... HyperTalk !!
From C, Awk and Sed (yes, they are full programming laguages - if you only use them for scripting you're missing 50% of the languages), Korn Shell, Borne Shell, PHP5, PL/SQL, LINC (an old Unisys 4GL) aka EAE, all to earn my bread and butter.
To C, PHP5, MySQL on the Mac for hobbies.
My favourite of all time ..... HyperTalk !!
I would have replaced Java with Ada 95 because from what I've been reading, Java programs are slow memory-gluttons. If they are slow memory-gluttons, I don't know why anyone would write, say, an interpreter in Java. What do I know? I'm only an efficiency fanatic. 
I'm glad I'm not programming professionally anymore. In the programming industry, my coworkers wrote in the language most others programmed in. Me? I preferred the best language for the application program I needed to write. I earned a reputation for always having my head in the academic clouds, and my head will stay happily there. Unfortunately, some may not mind if it collides with a Boeing 767.
I'm glad I'm not programming professionally anymore. In the programming industry, my coworkers wrote in the language most others programmed in. Me? I preferred the best language for the application program I needed to write. I earned a reputation for always having my head in the academic clouds, and my head will stay happily there. Unfortunately, some may not mind if it collides with a Boeing 767.
I would have replaced Java with Ada 95 because from what I've been reading, Java programs are slow memory-gluttons. If they are slow memory-gluttons, I don't know why anyone would write, say, an interpreter in Java. What do I know? I'm only an efficiency fanatic.
I'm glad I'm not programming professionally anymore. In the programming industry, my coworkers wrote in the language most others programmed in. Me? I preferred the best language for the application program I needed to write. I earned a reputation for always having my head in the academic clouds, and my head will stay happily there. Unfortunately, some may not mind if it collides with a Boeing 767.
You need to be gentle with Java and treat it right, but I've built trading platforms with it, and its not an issue.
Maybe I'm mistaken. I just believed what I read at the Great Computer Language Shootout's web site.
By the way, mistaken or not, folks, I think I've talked at you long enough. Thanks for an enjoyable time. I don't know whether I'll be back.
Bill
By the way, mistaken or not, folks, I think I've talked at you long enough. Thanks for an enjoyable time. I don't know whether I'll be back.
Bill
C++
C++ I see it far more easier at least for me than objective c, but now as I bought my first mac I am learning objective c. I learned c++ from different kind of tutorials and now I think I master the basics pretty well, the coding itself isn't the hard part for me, but thinking what is the best way to do the task.
C++ I see it far more easier at least for me than objective c, but now as I bought my first mac I am learning objective c. I learned c++ from different kind of tutorials and now I think I master the basics pretty well, the coding itself isn't the hard part for me, but thinking what is the best way to do the task.
For me, programming languages have always been easy to learn. But, although I don't know why, C++ always intimidates me. If anyone knows any tips on how to learn it, I would love to hear those tips.
C#. It keeps me employed. And, when combined with LINQ for SQL, I can do neat things really quickly in it. And the Visual Studio debugger is unmatched, IMHO.
If the rumors are true, we might just get a Mac version of it. Or the ability to remote debug on an Apple device.
MonoDevelop is one way to use C# on OS X.
I wish Apple would embrace something other than Obj-C, but Jobs seems wedded to the language. Apple had a loyal Pascal community for so long that it's sad that Apple hasn't made FPC of GPC available (without jumping through hoops) in Xcode.
I like Delphi, but haven't played with the crossplatform features.
Why I wouldn't run GPC
Please forgive me, my friends, if I'm repeating myself.
A day or two ago, I installed GPC because is the programming language I know best. Sorta dates me, ey? To try that compiler, I compiled a version of this program:
I could hardly believe my eyes when I noticed that the executable version of it was about 239,000 bytes. So GPC dove straight into the trash can. Maybe some linker made the computer bloat the executable program with many extra library functions. Whatever bloated it, that program was too, too huge. I translated the program into C, compiled the C program, and discovered that it executable version was only about 8,000 bytes.
Please forgive me, my friends, if I'm repeating myself.
A day or two ago, I installed GPC because is the programming language I know best. Sorta dates me, ey?
To try that compiler, I compiled a version of this program:
Code:
[B]program[/B] GPC_Tester(input, output);
[B]var[/B]
Number: [B]real[/B];
[B]begin[/b]
writeln('Please type a number.');
readln(Number);
writeln('The square root of ', Number:1, ' is ', sqrt(Number))
[B]end.[/B]I could hardly believe my eyes when I noticed that the executable version of it was about 239,000 bytes. So GPC dove straight into the trash can. Maybe some linker made the computer bloat the executable program with many extra library functions. Whatever bloated it, that program was too, too huge. I translated the program into C, compiled the C program, and discovered that it executable version was only about 8,000 bytes.
C runtime is supported by shared dylibs. GPC probably isn't.
Use the 'nm' command on each executable to see what symbols are externally defined.
Or use 'otool -L path/to/executable' to list the dylibs that are referenced.
Or there may be other reasons, such as whether the output is a universal binary, and for which architectures.
Use the 'nm' command on each executable to see what symbols are externally defined.
Or use 'otool -L path/to/executable' to list the dylibs that are referenced.
Or there may be other reasons, such as whether the output is a universal binary, and for which architectures.
C++ is bloated, you're right. But the great thing is you don't have to use anything you don't want to (by design). Don't like iostream? Use printf instead. Don't like algorithms? Do what you've always done: explicit loops. I find the combination of RAII for resource cleanup and Exceptions for error handling to be much nicer than anything C has to offer. And just the basic stuff like writing a concrete data type with member functions is much cleaner too; in C (to accomplish the same thing for something complicated) you have to use incomplete data types, be disciplined in using a naming convention (all the while polluting the global namespace), and have a brittle PITA way of calling your 'class' which which produces a potential ioccc entry every other line. But C has it all over C++ for binary compatibility.
At the moment programming is a hobby for me, but planning to make a career out of it once I graduate college.
As of now I have only been exposed to a handful of languages (C++, C, VB, Java, Obj-C). The only two I know in-depth are Java and Objective-C and both are really nice to work with, but of those two I prefer Objective-C. Though I learned Objective-C first and am most comfortable with it, so a bias is definitely their.
I never had any interest to pursue C++ perhaps one day I will need to. The next language I plan on learning is C (Went the alternate route of not learning C before Objective-C).
As of now I have only been exposed to a handful of languages (C++, C, VB, Java, Obj-C). The only two I know in-depth are Java and Objective-C and both are really nice to work with, but of those two I prefer Objective-C. Though I learned Objective-C first and am most comfortable with it, so a bias is definitely their.
I never had any interest to pursue C++ perhaps one day I will need to. The next language I plan on learning is C (Went the alternate route of not learning C before Objective-C).
No, but there is great emphasis in some workplaces now on doing C++ a particular way. It's the herd effect partly. But C++ has fueled a kind of bravado in some people that is founded on laziness. Like "Topper" from Dilbert, some C++ geeks insist their way is the best, biggest, and most correct way, not because it is but rather because they are too lazy to explore other options, or they loathe the difficulty of actually implement something.
Years ago, I asked a computer scientist what programming language he would suggest for the natural language interface I planned to write. "Scheme," he said, "because Common Lisp is too big." That answer puzzles me even now because I need only a few Lisp features for that application. Besides, I probably would write natural language software in Prolog because its inventors designed it for natural language processing.
Bloat may be why I've always disliked Perl. It gives you many ways to do the same thing. Hmm, I wonder why its name stands for Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister. What's eclectic: the rubbish, the lister, or both?
Bloat may be why I've always disliked Perl. It gives you many ways to do the same thing. Hmm, I wonder why its name stands for Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister. What's eclectic: the rubbish, the lister, or both?
Well, there's also reality that you have to deal with.
You can't choose the best language all the time, because you would need a support staff of an awful lot of people to maintain that code.
In the real world, its not cost effective to have more than one or two languages to support.
Unless you can trust programs that translate help the computer translate translate one high-level language into another high-level language. My Sun machine runs p2c to translate Pascal into C. Then, with a minor change or two, the C-version of the Pascal program will compile cleanly and run well.
Maybe you wonder why I take the trouble to say that the program helps the computer translate another program. Well, a program is like a recipe because it tells the machine, what to do, how to do it, and what to do it to. Recipes don't bake cakes. People do. Programs don't compute anything. Computers compute when they obey a program's instructions. Hairs are fun to split when you're a programmer with a hyper-analytical mind and a philosophy degree.
Maybe you wonder why I take the trouble to say that the program helps the computer translate another program. Well, a program is like a recipe because it tells the machine, what to do, how to do it, and what to do it to. Recipes don't bake cakes. People do. Programs don't compute anything. Computers compute when they obey a program's instructions. Hairs are fun to split when you're a programmer with a hyper-analytical mind and a philosophy degree.