Computer Programming

[MisterBob]

I cannot stress this enough:

FUCK VISUAL BASIC

If you're going to go RAD then use C#. At least then you can optionally use pointers and not alienate yourself from C/C++ syntax. You still get the benefits of drag & drop GUI development with easily wired event handling without being stuck in a dead language.

They're not going to learn much about programming if they're using VS.NET considering it does half of the work for you.

Not to mention it locks you into using MS-onry functionality when using languages that should compile on any platform, like C++

[Fhqwghads]

Yeah, but at least it's not VB. That was the real point. Keeping in mind that he's doing a lot of GUI prototyping, I'd imagine the GUI design is for Win32 apps so it would make sense to use C#. I don't know of any cross-platform language that supports RAD with drag & drop GUI design. If most of his platforms are going to be Windows then there's really no reason to not use it. Doing GUI apps in C/C++ for Windows is as much fun as <insert snappy metaphor>.

[Devek]

I don't know of any cross-platform language that supports RAD with drag & drop GUI design.

SWT? QT? GTK, etc?

If you're going to write software that someone might actually use, no reason for it not to run on other platforms too..

[Fhqwghads]

I don't know of any cross-platform language that supports RAD with drag & drop GUI design.

SWT? QT? GTK, etc?

If you're going to write software that someone might actually use, no reason for it not to run on other platforms too..

Cool, I have no need to do cross-platform, so it's good to know there's other stuff out there. I see Java is the language for those, which is still better than VB.

[Khamsin]

I used to program all the time as a hobby, playing with pointers, linked lists, abstracting, OOP, etc. as well as VESA graphics and such in C++. Played with ASM (both inline and standalone) a bit, too. Then I started doing a bunch of stuff with perl and MySQL for web applications, and then dabbled a bit with WML and HDML so I could view and interact with websites from my cellphone. Then I stopped around the time visual programming languages were getting popular, so I don't have much experience with them.

Now I'm kinda thinking about going back to hobbyist programming (not for career opportunities, mostly just for utilities to automate tasks, parse, etc. and make things easier for me, which is what I always did it for in the first place). I know how everything used to work when I always worked in DOS, but now there's all these newfangled APIs and .dlls and such.

What would be a good way for me to get back into things and update myself on how things work in this day and age? I'm familiar with perl, and with C++ when everything was DOS based. I know a little VB, but I never really got into it much.

I'd also want to remain in control of as much as possible. My programming MO was pretty much to make anything I write work as generally as possible so I could easily modify or add to it later to do other things besides what I originally wrote it for. I'd like to maintain that capability. May not have been as streamlined or fast as it could have been, but I liked being able to copy and paste code from other projects that I worked on and use it in something different and have it work with little modification.

[MisterBob]

I used to program all the time as a hobby, playing with pointers, linked lists, abstracting, OOP, etc. as well as VESA graphics and such in C++. Played with ASM (both inline and standalone) a bit, too. Then I started doing a bunch of stuff with perl and MySQL for web applications, and then dabbled a bit with WML and HDML so I could view and interact with websites from my cellphone. Then I stopped around the time visual programming languages were getting popular, so I don't have much experience with them.

Now I'm kinda thinking about going back to hobbyist programming (not for career opportunities, mostly just for utilities to automate tasks, parse, etc. and make things easier for me, which is what I always did it for in the first place). I know how everything used to work when I always worked in DOS, but now there's all these newfangled APIs and .dlls and such.

What would be a good way for me to get back into things and update myself on how things work in this day and age? I'm familiar with perl, and with C++ when everything was DOS based. I know a little VB, but I never really got into it much.

I'd also want to remain in control of as much as possible. My programming MO was pretty much to make anything I write work as generally as possible so I could easily modify or add to it later to do other things besides what I originally wrote it for. I'd like to maintain that capability. May not have been as streamlined or fast as it could have been, but I liked being able to copy and paste code from other projects that I worked on and use it in something different and have it work with little modification.

You can honestly just stick with C++ and Perl. VB is pretty much junk if you are at a decent skill level, honestly. Personally I avoid any of the MS languages, since I really think they teach you some bad habits, and it sucks to not be able to compile/run on multiple platforms. If you're interested in designing larger apps for your own use, or just for fun, I highly suggest you start researching patterns. Most good, large scale programming today is done as object oriented as possible, and having a good working knowledge of patterns can save you a huge headache. Just make you sure learn and understand them so you can adapt them properly, don't fall into the common lazy pitfall of simply following them blindly to the letter.

If you need to create applications with a GUI easily, you could try Java. There are a lot of poor rumors about Java (most which WERE founded in the days of Java 1.1), but most are wrong now. It's really not that slow, with Java 1.5 clocking in at about 1.1x slower than C++. (Assuming both the Java and C++ apps are written in an optimal fashion), and Java 1.6 is showing even more in the way of speed improvements.

If that's tl;dr, here's the summary:
VB sucks
C++ and Perl good!
Java can be good!

[Khamsin]

I have Borland C++ 6, actually... haven't checked on any newer versions lately, but it's the most up-to-date C++ IDE I have.

I still have Apache, ActivePerl, and MySQL on my computer for local testing, so I can get back into that, anytime. I may just have to check on newer versions of MySQL and ActivePerl.

My main concern is bridging the gap from my old DOS C++ ways and what I'd have to do nowadays.