Freaking Me Out ...

[Quark]

Sorry, this is completely irrelevent but this forum just gave me shivers.

Been working on my C++ programs alot lately, and we've just been diving into pointers. What does this have to do with anything?

"The Lurker Lounge Forums -> The Lurker Lounge -> The Lounge"
"firstPtr -> nextPtr -> data"

After all the memory address errors I've cleaned up in the last two weeks (and I know this is only the beginning), that form is eerie. :(

[smithy]

Don't complain. I'm currently taking an introductory java course having already taken the intro C and C++ classes. GAWD do I hate java.

I also hate pointers. :)

smithy

[Quark]

I hope to never learn the mass of junk that is Java. The field I'm interested in will never use it, so I'd be better off sticking to C/C++ and getting some Assembly under my belt.

Sun wants MS to run Java, when it didn't even run properly on Sun's own operating system. What's the word here... irony? Hey Computing Science kids, better learn that Java, you never know when you're going to have to bring a computer to its knees with a tic-tac-toe game.

Stolen shamelessly from Firingsquad.

[--Pete]

Hi,

Programming is only about 10% coding. Focusing on a language is pretty foolish, that is a small piece of the whole. Java is not bad for an *interpreted* language. Real programmers learn a new language pretty much "at the drop of a hat". Once you understand the principles, the rest is just syntax. I can't remember who said it, but "somewhere in C++ is a good programming language screaming to get out." Some people think that Java could have been that language.

--Pete

[Quark]

What would you recommend as the language to learn the principles, then?

Obviously most schools, including mine, use C++. Microsoft's doing a big push for C# (shudder, more proprietary junk). My school uses lisp and assembly for some higher-end stuff, but AFAIK there's no real Java class.

Of course, we're getting a new CompSci professor next semester, so that should help ...


Edit: Grr, gonna take awhile to get used to responding in the right spot.

[--Pete]

Hi,

I presume this is in reply to me. If not, well then I'll just butt in. ;)

If you want a pretty good language background, I'd recommend looking at:
Smalltalk for a good OOPs language done right.
LISP for a good AI language.
PostScipt for a good (and useful) threaded interpretive language.
Fortran 77 for a good algebraic language.
A couple of assembly languages to get a feel for things at that level (although they aren't as necessary as they once were. Optimizing compilers do better than all but the best assembly programmers).

However, as long as the language you are using is powerful enough to support decent data structures, it doesn't much matter what you use. To become a good programmer (as opposed to just a good coder) concentrate on algorithms and data structures. A couple of good books are Numerical Recipes in XXX where XXX is C, C++, and a bunch more languages (proving that the language doesn't much matter) and Art of Computer Programming by Knuth (both volumes).

There are a lot of other good books out there, mostly on narrow topics like cryptography, graphics, matrix manipulations, etc. Go to your library and do a search (or, if they've got their catalog online, do a search then go to your library :) ) Pick up a few books on these topics and read through them fast. Get the general ideas and a feel for the topics. You can always do a deeper search when a particular problem raises it's head.

But remember -- have fun. Taking a problem and getting a computer to solve it is one of the best games around. Get good at it, and people will give you money to have fun ;)

--Pete

[Jim NM]

I hope to never learn the mass of junk that is Java.

That's a bad attitude for anyone to harbor. Whether you think you'll ever use the knowledge or not, learning is always a good thing. Learning {insert language here}, whether you actually use it or not, may open your mind to new ways to think about and solve problems. You can then apply that to the language(s) you actually work with, and it will make you a better programmer.

Learn as much as you possibly can - don't limit yourself by refusing to learn.

Jim

[yangman]

Being part of a MUD development team, I'm currently learning Java, and I've never had a single session where I wasn't frustrated to hell.
It's sweet to have a cross-platform language that will work on anything with the Java SRE, but there just seem to be SO MANY limitations, like having to CONVERT byte into int for the variable to be usable in certain methods. Not to mention it's slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow....


Now, Borland Delphi, that was a blast to learn, even thought it was the first programming language I learned seriously.

[--Pete]

Hi,

Learning {insert language here}, whether you actually use it or not, may open your mind to new ways to think about and solve problems.

Actually *learning* ADA looked to be so hazardous to my mental health that I gave my copy of the spec away after browsing it :0

Life is short and there's a lot of fun stuff and useful stuff worth learning. No use wasting time on the dregs.

--Pete

[whyBish]

Well, I managed to write 7 across a chunk of my hard-drive once with too many (or was it too few) ** variables. :blink:

[Caesar]

As long as we're on the subject of programming, I might as well post this. It's a forty-page paper written by a computer scientist that "attempts to summarize the non-technical things that I wish someone had explained to me at the beginning of my career as a professional programmer." The link gives a slightly more in-depth description and provides a link to the 230kb pdf.

I'm no computer programmer but I found it a fascinating read (it probably helps that my father is a computer scientist so I'm fairly familiar with the subject matter). Worth at least a look, even if all you're doing is playing around with Java. :)

Enjoy.