A comment on programming languages

[chipotle]

On Slashdot, someone wrote, "I would feel pretty stupid actually reading a QBASIC book in 2003. Modern programming languages are easier to learn than QBASIC." To which the reply was:

By what reckoning? They turn this:

PRINT A +  B

into this:

am = new math.ArithmeticManager();
opA = new math.Operand((float) a);
opB = new math.Operand((float) b);
am.addOperand(opA);
am.addOperand(opB);
am.operator = new math.operators.Addition();
am.executeMathOperation();
system.io.output.print(am.mathOperationResult());

You know, he has a point.

Comments

[mcgroarty.livejournal.com]

You should see what comes out of the current crop of CS graduates, who haven't touched anything but overtemplated Visual C++ and MFC all their lives. :( :( :(

[chipotle.livejournal.com]

I can believe it. I haven't ever been even peripherally involved with Windows programming (There is the first place I've worked at that's actually doing Windows software), but I've seen PHP and C at NetPoodles which was somewhat cringe-inducing. Mostly that came from the realization that to a lot of the past and present coders there, "code reuse" meant "copy and paste." When they pasted in comments from entirely different parts of the system, it made things entertaining. Since I mostly spent time fixing and refactoring old code, I mostly complained about the lack of debugging going on there, though. (Naturally when they decided to lay off 2 out of 3 "front end" developers, the one they kept was the one who was the most likely to copy and paste and the most likely to fix bugs by adding a hack correction at the UI level rather than finding the bug at the core. I suspect he appeared to be the most productive by line count.)

For better or worse, I'm ignorant of C++, and I'm wondering if learning Objective-C will ruin me for it later. :)

[bwcoyoten.livejournal.com]

That looks like Ada...

AGH! Military Flashback! Military Flashback!!!

The thing with "modern" programming languages (as opposed to what, pleistocene programming languages?) is that there's a definite power/readability trade-off. Generally speaking, the more powerful a programming language is, the lower level it is, and therefore the harder it is to read or learn. VC++ runs way faster than VB, which is loads easier to write in.

This being my semi-ex-professional opinion.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I am a professional programming languages geek at IBM, so I can blather about this topic for months without repeating myself or saying anything.

But ... there's a continuum here. Some languages are intended for writing small programs quickly, helping people learn how to program, and suchlike. That gives you the "PRINT A + B" style.

Other languages are intended for gluing massive structures together -- and we're not talking huge programs in one language, we're talking seventeen huge programs in a total of thirty-eight different languages, no two of which were ever intended to cooperate. This gives you the other example ... not because it's the simplest way to say "PRINT A+B" in isolation, but because it's the simplest way to connect two systems, one of which prefers to express everything in balanced trinary, and the other of which prefers to "PRINT A+B" by counting out A pebbles, then B pebbles, then hurling them all into a geosynchronous orbit.

Choose your agony.

As far as that goes...

[bwcoyoten.livejournal.com]

I spent about five years programming database front ends, and for that purpose, I liked the ease-of-use and customizability of VB.

Now, however, as I begin working towards a game design career, I find myself using VC++ for all that the version I have is horribly misnamed: it's not quite "visual" at all, as most of the work is still done in pure code.