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The Best Programming Language (or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Code)

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Re: The Best Programming Language (or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Code)

#151

Post by jtfrench »

polskibus wrote: post #87
andrewcooke wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i guess maybe now is a good time to repeat this request - does anyone know of a good, recent book that describes how to write correct, modern c++ using the latest standards and staying with the subset of the language that expert users recognise as elegant and powerful?

I always recommend Effective C++ by Scott Meyers. It does not cover C++11 but is still relevant to anyone wanting to learn the good c++.

I would have to second that. Scott's book is great (and he's a fellow Brown alum)

Re: The Best Programming Language (or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Code)

#152

Post by jtfrench »

koyote wrote: post #19
V-2 wrote: post #12

Based on the code snippet, I'm not surprised he thinks C# is "verbose" with "lots of boilerplate" and "resembles Java", because the snippet is written as if it WAS Java, or at least written 10 years ago. Compare his GetFrequencies implementation with idiomatic, LINQ version: http://pastie.org/8834650

I completely agree. After having used C# extensively recently, and having used quite a lot of Java before that, I have a feeling that C# is what Java should have been/should be. LINQ alone makes C# infinitely less verbose and 'boilerplate' than Java.

So true. C# = What Java wanted to be, sans "write once, deploy anywhere" hype

Re: The Best Programming Language (or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Code)

#153

Post by computerslol »

sanderjd wrote: post #70
hvidgaard wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LINQ is a tool, and a great one. But just as you need to understand malloc when writing C, you need to understand the basics of LINQ to use it in production. The main problems I've come across are all failure to understand delayed evaluation. Maybe I'm not using it in a complex way, but as soon as it start to feel too complex, LINQ is not the way to go. I agree that it can be difficult to debug - that's why it should…

What are the best resources for really grokking LINQ in depth? I'm not too impressed with the level of depth in the main LINQ section on MSDN - it seems (sensibly) more focused on how to use it than on how it works.

http://community.bartdesmet.net/blogs/bart/archive/tags/LINQ...

Although this blog is dead now, the information stored within is golden. I also highly suggest De Smet's C# 5.0 unleashed book.

Re: The Best Programming Language (or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Code)

#154

Post by computerslol »

Glide wrote: post #106
sanderjd wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the best resources for really grokking LINQ in depth? I'm not too impressed with the level of depth in the main LINQ section on MSDN - it seems (sensibly) more focused on how to use it than on how it works.

The biggest thing for me with grokking LINQ was understanding the difference between IQueryable and IEnumerable types of operations. Most of the complexity in the runtime with it is with IQueryable. I don't know if there are a lot more resources out there but the best one for me was understanding Expressions and that namespace in .Net and trying to grok the ASTs that were being passed around to understand how it was…

There are also IObservable and IQservable if you want to go deeper.

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Going+Deep/Bart-De-Smet-Obser...

Re: The Best Programming Language (or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Code)

#155

Post by bromagosa »

overgard wrote: post #5
bromagosa wrote: post #3

«The first true object-oriented language. But it seems to me Smalltalk is pretty much a forgotten language.» Why do so many people kill Smalltalk so fast? I could give so many URLs to illustrate how Smalltalk has a stable and growing community, with so many open projects and people making a living out of it, teaching it in universities and using it for research, but I think these two links sum it all up: http://forum…

> Why do so many people kill Smalltalk so fast? Because it doesn't have curly braces. Entirely unfair, but it seems like if you want to sneak in an innovative language it needs to be a wolf in sheep's clothes. (IE: it need to vaguely resemble C)

But we also do have curly braces! For dynamic arrays! ;)

{ Number. #someSymbol. 5 + 6. [ :anArgument | anArgument doSomething ] value: 'some string goes here'. #(3 'hi'). 1000 factorial }

Re: The Best Programming Language (or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Code)

#156

Post by V-2 »

dllthomas wrote: post #131
tracker1 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly? There are very few things Java does better as a language, and most of those are opinion, not outright better. My biggest interest in .Net/CLI/Mono from very early on was how much easier it was to interface with systems libraries vs. Java's JNI.

Given the large surface areas of each, I'd be astounded if there were zero points on which Java is genuinely superior. I don't recall either well enough to give any specifics.

Better enums in Java.

Re: The Best Programming Language (or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Code)

#157

Post by blobfish »

Dewie wrote: post #135
overgard wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do so many people kill Smalltalk so fast? Because it doesn't have curly braces. Entirely unfair, but it seems like if you want to sneak in an innovative language it needs to be a wolf in sheep's clothes. (IE: it need to vaguely resemble C)

Since curly braces are a pain for me to write (on my keyboard), I strongly embrace languages who don't make them part of the important syntax.

Wouldn't it be better to buy a new keyboard and expand the range of languages you can type in comfortably?

Re: The Best Programming Language (or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Code)

#158

Post by pdpi »

blobfish wrote: post #157
Dewie wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since curly braces are a pain for me to write (on my keyboard), I strongly embrace languages who don't make them part of the important syntax.

Wouldn't it be better to buy a new keyboard and expand the range of languages you can type in comfortably?

I'm going to hazard a guess that the problem is not the physical keyboard, but rather the OP's use of a non-US keyboard layout. My native portuguese keyboard layout uses AltGr-8 and AltGr-9 for square brackets, and 7/0 for curly braces, and it's incredibly uncomfortable. I eventually changed to using the US International layout (with dead keys) to make it less awkward to write code, to the detriment of writing in portuguese.

Re: The Best Programming Language (or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Code)

#159

Post by Dewie »

pdpi wrote: post #158
blobfish wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be better to buy a new keyboard and expand the range of languages you can type in comfortably?

I'm going to hazard a guess that the problem is not the physical keyboard, but rather the OP's use of a non-US keyboard layout. My native portuguese keyboard layout uses AltGr-8 and AltGr-9 for square brackets, and 7/0 for curly braces, and it's incredibly uncomfortable. I eventually changed to using the US International layout (with dead keys) to make it less awkward to write code, to the detriment of writing in por…

> I'm going to hazard a guess that the problem is not the physical keyboard, but rather the OP's use of a non-US keyboard layout.

You're exactly right.

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