Re: Programming?

[Adam Williams <adam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 From          : klug>klug-request
 To            : adam
 Subject       : Re: Programming?
 Date          : 12/01/99 12:13


>> I think a FIRST programming language should be
>> something that's
>> commonly found in most workplaces, or at least
>> vaguely resemble
>> a common programming language.
>If I should use something for my workplace then I
>should be looking at Visual Basic. The only thing is

NOOOOOOOOOO!  Visual Basic stinks!  You're better off with C (which most
"real" apps are written in).  Anyone who writes a business system in VB is
just plain nuts (and I know alot of them).

>I'm looking for personal interest and not to further
>my standing in my place of business. What language
>would you suggest Bruce? I'm still leaning towards APL~

I know NOTHING about APL, so I'm staying out of this one.~

>and have found some interesting Websites but nothing
>with anything of substance on it. That and the book
>aspect has been severely lacking, atleast on-line but
>I still have a few more places to visit.

If you want to do app stuff, Tcl/Tk might be worth toying with.  You avoid
"compiler-isms" and other pain,  as you do in perl,  but it has a nice GUI
toolkit.  There are a few free COBOL compilers as well.  Since all this stuff
is free, there is nothing stopping you from trying out a few things before
settling on one to go heads down into.  My personal advice would still be to
use C and a cross-platform toolkit like V or Qt, but both Bob and Bruce have
much higher development background than I do.  Most my development is either
Web (for which I use PHP), or system level stuff (for which I use C).  System
level stuff is like populating a NIS /etc/password file from an LDAP
servers replication log, etc...,  real fun stuff that no user ever sees.~