Help for School Article

I'll be writing for an article for our school newspaper it will be entitled "Useless Programming Languages." But contrary to my title (just to catch their attention :P), my article will be about informing how useful these "useless" programs are. I commonly hear talk in our school about saying c++ is just a beginners language and they'd rather use Java or other newer (they think that newer languages are better). I already read some articles about the disadvantages and advantages of some languages but don't know the prominent "powerful" and very versatile/practical ones. Can you please help me on this? I'd like to prove that c++ shouldn't be getting that image in our school, and other languages too which have been said to be unpractical. I think there is an issue on Visual Basic and Java (wikipedia :P).

Great place to start:

http://public.research.att.com/~bs/blast.html

Visual Basic would be a great one to do it on. Theres a large majority of programmers that bash it because it's so "basic", but in real life it's probably one of the most used languages of all time. It might be dumb with dumb syntax, but for the majority of business applications (which is the majority of programs) it's perfect - it's very fast to use, and you can do pretty much all the common things any application needs to do.

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Originally Posted by Ezerhorden

I commonly hear talk in our school about saying c++ is just a beginners language and they'd rather use Java

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The absurdity of this statement baffles me.

Ei, thanks for the replies, now I have a problem on keeping my article short >_< I'm also thinking of including that many popular programs/OS's/games are written in c++, correct me if I'm wrong but Windows and Ragnarok online?

(kinda off-topic, kinda amused by the first question in Bjarne's FAQ page)

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Originally Posted by CornedBee

The absurdity of this statement baffles me.

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Maybe it has to do with how our school teaches programming. They start with c and c++ then VB then Java. I think they equate that order with, something... >_>

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Originally Posted by Ezerhorden

I'm also thinking of including that many popular programs/OS's/games are written in c++, correct me if I'm wrong but Windows and Ragnarok online?

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Large parts of Windows are written in C++, most of the rest in C. Don't know what Ragnarok online is, but I'd say there's an 80% chance of it being written in C++, and nearly 20% chance of being C. Definitely not Java.
Blizzard's games are all written in C++: StarCraft, Diablo, Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft, StarCraft: Ghost.
The software powering Google and eBay, and I believe Amazon too, is written mostly in C++.

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Originally Posted by stovellp

Visual Basic would be a great one to do it on. Theres a large majority of programmers that bash it because it's so "basic", but in real life it's probably one of the most used languages of all time. It might be dumb with dumb syntax, but for the majority of business applications (which is the majority of programs) it's perfect - it's very fast to use, and you can do pretty much all the common things any application needs to do.

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Echo, however, I find that the majority of programmers who dislike Visual Basic dislike it because it has the word basic it it's name. Don't you know they're way to good to learn anything that has basic in it?

:rolleyes:

I wouldn't go as far as to call VB.Net "basic" as its got all of the complexities & idiosyncracies of C#, but people will consider C# with an open mind because it has C in its name.

I tend to shy away from people that dislike VB for inappropriate reasons.

Same deal with Java, people hate it because it's "slow," yet don't understand that it's run on a virtual machine, yielding portability not seen in C/C++.

Language haters suck. :D

http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/bf/

if yuo want pointless programming languages, check out "brain f uck" ^^

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Originally Posted by spoon_

Echo, however, I find that the majority of programmers who dislike Visual Basic dislike it because it has the word basic it it's name. Don't you know they're way to good to learn anything that has basic in it?

:rolleyes:

I wouldn't go as far as to call VB.Net "basic" as its got all of the complexities & idiosyncracies of C#, but people will consider C# with an open mind because it has C in its name.

I tend to shy away from people that dislike VB for inappropriate reasons.

Same deal with Java, people hate it because it's "slow," yet don't understand that it's run on a virtual machine, yielding portability not seen in C/C++.

Language haters suck. :D

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That's exactly true, and it's the "basic" that's given people the perception it must be a toy language and no real developer would use it.

This is a great place to argue that the best developers use whatever tool lets them get the job done right, not whichever tool makes their ego bigger.

If you do want a really useful programming language though, look at this one:

http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/whitespace/index.php

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Originally Posted by stovellp

That's exactly true, and it's the "basic" that's given people the perception it must be a toy language and no real developer would use it.

This is a great place to argue that the best developers use whatever tool lets them get the job done right, not whichever tool makes their ego bigger.

If you do want a really useful programming language though, look at this one:

http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/whitespace/index.php

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Agree.

Ahh yes, whitespace, been there done that.

C++ could be said to be a beginners language in the best sense of the word - it was the language I started with.

C++ is a great language to begin with because it teaches you the hard basics. It takes years to be able to do anything decent with it, but once you understand it, you can pick up any other language in less than a few days. If you can understand C++, theres not many procedural or OOP languages you won't understand. So it's certainly a language I'd reccommend to beginners.

That said, you're unlikely to use it in real life these days (of course it has its place, but not in the majority of applications), but I'm still thankful I started with C++ than a language like Basic.

A list of applications that have been mostly written in c/c++:

http://public.research.att.com/~bs/applications.html

I just want to add my 2 cents in here.

I think deciding to pick which language you want to use is depend on your requirements.

If speed is not an issue, and portability is a must, than Java would be the best choice.

If speed is an issue, and portability is also a must, than C++ would be a better choice.
To achieve portablility in C++, I use ACE (adaptive communication environment).

And of course there're many other scenerios. Maybe you need to use CORBA, ICE or COM to serve as a bridge to provide language transparency.

Also, I don't think C++ is a learning language. The language that was designed for learning purpose was Pascal. C++ is now used as a learning language is probably because that it is widely use, and also to learn C++, you must learn how to handle memory managements, pointers and references, but if you learn Java first, you'll skip all these important things.

It's always easy to switch from C++ to Java, but for a Java developer to switch to C++, it will be a pain.

oh, one more thing, if you think that you don't have to worry about memory management in Java, then you're wrong, because it's possible to get memory leak in Java. If any of you're interested to know why you can create a memory leak in Java, I can provide more details, or you can read the "Effective Java" book written by Joshua Bloch.

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That said, you're unlikely to use it in real life these days (of course it has its place, but not in the majority of applications), but I'm still thankful I started with C++ than a language like Basic.

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C++ is the closest language besides... C, Machine Code, and Assembler (Why has nobody mentioned this O_o). Plenty of people use C++ for real applications. (They're barely any games that dont use C++) Lots of security software's use C++. Java is more of a porting language, its like C or C++, its not as close to the computer, and its noticably slower. BASIC and other languages have their points, its really all opinion.

Mmm, you cant really compare some languages to others, because they're all made with different ideas in mind. C++ is a headache when it comes to web applications, Java makes web applets a snap. But java cant access quite as much information. Java gives you less control over things like windows, ect. Its all built with different ideas.

Though, I enjoy C++ because its older and has more support, and its used for almost all games. I would have gone with java, but I dont see myself actualy using it at any point...

:D

there are no useless programming languages apart from those written for student assignments in colleges and sometimes universities in compiler creation classes (but those hardly count as they were never intended for realworld use).

I dislike VB for appropriate reasons:

• Interface has nothing to do with underlying data
• Class objects are not objects in the true sense of the word
• VB has been made to look like an object-oriented language when we all know it's roots come from a non-object oriented setup
• VB is quick and fast to use, yet you sacrifice loads of power as opposed to using something like MFC for your app
• VB's speed of execution is below par and certainly not up to C/C++
• VB attempts to be quick and simple and it is which is why anytime you try to do something just a little outside of the box, it craps out and works against you
• VB's error handling has not been improved since the dawn of BASIC which is a major oversight given that error handling system was based on goto's (either line or label) and gosub's
• Sub-classing controls becomes messy and is not nearly as simple and straightforward as C/C++.
• The message-based simplicity of Windows is buried deep inside of VB and if the control you are using does not receive the message you can't write a handler for it. AFAIK you cannot write a handler to intercept messages and route them as you would want
• Linking to DLLs is an extremely messy proposition as well as calling the API from inside of VB. I believe this has been changed in VB .NET, but I could care less to try it.
• VB is not fast enough for games, not designed for them, and therefore that means I've no interest in it.

I could go on and on.

Use what you need to get the job done, but I detest VB. But my bro-in-law uses it extensively at work so yes companies use it, but many of these same issues have been raised by him as well.

VB is useful. It gets people to quickly create small utilities for internal use in companies.
Sadly it's also used to write large complex systems that it's really not designed to, and which subsequently give the entire product a bad name.