[NCLUG] Looking at programming languages...

Walker, Philip M (Optical Storage) phil.walker at hp.com
Wed Jan 16 12:39:54 MST 2008


Two possiblities come to mind:  python and groovy

Of the two, python tends to suffer performance issues (maybe similar to ruby).

Groovy is very similar to Ruby, if you use the new idioms, so it's very easy to learn.
The performance is very good because it compiles to java .class files.

Phil

-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis Clark [mailto:dlc at frii.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 11:40 AM
To: Northern Colorado Linux Users Group
Subject: Re: [NCLUG] Looking at programming languages...

How about "Squeak"?  It is a more modern version of Smalltalk and it is OO and cross platform.  There is a large user base and its been around a while.

DLC

> I would like some opinions.   I am going to be doing some new
> development, as well as teaching some people who know nothing about
> programming some basics of programming.
>
> Here are my issues:
> PERL - Available everywhere, easy to write.  The GUI stuff, though is
> kind of convoluted for n00b's, and it tends to be a write only
> language.   You can write it, but you can't really go back and see
> what you did.
>
> Ruby - The language is brilliant.   It does everything just as you
> would want and expect.   However, it is a pig at runtime, and the
> runtime tends to have issues like sucking up every available bit of
> RAM and CPU when you least expect it.   I have not done any GUI stuff
> with it.  OO conceptually is a little advanced for beginners.
>
> Gambas - GUI is easy, you can easily connect code to GUI artifacts.
> However, it is not cross platform, and does not really seem to have
> enough people using it to really reach critical mass.
>
> What I want is something I can write a real application in, something
> robust enough for real corporate use.  It needs to be cross platform,
> at least Linux and Windows, since I use Linux, but the desktops for
> deployment may have Windows.  I would also like to be able to use it
> (once I get the hang of it) to teach others the basics, but show them
> that as they improve their skills, they can use this for real things,
> since I have already done so.   I have been a programmer since the
> dawn of time, and have worked in many languages on many platforms, so
> picking up a new one is not really a bad thing.
>
> Any suggestions you have for languages and where to get started on
> them would be great.  Also, since I will need to do GUI applications
> eventually with it, which toolkits may be nice as well as which tools
> to build the GUI.   I tend to like to use GUI tools to build GUI's,
> but then just a text editor, maybe with syntax highlighting, for
> actual code.   A full blown IDE is not that important, although a step
> debugger is nice.
>
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--
Dennis Clark
TTT Enterprises





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