Sat Feb 20 19:34:01 MST 2010

On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 7:27 PM, Michael Havens <bmike1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> website development seems like the only thing I would want to do so Ruby it
> is!

   and that is the typical story with Ruby developers...  ;)

  -jmz

> Unfortunately, it isn't on my Ubuntuu install. When  I tried to start it
> it told me to apt-get it. No internet connection.
>
> On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 7:12 PM, Joseph Sinclair <plug-discussion at stcaz.net>
> wrote:
>>
>> Let's not devolve into a favorite language war.  There are situations
>> where Python is a great language choice, and situations where it's terrible.
>> Every language choice comes down to what you want to accomplish.
>>  Some languages are good for rapid development of websites (Ruby, PHP,
>> etc...).
>>  Some languages are good for systems management scripts (Python, Perl,
>> etc...).
>>  Some languages are good for developing large web systems intended to be
>> maintained for years (Java, others).
>>  Some languages are good for developing packaged COTS software (C++, Java,
>> etc...).
>>  Some languages are good for system software and embedded devices (C, C++,
>> etc...).
>>  Many languages are most useful in very specific niches (Forth, Lisp, ADA,
>> XSLT, LOLCode, Objective-C, etc...)
>>
>> Most languages have multiple areas where they work well, and multiple
>> areas where they're not so good.
>> What exactly you want to accomplish in your software development should
>> drive the language choice, although it rarely does.
>>
>> No one particular language is the best choice for learning how to write
>> software; each type of software development will drive a different choice of
>> the best "first" language to learn.
>>
>> Mike, you need to specify your goal more precisely in order for the
>> community here to give you a useful recommendation that will help you best
>> accomplish that goal.
>>
>> ==Joseph++
>>
>> Kevin Fries wrote:
>> > Wow, now I know why it is so hard to hire people that are competent!
>> >  Python is fun, not right, but fun... Thats your argument?  If you want to
>> > know why we refuse to hire Python programmers at our company, I can give you
>> > real facts on why you should not use that language as a place to learn...
>> > Not opinions.
>> >
>> > Kevin
>> >
>> > Sent from my Nokia phone
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: Joshua Zeidner
>> > Sent:  02/20/2010 4:17:23 PM
>> > Subject:  Re:
>> >
>> > On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 4:13 PM, Joshua Zeidner <jjzeidner at gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >>  Seems like we have a lot of opinions here.  Here is a paper from ACM
>> >> on the use of Python in for teaching programming.
>> >>
>> >>    http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=114017
>> >
>> >   sorry wrong link:
>> >  http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1140123.1140177
>> >
>> >        -jmz
>> >
>> >>  -jmz
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 4:01 PM, Austin William Wright
>> >> <diamondmagic at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>> >>> Alan Dayley wrote:
>> >>>> Python.
>> >>>>
>> >>> Absolutely NOT PYTHON. It breaks the first two rules of programming,
>> >>> the
>> >>> assignment operator (=) assigns values to a variable, and always
>> >>> ignore
>> >>> whitespace. Well my first two rules, at least. Plus it sucks at
>> >>> consistent use of object-oriented programming.
>> >>>
>> >>> If you *really* need a general-purpose programming language, look at
>> >>> Ruby, it's slightly more well behaved. Slightly. I would recommend
>> >>> Javascript, it's a major programming language, and you can run it in
>> >>> your web browser with literally nothing to install. Plus Javascript is
>> >>> closely related to XML and HTML, while not programming languages, are
>> >>> markup languages (a way of storing data) that is becoming very
>> >>> important
>> >>> to know for many things. Though designed for the web, many of these
>> >>> things are finding themselves become part of everyday computing,
>> >>> especially XML. For these things, http://www.w3schools.com/ is
>> >>> popular.
>> >>>
>> >>> Any scripting language might be a good start at learning about
>> >>> if/then/else logic, but none of these languages are going to teach how
>> >>> computers really *process* or *store* information on the inside (how
>> >>> the
>> >>> CPU executes the program or how variables are stored in memory), or
>> >>> for
>> >>> that matter write an actual interactive computer program, you will
>> >>> need
>> >>> a real language like C or C++. After learning something like
>> >>> Javascript
>> >>> you will find C surprisingly limited in functionality if you try and
>> >>> do
>> >>> things the same way, especially variable-length variables like strings
>> >>> and arrays. Keep that fact in the back of your head for when, if, you
>> >>> attempt C/C++.
>> >>>
>> >>> Whatever you do, Google "<x> tutorial" should bring up something good.
>> >>> In the way of books, however, you can't miss ones from O'Reilly (
>> >>> http://oreilly.com/ ), they are jade/teal and have a random animal on
>> >>> the cover.
>> >>>
>> >>> Austin Wright.
>> >>> ---------------------------------------------------
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>> >>>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> http://home.joshuazeidner.com/
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> :-)~MIKE~(-:
>
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