What is the language with the lowest barriers to entry, simplest syntax, easiest setup. I'm aware that there's not a best language but I am sure that there will be one that's got a good score in all three areas. It's for teaching friends how to program, I like PHP and Python but I don't want to be narrow minded and limit myself when the...
I will probably start with C and then Lisp. Although I started programming in C, I did not program in it as much as I want. It's fun working with the low level stuff. Learning C helped me a lot when I started working. I've only started learning Lisp now and I found it amazing that the concepts it supported from the very start are still v...
Following on from Teifion's recent post "Easiest language to start with", I'm interested in the community's thoughts on what is generally considered the hardest programming language to learn. Something of an elitist's dream to be able to mention at geek cocktail parties. I'm not just talking about ones with the strangest syntax, but als...
It wasn't that long ago that I was a beginning coder, trying to find good books/tutorials on languages I wanted to learn. Even still, there are times I need to pick up a language relatively quickly for a new project I am working on. The point of this post is to document some of the best tutorials and books for these languages. I will ...
If one would be allowed to read only one book to learn new programming language what book would that be? My (rather small) list would be C - C Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis M. Ritchie C++ - The C++ Programming Language by Bjarne Stroustrup Java - Thinking in Java by Bruce Eckel Lisp - Structure and Interpretation ...
Say, one is a business applications developer (database, UI, 3-layer architecture, you know) working on Java or .NET platform and not going to change his career direction. What new programming language would you recommend him to learn to continue his professional growth and why? ...
This is more to satisfy my curiousity than anything else, but what languages have the best (or worst) documentation and support communities (including IRC, mailing lists, USENET groups, websites, forums, etc)? ...
Since debate without meaningful terms is meaningless, I figured I would point at the elephant in the room and ask: What exactly makes a language "object-oriented"? I'm not looking for a textbook answer here, but one based on your experiences with OO languages that work well in your domain, whatever it may be. A related question that mig...
Does the choice between language X and language Y (and perhaps also Language Z) have that much of an impact on the success of a project? I understand that there are some languages that just aren't the right fit (I don't think you would write an operating system in Java, for example), but between two or three languages that all work, does...
I've been learning Scala recently, and it seems like a very very promising general purpose programming language. It has all the good functional programming features, terse syntax, it runs on JVM and interoperates with Java. Some think it's the Next Big Language. Others aren't so sure. Why do you think it is/isn't going to be the next b...
I see a lot of talk on here about functional languages and stuff. Why would you use one over a "traditional" language? What do they do better? What are they worse at? What's the ideal functional programming application? ...
I am a C# developer and have been programming in that for a long time. I have some experience using ASP 3.0, php, VB.NET and C. I would like to learn something else and am not sure where I should focus. I have done a little with Python but wasn't as "inspired" by the language as I would have hoped to be. Thoughts on what I should le...
I think it's a very carefully designed language. I like the programming concepts it promotes. After the first touch I was very impressed. I was wondering if there are any job ads for this language. The license price is a bit prohibitive so I think there are very few small companies that will choose it. Have you worked on large project...
I've searched on the Internet for comparisons between F# and Haskell but haven't found anything really definitive. What are the primary differences and why would I want to choose one over the other? ...
I discovered that the cause of my problems (see question) was the lack of support in C# for covariance on inherited methods' return types. Now I'm curious what languages support this feature. Accepted answer will be whoever can name the most. EDIT: John Millikin correctly pointed out that lots of dynamic languages support this. I'll ...
Based on the tags page here, C# is the big winner. Freshmeat lists far more C projects than anything else. ...
Are the naming conventions similar in different languages? If not, what are the differences? ...
I've checked the tags and there is nothing for D - the programming language from Digital Mars. It is listed 12th on the TIOBE index, just after Ruby, so it must have some following. Anybody been using this? What are initial impressions? ...
Does anyone know of an IDE for the D Programming Language? ...
I have been learning C++ for a while now, I find it very powerful. But, the problem is the the level of abstraction is not much and I have to do memory management myself. What are the languages that I can use which uses a higher level of abstraction. ...