I've been using PHP for a while, but I'm growing tired of the sloppy/awkward Unicode support (among other things). Baked-in Unicode support is very important to me, since I despise debugging character encoding issues, especially between the database and scripting layers. What languages work well with both Unicode and web development? He...
See: Understanding Pointers In many C flavoured languages, and some older languages like Fortran, one can use Pointers. As someone who has only really programmed in basic, javascript, and actionscript, can you explain to me what a Pointer is, and what it is most useful for? Thanks! ...
I'm looking for some metrics. I'm currently tech-editing a book in which the author boldly states that "ASP executes faster than CGI and Perl". It's not backed up by any sources or anything that would lead me to believe that was a fact, so I'm wondering, does anyone know the answer to this question? I've done some google searches, but ha...
Is it a case by case basis or are there some languages you can compare and really have an honest, non-fanboy, completely measured quality difference between the two? ...
Can anyone help me understand some of the pros (and some of the cons if they are constructive) of using VB.NET over say, C#? ...
I always liked to ask myself "what's the first principle(s) of this?" after I learned the basic stuff of something (e.g. programming). It's an inspiring question, IMO, that can force you to think about the most important principle(s) behind something, especially a skill such as programming. So, what do you think is the first principle(s...
If I have a boolean function f(x) = {print(x); return is_even(x)} that does some time-consuming (in this example, for illustrative purposes, side-effect-producing) stuff and a list a={2,3,4} I can check if f() is true for every element of a with apply(And, map(f, a)) but that wastefully applies f to every element of a instead of retur...
What's wrong with F#? That is, what about the language would make it unsuitable for production environments (excluding the fact that it's not yet officially graduated from MS Research)? I'm interested in functional programming (especially on .NET) and I'd like to learn this language, but I worry about its applicability in the real world...
I need to be able to periodically send email alerts to subscribed users. PHP seems to struggle with sending one message, so I'm looking for good alternatives. Any language will do, if the implementation is fast enough. The amount of mails sent will eventually be in the thousands. If purchasing licensed software can be avoided, so much ...
When I was last at university the language de-jour for projects was Java. I was wondering if this is still the case. Last I checked my university had switched to teaching Python as its first language and from what I can see python seems to be gaining popularity among the "We need to make something quickly" crowd. Haskell was also the m...
I'm already a professional J2EE developer by day, and Rails developer by night. I'm planning on adding Python to my list of skills. I'm already convinced a language is just a tool, so I'm not interested in a religious war. I agree with the Pragmatic Programmers that learning one language/year is a good thing for your professional develop...
Hi This is a problem I constantly face. I know how to execute a certain task in one enviroment / framework / language but I am a complete stranger in another. What's more, sometimes the gap between languages / enviroments is really too big to be simply adapted (like porting a prolog application to C#) So, I guess the question is: how...
I was trying to convert a string containing only base 10 digits (e.g. "124890") to an array of corresponding integers (for given example: [1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 0]), in Ruby. I'm curious about how easily this can be accomplished in Ruby and in other languages. ...
After falling in love with F# after only reading the website, and having a friend convince me to try IronPython, what else is there aside from those already included with Visual Studio 2008? ...
There's more and more attention on languages such as Haskell and F# and although I can see the parallelisation benefits where processing large amounts of data, I cannot see where a functional language would fit into standard LOB development. So for the majority, is there a use for functional languages? ...
(Revisiting this topic with the release of the Kindle DX) Having owned both generation Kindle readers and now getting a Kindle DX; I'm very excited for true PDF handling on an e-ink device! An image of _Why's book on my Kindle (from my iPhone). This gives me a device capable of storing hundreds of thousands of pages that are full text...
Wikipedia describes five stages of technology lifecycle: Bleeding edge - any technology that shows high potential but hasn't demonstrated its value or settled down into any kind of consensus. Early adopters may win big, or may be stuck with a white elephant. Leading edge - a technology that has proven itself in the marketplace...
Has anyone had any experience targetting WSH in the way that VBScript, JScript, PerlScript, xbScript and ForthScript (among other) do, such that the language can be used from the command line and embedded in server-side web pages? Where do I go to get that kind of information? ...
When you first started to write program, what was the first programming language you learned? Please don't post repeats. If someone already posted it, just vote for it. ...
Beyond some valid reasons not to use a new tool such as support of legacy code, no in-house SPARKAda knowledge base, why hasn't SPARKAda caught on? It seems like a very sound tool for many projects requiring high reliability, so I don't understand why its not so common. I would be more comfortable knowing that the avionics software that ...