I'd spent several years in the day job with VB.net. Out of work I'd flick between it and C# for different projects/hobbies. Now that the day job is almost fully C#, VB.net is starting to look foreign and a little removed. Does any beg to differ? Should I keep my delve back to VB.net for any particular scenarios? I mean, does it win ...
Reading Paul Graham's essays on programming languages one would think that Lisp macros are the only way to go. As a busy developer working on other platforms I have not had the privledge of using lisp macros. As someone who wants to understand the buzz please explain what make's this feature so powerful. Please also relate this to somet...
When I was at University 30 years ago, I used a programming language called APL. I believe the acronym stood for "A Programming Language", This language was interpretive and was especially useful for array and matrix operations with powerful operators and library functions to help with that. Did you use APL? Is this language still i...
I often find myself forgetting the syntax of any programming language I learn. I first learned C then C++ then PHP and Java. If I'm asked to program in C now, I think I can't do it. Being a programmer how imprtant it is to remember the syntax of every programs you learn? Am I the only one who is experiencing this (if yes then I'm dumb) o...
OK. So I want to switch from language Flob to language Blub. The thing is that in Flob I can do a lot of stuff, in Blub I can write hello world and maybe some simple recursive function. What kind of exercises or toy projects will get me up to speed in Blub. I'm sure there is a lot of exercises or toy projects that I can do in the eveni...
Which programming languages not only make you more proficient in the particular language your are learning, but also have a direct impact on the way you think and understand programming in general; therefore, making you a better programmer in other languages. Basically, which languages have the biggest impact on understanding the how an...
Python 3.0 breaks backwards compatibility with previous versions and splits the language into two paths (at least temporarily). Do you know of any other language that went through such a major design phase while in maturity? Also, do you believe that this is how programming languages should evolve or is the price to pay simply too high?...
As the title of this post states. Would you prefer to use a language that is verbose or more shorthand? So would you prefer this: Dim myvar as string = "hello world" or this string myvar = "hello world" I know I just compared C# to VB but you get my drift, another example would be powershell where you can use the % sign to mean fo...
For example, if I make a query like 'between(1,4,X)?' I would expect something like X=2,X=3. Is this possible? ...
My definition of general purpose is a bit specific: a general purpose programming language should be able to handle all problem domains, including implementing operating system kernels, device drivers and all sorts of programming language facilities. This definition basically excludes all mandatory garbage collected languages (including ...
A complicated-sounding term with no good explanations from a simple google search... are there any more academically-oriented folk who could explain this one? ...
There's been a cluster of Perl-hate on Stack Overflow lately, so I thought I'd bring my "Five things you hate about your favorite language" question to Stack Overflow. Take your favorite language and tell me five things you hate about it. Those might be things that just annoy you, admitted design flaws, recognized performance problems, o...
I would like to design very high availability(never take server down, roll out features without restart etc) application with both client(probably C# gui) and server components(Java,C++,Perl). I got some advice from (minimize-code-maximize-data.html and Yegge), and I would like to make most logic dynamically readable from database so t...
I was always wondering why such a simple and basic operation like swapping the contents of two variables is not built-in for many languages. It is one of the most basic programming exercises in computer science classes; it is heavily used in many algorithms (e.g. sorting); every now and then one needs it and one must use a temporary var...
I think this mostly applies to web applications, since you often see things like language and database vendor in regards to web applications, but not so much on desktop applications. If a web application is created using language X, would that have any noticeable impact on who deploys the application? For example, would a company that u...
I have heard some things about Groovy from several different sources. One said Groovy is a great test harness for Java. Another said Groovy is Java's answer to Ruby. I am not sure what I've heard that is correct. What is Groovy and why should I learn more about it? Obviously I have a vague idea about groovy, but the emphasis is on the w...
I have often wondered why it is that non-English speaking programmers are forced to use a different language when programming when it would seem to be so easy to offer an IDE that could replace keywords with localized versions. Why can't the Germans use a "während..macht" loop? Do programmers in Japan, Germany, France, Spain, Botswana j...
Title says it mostly. I want to add a simple extension method to the base Dictionary class in C#. At first I was going to name it Pop(TKey key), kind of like the Stack method, but it accepts a key to use for lookup. Then I was going to do Take(TKey key), but it coincides with the LINQ method of the same name...and although C# 3.0 lets y...
To assist with a project I'm working on, I request your input to the following questions. I'm looking for your thoughts regarding programming language syntax and built-in capabilities, NOT about available frameworks and libraries. (1) In the different programming languages you use, what langauge features do you think are lacking? (2) ...
I hate to be subjective in this way, but with many people calling this website a .NET oriented website it's probably the best place to target this question at. In the current climate, should I, a simple beginning programmer, learn a .NET language? Obviously the most popular languages/frameworks around at the moment are ASP.NET (I know i...