What Programming Language Should I Learn? - Page 2 - Overclock.net

rabidgnome229 · 07-02-08

Nah - I can't stand web stuff

DaCrusader · 07-02-08

what about python? (I know little about programming myself)

BugBash · 07-02-08

LOGO? LOL!

how about Assembly language? push, pop and all that!

I remember (vaguely) Motorolla 680x0 Assembly from my younger days(89-94)

As for `Coolness` I supose its how geek/nerd ya want to go, check out

www.scene.org

and look at the results and releases at the various partys held round the globe!

heretic · 07-02-08

Check the wiki on functional languages. A LOT of good resource links. I'd start with a little bit of Scheme and then go on to something like Erlang once you get the hang of functional programming. I'd also pick up a book on programming languages, or check out some of the MIT Open Course Ware courses like this one

The Bartender Paradox · 07-02-08

OK sorry about the delay- needed to sleep and such

.

So in scheme for every command this is the basic layout:

(function argument argument argument ....)

so say we had an averaging function and we wanted to average 3, 6, 4, and 1 it would look like:

(avg 3 6 4 1)

This format applies to everything, even adding, To add 4, 5, and 21:

(+ 4 5 21)

It may seem weird at first, but you quickly find that the format is really nice. Now on to making functions, technically it is done with the lambda command to make the function and define to give it a name, but we can do it all in define if we want. To average two numbers with a and b as variable names:

Code:

(define (average a b)
    (/ (+ a b) 2))

To make it average an arbitrary amount of numbers we can declare one of our function variables to collect the remaining inputs into a list (behaves kind of like a linear linked list) by placing a . before it. Average again for as many inputs as you want:

Code:

(define (average a . b)
    (/ (sum a b) (+ 1 (length b))))

; indicates a comment. The above is pretty easy right, an average is the sum of all 
;your inputs, divided by the number of inputs you have. Unfortunately Scheme doesn't
;have sum or length as primitives- so lets make them! 

  ;below null? checks for the end-of-list marker, car gets the data from our list element, 
;and cdr moves down the list  (car and cdr have a broader function than that, but for
;now that's all you need to know)

(define (sum a b)
    (if  (null? b)
             a 
            (sum (+ a (car b)) (cdr b))))

;You'll note that the above was done by recursion- Scheme has no for or while loops, all 
;looping is done by recursion. Might seem weird, but things like this that simplify the 
;language I think are what makes it quite nice and intuitive.
 
(define (length b)
    (if (null? b) 
           0
           (+ 1 (length (cdr b)))))

;in case you are worried about performance issues, Scheme apparently has some nifty 
;tricks to optimize recursion, and the programmer can do some things as well to help. In
;sum you'll notice that the recursion behaves like an iterative process, that is it calls sum
;over and over and only changes its arguments. In length, the method is a little less efficient, 
;the number of waiting additions to be performed grows linearly with the length of b.

So there you have it - a simple Scheme program.

Pasha · 07-02-08

Python is a fun language, but you seem to be steering away from OOP with the language you want to learn. If you want to learn another OOP, Python is great.

Gexx · 07-02-08

Japanese!

I'd go with PHP it seems useful these days.

rabidgnome229 · 07-02-08

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Bartender Paradox

OK sorry about the delay- needed to sleep and such

.

So in scheme for every command this is the basic layout:

(function argument argument argument ....)

so say we had an averaging function and we wanted to average 3, 6, 4, and 1 it would look like:

(avg 3 6 4 1)

This format applies to everything, even adding, To add 4, 5, and 21:

(+ 4 5 21)

It may seem weird at first, but you quickly find that the format is really nice. Now on to making functions, technically it is done with the lambda command to make the function and define to give it a name, but we can do it all in define if we want. To average two numbers with a and b as variable names:

Code:

(define (average a b)
    (/ (+ a b) 2))

To make it average an arbitrary amount of numbers we can declare one of our function variables to collect the remaining inputs into a list (behaves kind of like a linear linked list) by placing a . before it. Average again for as many inputs as you want:

Code:

(define (average a . b)
    (/ (sum a b) (+ 1 (length b))))

; indicates a comment. The above is pretty easy right, an average is the sum of all 
;your inputs, divided by the number of inputs you have. Unfortunately Scheme doesn't
;have sum or length as primitives- so lets make them! 

  ;below null? checks for the end-of-list marker, car gets the data from our list element, 
;and cdr moves down the list  (car and cdr have a broader function than that, but for
;now that's all you need to know)

(define (sum a b)
    (if  (null? b)
             a 
            (sum (+ a (car b)) (cdr b))))

;You'll note that the above was done by recursion- Scheme has no for or while loops, all 
;looping is done by recursion. Might seem weird, but things like this that simplify the 
;language I think are what makes it quite nice and intuitive.
 
(define (length b)
    (if (null? b) 
           0
           (+ 1 (length (cdr b)))))

;in case you are worried about performance issues, Scheme apparently has some nifty 
;tricks to optimize recursion, and the programmer can do some things as well to help. In
;sum you'll notice that the recursion behaves like an iterative process, that is it calls sum
;over and over and only changes its arguments. In length, the method is a little less efficient, 
;the number of waiting additions to be performed grows linearly with the length of b.

So there you have it - a simple Scheme program.

Interesting

. I'll probably go for something like that