C vs. Java vs. VB

Java is certainly the language that, as a skill, will provide the most opportunity to work for pointy-haired bosses. Java is a career decision, though, not a decision based on a genuine interest in programming. Java's real strength as a language is in its ability to allow large numbers of mediocre programmers to work on a project over a period of months or years without screwing up the codebase too badly.

Object oriented programming is indeed "the way", according to the common "wisdom", it's not the be-all and end-all of programming. If you really want to know what you're doing and make good decisions about what sort of programming you need to do for a given task, you're better off learning a lot more than just OOP. Functional programming, for instance, is similarly valuable, and perhaps even more valuable than either is Lisp-style macros -- though such knowledge is unlikely to get you a job in and of itself, it will help to provide a more complete understanding of the subject matter.

I'm afraid I have to disagree with the suggestion that learning multiple styles of writing Java code covers "almost all aspects of programming." In fact, it covers very little, and I get the impression that you probably haven't much experience with programming outside the Java sphere of practice. Little things like symbols or macros can make all the difference in the world when you're trying to produce truly excellent code, though most Java programmers probably have no idea why, or even that such things exist in programming languages.

Pick the language that has the highest demand where you are living, or is growing in demand.

you will learn programming no matter what language you learn.

as much as I detest the idea I need to learn java to get more contracts around here, my c and c++ skills are useless, they want java and .net framework [ usually asp.net ]

java being a piss poor excuse for a programming language, as all languages that are interpreted, it is meant for simple scripting only.

While I agree that learning Pascal is a good intro into programming, you're not going to get any jobs from that. In choosing between C, C++, C#, Java or VB.NET, I'd go with either C#, C++ or Java. C# and Java are basically super-C++ languages. C# has some wierd quirks but it's a good language and becoming quite popular. C++ is probably your best jumping off point. If you know C++ you easily pick up C# or Java, but not necessarily the other way around. If you know C++ you can also easily pick up C (basically same language except is object-oriented). C is still used a lot but you'll find that companies' job ad require C++, but the real job actually is C programming. Go figure. I wouldn't even consider VB.NET. C# does everything and more that VB.NET can do and more with many advantages, not the least of which is data type-checking.

carting around vbrun.dll was definitely a problem.
implicit object creation, being object based not object oriented, massive reliance on variants, daft syntax variations, absolutely pathetic compiler.
It was very good at producing a professional looking application in a short space of time as long as it was neither too demanding or too complex though.

Did it for two years, it's the worst language/environment choice I've ever seen.

VB is a toy language. It was conceived with the idea of visual rapid development, but as a consequence suffered from lack of foresight regarding complex development. The syntax does not extend itself well at all, although I must admit that VB.NET is a big improvement. I still find C# 10 times better, though. I've programmed many projects in VB since version 2.0 thru VB.NET, and I can't say that during any of them I didn't wish I was using a more powerful language.

VB wants to be an object oriented language, but can't quite make it. It wants to be a rapid development platform, but it isn't powerful enough to actually create anything.

While it is fine for scripting little widgets for Access, it has no place in being considered with real programming languages.

If your looking for a marketable skill set, then I'd still bet on Java, C++, then VB. If you are planning on going into a certain field, such as industrial automation, then you are going to want to look at what that industries tools are. You may want to learn PIC, ADA or a 4GL language.

I've been happily employed for 18 years using basic, from MS Basic 3.0 to VB6.0 and have never run into a situation that I could not handle with a third party library or ActiveX control or a custom library.
There is allot of VB misconception here, along with some truth. First and foremost, VB was meant for the development GUI based applications by people who are not fulltime programmers. That is, an accountant, manager, etc can quickly pick up VB to develop applications they need. Yes, VB has a runtime that has to be deployed with it, but C has it own, at least in the MS deployment. There are plenty of other languages that need a deployed environment as well.
I'd argue with anyone that says VB is primarily for scripting, although knowing VB opens up several MS scripting platforms to you; such as VBscript, which I use in conjuction with custom VB libraries in web applications development.

Lastly, don't forget that a language is merely a means to express an idea, so learning to design a application is at least as important as learning to code it well into a program.

P.S. My skillset includes ASP,SQL,Java,HTML and some C++,assembly,Fortran and xBase (FoxPro,Clipper,dBase).

without the extremely naff friends approach which busts encapsulation an OO cornerstone to bits it you can;t do anything really clever with it.
Very few have the luxury of doing pure OO, the design implmentation trade off coupled with potential code re-use makes it impractical, but proper use of scoping would have made it far better. Unless you need it's theoretical ability to be cross-platform through the JVM there are far better choices for OO. Syntax wise Java gives you less options than other languages, I know it doesn't always go down well but OO is not always the best solution.

I liked Delphi a lot, especially back in the version 2 days (ca 1995) when VB REALLY sucked and writing Windows apps in C++ was like constructing a Saturn V out of toothpicks. Delphi provided both OO and visual programming, and came with a lot of powerful tools for that time.

I still like Delphi, apart from the aggravating syntax differences of Pascal (:= for assignment, having to omit the semicolon before else, etc.), but I guess that whatever you get used to is what you use to measure the aggravation level of everything else. One of my first languages was Algol, which is very similar to Pascal, but that's been so long ago that I am thoroughly C-oriented when it comes to syntax now. I still have some projects in Delphi 5 that require work from time to time, and switching back and forth can be particularly trying.

Delphi does not seem to have gained the market acceptance here in the US that it still has in the UK. If you're looking to be marketable in the US, I wouldn't put all my eggs in that basket.

VS.NET 2003 is all you will need for developing in C# or C++. Since you are learning from scratch as it were, I would advise going with C#. It is an easier language to learn and has fewer and less dangerous pitfalls.

There are some good topics in the MSDN to help you get started with C#. Here is a good starting point:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms173063.aspx

The response from sterling is absolutely correct: Visual Studio .NET will work fine for working with C# or C++. Also, C# is likely the easier route to take, of those two options. You don't need to buy any additional software, either.

On the downside, C# and the Visual Studio IDE is the path to vendor lock-in, so if you ever want to free yoursel of that you'll have to look into other ways to do programming. I, personally, don't have any interest in learning C# beyond some bare essentials that give me an idea of how the language is put together, because any code I write these days is meant to be cross-platform or to run on unix variants only. In fact, aside from web programming, I don't think I've even written cross-platform code, ever -- crap like Hello World programs notwithstanding.

If you want to see some discussion of what makes for good programming, have a look at my next Soapbox article when it gets posted. I'm doing some final edits on it this morning (I wrote it last night), though it'll be a few days before it's available online, I think.

If you're willing to try learning a language on your own, without going to classes for it, I recommend Ruby instead of any of the languages you've mentioned. The "interpreter" for it is free, there are a number of IDEs available for it, it's simple enough so that all you really need to work on it is a text editor, and it may well be the easiest-to-learn OOP language ever. Really.

other scripting language in some applications.
there are a number of 3d modelling and animation applications that have developed a python library for thier scripting.
no other scripting language, that is cross platform, and is freely available, has such a library.
[ Maya's mel scripting is not freely available for use with other applications ;) ]

Perl was designed from day one for working with strings, naturally it's going to be excellent at it. :P I still wouldn't design an application that wasn't 90+% working with strings in perl, as the interpreter is a choke point.

And contrary to popular belief, Microsoft MASM is not dead. MASM 7 ships with Visual Studio 2003. It's used to compile .Net assemblies to native machine code.

By the way, Steve Gibson still uses assembler, and he's **REALLY** good at it!

Maybe a bit of optimisation with inline assembly in Delphi, other than that not since 8 bit. Good reason for that of course, it's way too expensive, except for something that can't be done with anything else. It's cheaper to throw hardware at a problem in business level code than it is to use assembler to get the best out of what you have. I learnt programming (well sort of anyway) with 8 bit m/c, sometimes I think about going back to it for a laugh then I remember it wasn't all that funny.

create an enterprise app in vb that runs on any unix box.
with no wine, no crossover office.
native on unix.

can't do it can you?
since vb is os specific it is a toy language.

Gee, isn't that exactly what you post is?

Talk about a propeller-head who is having his day, man this must be like Christmas to you, you FINALLY get to sound cool!

But you missed Python, you may want to take up reading up on code again and realize where the most money or the least work is.

Incapable ?. Well it is capable of enterprise complex resource critical applications in the same way as Access is capable of being an enterprise database. Lot's of people recommend that as well.

A competent programmer can get something useful out of it, as long as they understand it's severe limitations, but learning with it just makes an incompetent programmer as far as I'm concerned, particularly OO. This is pre .NET by the way.

Rant continued as requested, in fact here's a

P.S. I've wrote some very capable VB programs when requested. I just know I could have done them much better in a better environment, and given the increase in utilty, performance, longevity nd code re-use, they would have a significantly better ROI. To me VB is a realisation of the shortsighted, it'll do mentality that's crept into IT, since the boom.

The harsh truth about VB is this:
It used to be a "toy" language. It has definitely progressed past that point, now, with years of Microsoft wrangling. It has become a very capable language, complete with OOP and binary file compilation capabilities. Unfortunately, it's a [b]really awful[/b] non-toy language. As much as I dislike Java, I'd take that over VB any day of the week. VB is misbegotten, cumbersome, and generally very poorly implemented. All of its more useful features have a very tacked-on feel to them, its implementations over the years have had all the efficiency of fishnet stockings as a way to store tomato soup, and its semantic structure is about as robust as Jesse Ventura's understanding of US foreign policy.

Still, that doesn't change the fact that VB isn't the "toy" language it once was. For that matter, I'd say Java was more of a "toy" language than VB these days, though not by much.

One thing at which VB truly excels is making money without having to do any real work, though. The reason for that is simple, and best articulated by PT Barnum: There's a sucker born every minute.

but I still do a bit of coding to sort of keep my hand in. I started on COBOL but had to learn FORTRAN soon after. That made learning C easy to pick up. If I were starting out from scratch today I think I'd want to learn the C family and anything else that was cross platform compliant. I think both PERL and Python fall into that category but the main thing is to look at what your market is demanding and work from there. Oh yeah, learn to tolerate Windoze and the weenies who drive it but try to find and work in a Unix/Linux environment. You'll have fewer headaches at the end of the day.

[b]Dawg[/b] ]:)

You need to qualify your use of the term "other languages". Rather than just referring to Python, I'd have made this point with sort of a family of high-level dynamic languages, including Perl, Ruby, and the various Lisp dialects. In fact, you can usually get faster development and less lines of code with any of these than with Python, though not by bloody much.

Ultimately, in fact, Ruby pretty much does everything better than Python except for these three things:

1. The Python parser runs slightly faster than the Ruby parser, at present, though that's likely to change in the near future.

2. You can more easily find Python jobs than Ruby jobs, though that's almost certain to change very soon: already Ruby book sales are greater than Python book sales in the US.

3. Python is better at limiting the programmer. Some people call that a "feature". I call it a "bug".

Basically everything else is better in Ruby, including learning it quickly, doing rapid development, producing maintainable code, doing OOP, and so on. Hell, even the Ruby community is more friendly and helpful than the Python community.

can only work for one os, then they are not worth using.

program in languages that are cross platform, or don't concider yourself a fully qualified programmer.

as soon as ms makes thier visual basic work on every single os, I'll concider looking at it.

One could create system libraries using Java or COBOL, too. Hell, you could even create system libraries using Whitespace or Brainfuck, if you were feeling really masochistic. Just like writing system libraries in VB, though, I'd advocate shooting the idiot that did so, though -- especially if someone wanted me to maintain the code later.

VisualBasic is, in and of itself, a truly heinous language. I have some distaste for Java, which successfully combines all the best features of some very good languages in a really awful, broken manner that ultimately gives one a universally mediocre programming language, but it doesn't even begin to compare to the botched abortion which is Visual Basic. VB actively hinders the creation of good code, in addition to which it is restricted to extremely limited deployment and exhibits all the runtim speed of a one-legged dog.

Browser-dependent applications written in Java regularly outperform compiled executables with equivalent functionlity that have been written in VB. There's no excuse for that.

You can simply call a python module, rewritten with your updated code.

Python is also a LOT easier to recode, update and append than C++, is a LOT easier to debug and takes a fraction of the time to script from scratch. IN many cases, if you were toput th eodds p on the board, the boss would opt for a complete rewrite in Python over an append in C.

What do you mean by All OS compatibility? I've worked in MS OS environments for 17+ years and have never heard that claim from MS.

Please do explain this mysterious claim of "full compatability with ALL operating systems". I've certainly never heard anything anywhere near that claim from Microsoft, ever. And I've been using Microsoft OS's and software since the original IBM PC came out in 1981.

Tony,

Although I agree fundamentally with the argument in your message (OO before specific language) I have to say that if someone can learn C# that person should be able to learn Java just as easily. They are very similar language.
When it comes to the libraries that might be another story because Java comes with a lot of libraries. However, this is a strength of Java not a weakness.

Delphi is not a toy.

My newest co-worker worked for years in the west of England and his former employer used some custom Delphi apps developed in-house which handled multi-billion dollar operations.

Delphi was a better GUI development environment back in the early 90s than VB or C from Microsoft. Even Gupta SQLWindows was better til VB4 came out.

Haven't seen Delphi in 10 years now. Hopefully, they've kept up with MS.

I wonder if they (Delphi) make an *nix GUI development interface...does anyone know?

I don't normally go into the markets where those languages are the preferred, quite frankly because they're trying to drive their charge rates *way* down (at least in my area). In fact, several associates of mine are switching from heavy Perl/Ruby/Python shops to the VB.Net/C# shops because they'd really like to be able to pay their mortgages.

As an aside, it's interesting that you list Lisp in your reply, because one of my clients has two systems that use AutoLisp (AutoCAD version of Lisp for diagram generation and animation) pretty much exclusively. They've tried converting it to something else, but AutoCAD is a pretty tight product (and the undisputed king of the hill in the CAD arena).

I never said Python predated C nor did I comment on why it was written.

Yes, Python is a simplified C, and it was created to simplify updates, debugging and recoding. Why write 200 lines when you can do the same in 20? It simply doesn't make any sense.

1. line-oriented - Why is this a problem? This is just a parsing implementation issue, not an application issue. It would only become an application issue if a programmer were dumb enough to implement a production application in an interpreted BASIC (for the masses, VB is not, and hasn't been for a long time, an interpreted language).

2. broken OOP model - If an incomplete OOP model is a broken OOP model, then I'll give you this one.

3. dog-slow - What benchmark are you using and what language variation? The application level benchmarking that I've done for my clients shows that, in the .Net flavor, application performance between a VB.Net application and a .Not C++ application is far more dependent on memory limitations and hard drive access speed.

4. - Okay. BASIC is really no longer BASIC (for those who don't know, BASIC stands for Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code). Microsoft considered it an easy introduction to programming which a *lot* of early programmers used, and they didn't want to lose those customers to someone else, so they evolved the language into what it is now. But they're not the only ones, check out RealBASIC and TrueBASIC as well. Either one could be used instead of VB (just not with .Net).

1. With subs, functions, classes, and objects where is the line orientation.

2. Other reply covers this

3. You must have a 2 legged dog, good coding techniques assure a quick VB program.

4. You would probably have to dig them out of the grave to do that. BASIC was created in 1964 for non-programmers to be able to get a computer to do something constructive.

The big problem with VB aside from it's bad start, flat out lie about OO is it's joke of a compiler.
If you refer to a property of a non existant object, what should happen.
Access Violation or should you have a compiler that says. Silly Billy, forgot to create it, ooh diddums, who's a silly a boy/girl (delete as required), here I'll do it for you.
While that facility not to mention things like option explicit, dim, dim as New set set = new load unload arrgggH. Let Set Get, along with no abstraction, polymorphism and inheritance for your OO, VB was is and always will be a Very Bad joke.

Give me an example of how it's "tacked on". Yes, VB6.0 is missing inheritance, polymorphism and overloading, so give me an example of something you have experienced as being tacked on. Also let me know any OOP shortcomings in VB.NET; URLs please.