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Additional programming languages
Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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In addition to C and C++, what languages do you find useful on a regular or niche basis in your life as a programmer, and why?

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Steve Terry
Member #1,989
March 2002
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perl, vbscript, and VB.NET.

We found perl useful at work because it's a cross platform scripting language, it's complex, fast, and has lots of features. We were able to rip through gigabytes of data with a single perl script in just minutes.

As for vbscript, well for some of our other developers it's easy to learn and if used correctly can be powerful. Also our main application we support uses a variation of vbscript for automating some of the tasks. For more complex tasks I use C++ with the same application.

VB.Net, same thing with our main support application through COM only now we can add forms. VB.Net isn't that bad and for RAD tools it's pretty decent if you want to get out a quick application that looks good. Also if you want to get more complicated, you always have the option of LoadLibrary and delegates, for calling C++ libraries :)

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Erin Maus
Member #7,537
July 2006
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Lua when making games in C/C++. Seriously, using Lua over C/C++ in less speed-critical parts of the game makes it so much easier to program. Very little to worry about (e.g., dangling pointers) because of the great way Lua is programmed.

C# when doing anything, really, outside of embedded work. This is the nicest language I have worked with so far.

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kazzmir
Member #1,786
December 2001
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python is the modern perl (glue code / semi-serious projects).

java is a reasonable language for making serious things, mostly due to the jvm. well java sort of sucks but scala is a reasonable jvm language (although its still somewhat unstable).

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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  • Perl: very powerful text processing, very terse syntax, very flexible language. It's very fast to hack up working programs of all kinds in Perl.

  • Java or C#: modern, high-level, statically-typed, "enterprise-y". These are good if you want things to be a bit more hard-structured.

  • [Common] Lisp: I don't really have enough experience with it to say yet, but it seems to be one of those special languages that is really simple, but really powerful, and not taken seriously by others, meaning that your knowledge with it will give you an edge.

Mokkan
Member #4,355
February 2004
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I use Python on a regular basis. It's easy to extend (ctypes and cython), has an extensive standard library, and I find it to be a fun language to use.

Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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Hm..

I use Perl a lot for system administration type stuff. People have already stated pretty good reasons why. Also because its the first language I learned.

I use Java for android stuff. Thats about the only reason I use java. Similar with ObjC, only use that for iOS.

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SiegeLord
Member #7,827
October 2006
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I use D2 in lieu of C/C++. Although it has lots of nice features, my day to day hacking in it is made pleasant due to the following subset of them:

1. Nested functions with lexical access to the outer scope:

void main()
{
  int a;
  void stuff()
  {
    a = 5;
  }
  stuff(); // a is now 5
}

It cleans up my code to no end.

2. Advanced array syntax:

auto a = new float[](1000);
auto b = new float[](1000);
auto c = a[0..$/2]; // Get a slice (view) of an array
b[0..$/2] -= c[]; // Perform an elementwise subtraction of c from the first half of b

I need to do a lot of array manipulation and these bits just help make things cleaner.

3. Native performance:

It's just nice to be able to write code in a clean way and be able to say with confidence that it is as fast as the equivalent C code. Sometimes I don't want to think about how to write my code in a vectorized/functional fashion, I just want to write a brain-dead for-loop. It's nice not to be punished for that (as you are in scripting languages).

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verthex
Member #11,340
September 2009
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I've seen more job interviews for my VB.NET than any other language. I'm also afraid to admit that MS Access is used too much where I live and everything needs a freaking rewrite from old school VB. These are real jobs, no one here recommends knowing C++, only Java and C# which are the same but these people don't care. They are very specific. If they need 3 years C# then they need C# and it couldn't matter if you had worked with C++ for a decade.

axilmar
Member #1,204
April 2001

Other than C/C++, Java is what I've used to do useful things.

Steve Terry
Member #1,989
March 2002
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My boss would have fired us for even mentioning MS Access :-)

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Specter Phoenix
Member #1,425
July 2001
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My boss would have fired us for even mentioning MS Access :-)

That is how you know you are working for the right guy. Most companies I have talked to that use MS products say the same thing, "We use them because it is powerful and fast to develop on and with." Always sounded dumb to me to be honest.

verthex said:

If they need 3 years C# then they need C# and it couldn't matter if you had worked with C++ for a decade.

That reminds me of the company that is a town over from me. Background: I applied to them and they only used C# nothing else. Then last year I read in the newspaper that they had to fire and hire all new staff because apparently most the staff new C# well but and never touched any other languages. The company shut down last year around the holidays (November/December) but never said the reason. I'm guessing it is because they wanted to expand to other things that required other languages. I find it hard to believe they hired all those programmers out of college and none of them knew more than C#.

Neil Walker
Member #210
April 2000
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I program in Malbolge. When I want something quick and simple, I use binary.

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Christian Göllner
Member #12,529
January 2011
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If you want to program games on the browser -> JavaScript

Niunio
Member #1,975
March 2002
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Pascal and Object Pascal. There are a lot of IDE/Compilers (Delphi, Lazarus, OP4JS, Morphix...) and niches (desktop, computer games, web development [including HTML5 and Flash]... ).

I like it because it's much less cryptic than C, Java and such, so it's more readable specially if you never used Pascal before. It's also easy to write cross-platform applications (same program would compile and run in a lot of OS without any change if you use Free Pascal).

Also it was claimed as Best Programming Language by The Code Project in 2010 and 2011 (actually they said "Delphi" but there are a lot of people that thinks "Delphi" is the language name... including Borland themselves! :o;))

And, finally, Apple used it to program MacOS from 1 to 9 (curiously they decided to use a C-style language at the same time they decided to move the architecture to Intel... ).

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furinkan
Member #10,271
October 2008
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I use a standard LAMP stack at work (no longer working at KFC).

I'm finding that JavaScript is really powerful, especially now that I'm starting to understand the practicalities of closures (Look at the D example above; same thing). It is a hugely misunderstood language, and it doesn't help that most people using it have no programming background at all. I use JavaScript for a lot of demo type work.

EDIT: Oh, right... bbcode no more...

GameCreator
Member #2,541
July 2002
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HTML & variables. But I'm not sure if HTML is a language.

Specter Phoenix
Member #1,425
July 2001
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HTML & variables. But I'm not sure if HTML is a language.

Well I've been told that any scripting language can be a programming language and any programming language can be a scripting language, just takes a person making the interpreter and compiler for each language. With HTML I suppose it could be, but don't think it would be very powerful by itself and without a overhaul.

Tobias Dammers
Member #2,604
August 2002
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Let's see. I have sampled and sniffed quite a bunch of languages, but the ones that I still use seriously are:

  • PHP for web programming, anything ranging from a quick-and-dirty single page script to a full-blown MVC or three-tier web application.

  • Python also for web programming; the language is somewhat saner than PHP, definitely more consistent and has much less obscure edge cases; but for some reason, I don't quite like the flavor of it.

  • Haskell for all sorts of programming; the language shines particularly when complex logic is involved (lazy evaluation and purity are excellent tools if you can play their strengths), as well as doing mathy things and, perhaps its strongest point, implementing parsers and domain-specific languages.

  • Shell script (usually bash, zsh if I can be sure it's available) to glue various little tools together.

  • Javascript for anything client-side - there's not much choice anyway, and with jQuery and the right functional-programming mindset, the language isn't that bad really.

  • C# if I have to program for Windows (which is rare these days, but used to be my bread and butter).

Apart from that, the usual range of data, document and markup languages.

Well I've been told that any scripting language can be a programming language and any programming language can be a scripting language, just takes a person making the interpreter and compiler for each language. With HTML I suppose it could be, but don't think it would be very powerful by itself and without a overhaul.

"Programming language" and "scripting language" are basically the same thing these days; the difference is more conceptual than anything. HTML is not a scripting language though: it is a document language, purely descriptive and without any means of expressing operations or algorithms. HTML could never be used for actual scripting or programming without changing its core semantics, which would turn it into something completely different.

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Jonatan Hedborg
Member #4,886
July 2004
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I rarely if ever touch C/C++ nowadays (good riddance! At least to C++ :-X). Mostly ActionScript 3 (it's my job) and javascript. Also a bit of C#, Ruby and java for private projects.

Specter Phoenix
Member #1,425
July 2001
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"Programming language" and "scripting language" are basically the same thing these days; the difference is more conceptual than anything. HTML is not a scripting language though: it is a document language, purely descriptive and without any means of expressing operations or algorithms. HTML could never be used for actual scripting or programming without changing its core semantics, which would turn it into something completely different.

So you just basically said what I said with more "keywords" than I did:

With HTML I suppose it could be, but don't think it would be very powerful by itself and without a overhaul.

Though, the compilers and interpreters go through the code and find the calls to convert to machine language. So in theory you could write a compiler or interpreter that detected HTML tags and other things to make it execute them like a program. Not something you would want to do due to waste of time but still possible.

Crazy Photon
Member #2,588
July 2002
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Been having some fun programming in NodeJS.

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bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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So you just basically said what I said with more "keywords" than I did...

What you don't understand is that HTML describes the structure of a document. There's no actual program instructions in pure HTML (think of a computer program as a recipe, with a set of ingredients, processing steps, and result). You can use SGML or XML to write a program and some dialects might even exist, but that's not the same as HTML.

Referring to HTML and variables as programming languages is a classic way to make fun of people that consider themselves programmers without knowing anything about programming. :-/

Specter Phoenix
Member #1,425
July 2001
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bamccaig said:

Referring to HTML and variables as programming languages is a classic way to make fun of people that consider themselves programmers without knowing anything about programming. :-/

I make fun of myself, why would I care what someone else said about me? You could make an HTML Compiler that reads say "<H1>This is a string!</H1>" and the compiler has been told to interpret H1 as the instruction output string between <H1></H1> at <terminal font + 3 or something. HTML isn't instructions, but if you made a compiler you could (under the hood) tell it to interpret the tags as instructions. Variables? Name = "" where 'name' could be interpreted as a variable and the data in "" could be placed in memory. This is what I meant by anything can be turned into a programming language because if the person is bored enough and has the know how they could make a compiler that does most the work under the hood and turn a structure of documents into a programming language. (Does this prove I don't care how crazy people think I am (or stupid for that matter)?)

verthex
Member #11,340
September 2009
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My boss would have fired us for even mentioning MS Access :-)

Just replace MS access with "case of the mondays".

video

That reminds me of the company that is a town over from me. Background: I applied to them and they only used C# nothing else. Then last year I read in the newspaper that they had to fire and hire all new staff because apparently most the staff new C# well but and never touched any other languages. The company shut down last year around the holidays (November/December) but never said the reason. I'm guessing it is because they wanted to expand to other things that required other languages. I find it hard to believe they hired all those programmers out of college and none of them knew more than C#.

Well, jobs I mention for C# and Java are all short term contract jobs (max 6 months), usually pay 40k for each contract and they don't spend time training folks obviously because its temporary. I'd say 85% of the jobs I see on craigslist aren't permanent.

The MS access/ VB jobs are mostly in the service industry which are longer term but the skills aquired from them isn't stellar. Its just customer/client shit.



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