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• Imperative vs. component based programming [closed]

  - by AlexW

  I've been thinking about how programming and more specifically the teaching of programming is advocated amongst the community (online). Often I've heard that Ruby and RoR is an ideal platform for learning to program. I completely disagree... RoR and Ruby are based on the application of the component based paradigm, which means they are ideal for rapid application development. This is much like the MVC model in PHP and ASP.NET But, learning a proper imperative language like Java or C/C++ (or even Perl and PHP) is the only way for a new programmer to explore logic itself, and not get too bogged down in architectural concerns like the need for separation of concerns, and the preference for components. Maybe it's a personal preference thing. I rather think that the most interesting aspects to programming are the procedural bits of code I write that actually do stuff rather than the project planning, and modelling that comes about from fully object oriented engineering or simply using the MVC model. I know this may sound confused to some of you. I feel strongly though that the best way for programming to be taught is through imperative and procedural methods. Architectural (component) methods come later, if at all. After all, none of the amazing algorithms that exist were based on OOP practice! It's all procedural code when it comes to the 'magic'. OOP is useful in creating products and utilities. Algorithms are what makes things happen, and move data around, and so imperative (and/or procedural) code are what matters most. When I see programmers recommending Ruby on Rails to newbie developers, I think it's just so wrong. Just because you write less code with Ruby does not make it easier to do! It's the opposite... you have to know loads more to appreciate its succinct nature. New coders who really want to understand the nuts and bolts of coding need to go away and figure out writing methods/functions (i.e. imperative programming) and working in procedural style, in order to grasp the fundamentals, first, before looking into architectural ways of working. So, my question is: should Ruby ever be recommended as a first language? I think no (obviously)... what arguments are there for it?

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• Ideal programming language learning sequence?

  - by Gulshan

  What do you think? What is the ideal programming language learning sequence which will cover most of the heavily used languages and paradigms today as well as help to grasp common programming basics, ideas and practices? You can even suggest learning sequence for paradigms rather than languages. N.B. : This is port of the question I asked in stackoverflow and was closed for being subjective and argumentative.

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• Is this how dynamic language copes with dynamic requirement?

  - by Amumu

  The question is in the title. I want to have my thinking verified by experienced people. You can add more or disregard my opinion, but give me a reason. Here is an example requirement: Suppose you are required to implement a fighting game. Initially, the game only includes fighters, who can attack each other. Each fighter can punch, kick or block incoming attacks. Fighters can have various fighting styles: Karate, Judo, Kung Fu... That's it for the simple universe of the game. In an OO like Java, it can be implemented similar to this way: abstract class Fighter { int hp, attack; void punch(Fighter otherFighter); void kick(Fighter otherFighter); void block(Figther otherFighter); }; class KarateFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation...}; class JudoFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation... }; class KungFuFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation ... }; This is fine if the game stays like this forever. But, somehow the game designers decide to change the theme of the game: instead of a simple fighting game, the game evolves to become a RPG, in which characters can not only fight but perform other activities, i.e. the character can be a priest, an accountant, a scientist etc... At this point, to make it more generic, we have to change the structure of our original design: Fighter is not used to refer to a person anymore; it refers to a profession. The specialized classes of Fighter (KaraterFighter, JudoFighter, KungFuFighter) . Now we have to create a generic class named Person. However, to adapt this change, I have to change the method signatures of the original operations: class Person { int hp, attack; List<Profession> skillSet; }; abstract class Profession {}; class Fighter extends Profession { void punch(Person otherFighter); void kick(Person otherFighter); void block(Person otherFighter); }; class KarateFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation...}; class JudoFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation... }; class KungFuFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation ... }; class Accountant extends Profession { void calculateTax(Person p) { //...implementation...}; void calculateTax(Company c) { //...implementation...}; }; //... more professions... Here are the problems: To adapt to the method changes, I have to fix the places where the changed methods are called (refactoring). Every time a new requirement is introduced, the current structural design has to be broken to adapt the changes. This leads to the first problem. Rigid structure makes it hard for code reuse. A function can only accept the predefined types, but it cannot accept future unknown types. A written function is bound to its current universe and has no way to accommodate to the new types, without modifications or rewrite from scratch. I see Java has a lot of deprecated methods. OO is an extreme case because it has inheritance to add up the complexity, but in general for statically typed language, types are very strict. In contrast, a dynamic language can handle the above case as follow: ;;fighter1 punch fighter2 (defun perform-punch (fighter1 fighter2) ...implementation... ) ;;fighter1 kick fighter2 (defun perform-kick (fighter1 fighter2) ...implementation... ) ;;fighter1 blocks attacks from fighter2 (defun perform-block (fighter1 fighter2) ...implementation... ) fighter1 and fighter2 can be anything as long as it has the required data for calculation; or methods (duck typing). You don't have to change from the type Fighter to Person. In the case of Lisp, because Lisp only has a single data structure: list, it's even easier to adapt to changes. However, other dynamic languages can have similar behaviors as well. I work primarily with static languages (mainly C and Java, but working with Java was a long time ago). I started learning Lisp and some other dynamic languages this year. I can see how it helps improving my productivity.

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• Ideal programming language learning sequence? [closed]

  - by Gulshan

  What do you think? What is the ideal programming language learning sequence which will cover most of the heavily used languages and paradigms today as well as help to grasp common programming basics, ideas and practices? You can even suggest learning sequence for paradigms rather than languages. N.B. : This is port of the question I asked in stackoverflow and was closed for being subjective and argumentative.

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• When Programming will become deprecated [closed]

  - by Vibeeshan

  Possible Duplicate: Will programmers be around in a few years? According to the history of programming, with each new generation of software engineering it seems to become easier and easier. Machine Code - Assembly - Programming Languages - easier - more easier - etc. If this situation continues anyone will be able to program (even complex systems). Even now, most of the kids study programming at school (Pascal , VB, etc.). Will be there any jobs called software engineering in future (if everyone know to program). ....and.... What do you think about the future of software development?

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• Topics for covering in-depth programming knowledge

  - by black_belt

  I pursued my bachelors' degree in business administration, but my interest in Information Technology led me to acquire some knowledge of PHP programming and MySQL database. I find programming so interesting that I haven't applied for any job since my graduation. Currently I am staying home and just trying to acquire in-depth knowledge of PHP programming. So far I have developed couple of websites and web applications including Inventory+ Point of Sale Software and an Accounting system for small organizations. I aim to have knowledge that a Computer Science graduate should have, and for that I want to read books but I have no idea where to start from. Could you please suggest me some books and topics that I should study on? Thanks a lot :)

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• How to write comments to explain the "why" behind the callback function when the function and parameter names are insufficient for that?

  - by snowmantw

  How should I approach writing comments for callback functions? I want to explain the "why" behind the function when the function and parameter names are insufficient to explain what's going on. I have always wonder why comments like this can be so ordinary in documents of libraries in dynamic languages: /** * cb: callback // where's the arguments & effects? */ func foo( cb ) Maybe the common attitude is "you can look into source code on your own after all" which pushes people into leaving minimalist comments like this. But it seems like there should be a better way to comment callback functions. I've tried to comment callbacks in Haskell way: /** * cb: Int -> Char */ func foo(cb) And to be fair, it's usually neat enough. But it gets into trouble when I need to pass some complex structure. The problem being partly due to the lack of type system: /** * cb: Int -> { err: String -> (), success: () -> Char } // too long... */ func foo(cb) Or I have tried this too: /** * cb: Int -> { err: String -> (), * success: () -> Char } // better ? */ func bar(cb) The problem is that you may put the structure in somewhere else, but you must give it a name to reference it. But then when you name a structure you're about to use immediately looks so redundant: // Somewhere else... // ResultCallback: { err: String -> (), success: () -> Char } /** * cb: Int -> ResultCallback // better ?? */ func foo(cb) And it bothers me if I follow the Java-doc like commenting style since it still seems incomplete. The comments don't tell you anything that you couldn't immediately see from looking at the function. /** * @param cb {Function} yeah, it's a function, but you told me nothing about it... * @param err {Function} where should I put this callback's argument ?? * Not to mention the err's own arguments... */ func foo(cb) These examples are JavaScript like with generic functions and parameter names, but I've encountered similar problems in other dynamic languages which allow complex callbacks.

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• Which order would you teach programming languages in, when teaching a newbie?

  - by blueberryfields

  If you had to design a study program, with a breadth-of-programming-languages requirement, which stated that the student should be exposed to all major concepts and methodologies that can be taught through (at the minimum) 6 programming languages, which programming languages would you choose to teach, and in which order? Breadth-of-programming-languages is based on programming language and theoretical concepts.

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• Language Club – Battle of the Dynamic Languages

  - by Ben Griswold

  After dedicating the last eight weeks to learning Ruby, it’s time to move onto another language.  I really dig Ruby.  I really enjoy its dynamism and expressiveness and always-openness and it’s been the highlight of our coding club for me so far. But that’s just my take on the language.  I know a lot of coders who’s stomachs turn with the mere thought of Ruby.  They say it’s Ruby’s openness which has them feeling uneasy.  I’d say “write a bunch of tests and get over it,” but I figure there must be more to it than always open classes and possible method collisions. Yes, there’s something else to it alright. The folks who didn’t fall head over heals for Ruby are already in love with Python.  You might remember that Python was the first language we tackled in our coding club.  My time with Python was okay but it didn’t feel as natural to me as Ruby.  But let’s say we started with Ruby and then moved onto Python.  Would I see Python in a different light right now.  Might I even prefer Python over Ruby?  I suppose it’s possible but it’s pretty tough to test that theory – unless we visit Python for a second time. That’s right. The language club is going to focus on Python again and in my attempt to learn Python – yet again – in the open, I’ll be posting my solutions here just as I did for Ruby.  We don’t always have second chances so I going about this relearning with two primary goals in mind:  First, I’m going to use IronPython and the IronPython tools which provide a Python code editor, a file-based project system, and an interactive Python interpreter, all inside Visual Studio 2010.  As a note, the IronPython tools are now part of the main IronPython installer which is Version 2.7 Alpha 1 (not the latest stable version, 2.6.1) and I’d be crazy not to use them.  Second, I’d like to make sure I’m still learning Python without a complete MS skew so I’m going to run my code through Eclipse using the PyDev plugin as well.  Heck, I might use IDLE too. I already have this setup on my machine so it’s no big deal. Okay, that’s it for now.  I worked on the first ten Euler problems last night and the solutions will be posted shortly. Wish me luck.

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• Analyzing a programming language

  - by Matt Fenwick

  In SICP, the authors state (Section 1.1) that there are three basic "mechanisms" of programming languages: primitive expressions, which represent the simplest entities the language is concerned with means of combination, by which compound elements are built from simpler ones means of abstraction, by which compound elements can be named and manipulated as units How can I analyze a mainstream programming language (Java, for example) in terms of these elements or mechanisms?

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• What programming language was used to develop Windows OS?

  - by nardo

  I am very new to programming and I have started to learn programming just last week. I am still having trouble understanding about programming languages, especially what to use in a particular system. My first language is Java and it's the only programming language I have experience with. I know there are a lot of programming languages out there but I am so curious what programming language was used to develop Windows? Can Java be used to develop an OS?

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• Is diversifying my programming knowledge good?

  - by the_great_monkey

  I have skills in so many programming languages, such as Java, C++, C, Obj-C, Scala, Haskell, and Matlab. However I don't know/like web programming at all. I also get bored very quickly. Thus I haven't work with any Java projects that's bigger than say 20-30 java files. I'm finishing off my degree and I want to work as a developer, particularly in mobile area. Do I have enough skills to be recruited by good companies?

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• Programming Language most relevant to the Financial sector?

  - by NoviceCoding

  I am a freshman in college and doing a software engineering/ finance double major. I've been learning programming on my own and have a good bit of familiarity with php by now. I was wondering what you guys think the most relevant programming language is for financial/investment banking use? I have read this thread: Books on developing software for financial markets/investment banks I want to start learning/reading up on a language (the basics not financial/quant stuff) to set a foundation for the future financial/quant stuff.

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• Technique to Solve Hard Programming logic

  - by Paresh Mayani

  I have heard about many techniques which are used by developer/software manager to solve hard programming logic or to create flow of an application and this flow will be implemented by developers to create an actual application. Some of the technique which i know, are: Flowchart Screen-Layout Data Flow Diagram E-R Diagram Algorithm of every programs I'd like to know about two facts: (1) Are there any techniques other than this ? (2) Which one is the most suitable to solve hard programming logic and process of application creation?

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• If all programming languages are Turing Complete then why do we have language wars?

  - by kadaj

  There are language wars saying one programming language is better than other.. Consider Lisp and Java; and we can argue that the meta programming capabilities of Lisp is better than that of Java. But that does not mean Java cannot have meta programming capabilities without being another dialect of Lisp. Basically all programming languages are Turing Complete. So doesn't that mean we could solve any solvable problem in all those programming languages?

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• What programming language was used to develop Windows OS?

  - by nardo

  I am very new to programming and I have started to learn programming just last week. I am still having trouble understanding about programming languages, especially what to use in a particular system. My first language is Java and its the only programming language I have experience with. I know there are a lot of programming languages out there but I am so curious what programming language was used to develop Windows? Is Java can be used to develop an OS?

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• Composing programs from small simple pieces: OOP vs Functional Programming

  - by Jay Godse

  I started programming when imperative programming languages such as C were virtually the only game in town for paid gigs. I'm not a computer scientist by training so I was only exposed to Assembler and Pascal in school, and not Lisp or Prolog. Over the 1990s, Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) became more popular because one of the marketing memes for OOP was that complex programs could be composed of loosely coupled but well-defined, well-tested, cohesive, and reusable classes and objects. And in many cases that is quite true. Once I learned object-oriented programming my C programs became better because I structured them more like classes and objects. In the last few years (2008-2014) I have programmed in Ruby, an OOP language. However, Ruby has many functional programming (FP) features such as lambdas and procs, which enable a different style of programming using recursion, currying, lazy evaluation and the like. (Through ignorance I am at a loss to explain why these techniques are so great). Very recently, I have written code to use methods from the Ruby Enumerable library, such as map(), reduce(), and select(). Apparently this is a functional style of programming. I have found that using these methods significantly reduce code volume, and make my code easier to debug. Upon reading more about FP, one of the marketing claims made by advocates is that FP enables developers to compose programs out of small well-defined, well-tested, and reusable functions, which leads to less buggy code, and low code volume. QUESTIONS: Is the composition of complex program by using FP techniques contradictory to or complementary to composition of a complex program by using OOP techniques? In which situations is OOP more effective, and when is FP more effective? Is it possible to use both techniques in the same complex program? Do the techniques overlap or contradict each other?

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• Do people in non-English-speaking countries code in English?

  - by Damovisa

  With over 100 answers to this question it's highly likely that your answer has already been posted. Please don't post an answer unless you have something new to say I've heard it said (by coworkers) that everyone "codes in English" regardless of where they're from. I find that difficult to believe, however I wouldn't be surprised if, for most programming languages, the supported character set is relatively narrow. Have you ever worked in a country where English is not the primary language? If so, what did their code look like? Edit: Code samples would be great, by the way...

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• Languages and Tools for Web programming

  - by Mark Szymanski

  I am wanting to start Web Development and I was wondering what languages I would want to learn and what (if at all possible) free tools I would want to use.

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• KISS principle applied to programming language design?

  - by Giorgio

  KISS ("keep it simple stupid", see e.g. here) is an important principle in software development, even though it apparently originated in engineering. Citing from the wikipedia article: The principle is best exemplified by the story of Johnson handing a team of design engineers a handful of tools, with the challenge that the jet aircraft they were designing must be repairable by an average mechanic in the field under combat conditions with only these tools. Hence, the 'stupid' refers to the relationship between the way things break and the sophistication available to fix them. If I wanted to apply this to the field of software development I would replace "jet aircraft" with "piece of software", "average mechanic" with "average developer" and "under combat conditions" with "under the expected software development / maintenance conditions" (deadlines, time constraints, meetings / interruptions, available tools, and so on). So it is a commonly accepted idea that one should try to keep a piece of software simple stupid so that it easy to work on it later. But can the KISS principle be applied also to programming language design? Do you know of any programming languages that have been designed specifically with this principle in mind, i.e. to "allow an average programmer under average working conditions to write and maintain as much code as possible with the least cognitive effort"? If you cite any specific language it would be great if you could add a link to some document in which this intent is clearly expressed by the language designers. In any case, I would be interested to learn about the designers' (documented) intentions rather than your personal opinion about a particular programming language.

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• First ATMs programming language

  - by revo

  First ATMs performed tasks like a cash dispenser, they were offline machines which worked with punch cards impregnated with Carbon and a 6-digit PIN code. Maximum withdrawal with a card was 10 pounds and each one was a one-time use card - ATM swallowed cards! The first ATM was installed in London in the year 1967, as I looked at time line of programming languages, there were many programming languages made before that decade. I don't know about the hardware neither, but in which programming language it was written? *I didn't find a detailed biography of John Shepherd-Barron (ATM inventor at 70s) Update I found this picture, which is taken from a newspaper back to the year 1972 in Iran. Translated PS : Shows Mr. Rad-lon (if spelled correctly), The manager of Barros (if spelled correctly) International Educational Institute in United Kingdom at the right, and Mr. Jim Sutherland - Expert of Computer Kiosks. In the rest of the text I found on this paper, these kind of ATMs which called "Automated Computer Kiosk" were advertised with this: Mr. Rad-lon (if spelled correctly) puts his card to one specific location of Automated Computer Kiosk and after 10 seconds he withdraws his cash. Two more questions are: 1- How those ATMs were so fast? (withdrawal in 10 seconds in that year) 2- I didn't find any text on Internet which state about "Automated Computer Kiosk", Is it valid or were they being called Computer in that time?

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• Visual Programming paradigms

  - by Rego

  As the number of "visual" OS's such as Android, iOS and the promised Windows 8 are becoming more popular, it does not seem to me that we programmers have new ways to code using these new technologies, due to a possible lack in new visual programming languages paradigms. I've seen several discussions about incompatibilities between the current coding development environment, and the new OS approaches from Windows 8, Android and other tablets OS's. I mean, today if we have a new tablet, it's almost a requirement for coding, to have, for instance, an external keyboard (due it seems to me it's very difficult to program using the touch screen), exactly because the coding assistance is not conceived to "write" thousands of lines of code. So, how advanced should be the "new" visual programming languages paradigms? Which characteristics these new paradigms would be required?

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• Visual programming for serious software

  - by Gerenuk

  Are visual program control flow diagrams and languages which support that used for larger serious programs? Why not? They seem like a nice overview of the code. In the thread What software programming languages were used by the Soviet Union's space program? a visual language is mentioned (Drakon) and I wondered why such approaches aren't used more often? Is there nothing a visual control flow representation (I don't mean class diagrams etc.) which are 1-to-1 with code can help compared to typing in letters in an editor?

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• Why no more macro languages?

  - by Muhammad Alkarouri

  In this answer to a previous question of mine about scripting languages suitability as shells, DigitalRoss identifies the difference between the macro languages and the "parsed typed" languages in terms of string treatment as the main reason that scripting languages are not suitable for shell purposes. Macro languages include nroff and m4 for example. What are the design decisions (or compromises) needed to create a macro programming language? And why are most of the mainstream languages parsed rather than macro? This very similar question (and the accepted answer) covers fairly well why the parsed typed languages, take C for example, suffer from the use of macros. I believe my question here covers different grounds: Macro languages or those working on a textual level are not wholly failures. Arguably, they include bash, Tcl and other shell languages. And they work in a specific niche such as shells as explained in my links above. Even m4 had a fairly long time of success, and some of the web template languages can be regarded as macro languages. It is quite possible that macros and parsed typing do not go well together and that is why macros "break" common languages. In the answer to the linked question, a macro like #define TWO 1+1 would have been covered by the common rules of the language rather than conflicting with those of the host language. And issues like "macros are not typed" and "code doesn't compile" are not relevant in the context of a language designed as untyped and interpreted with little concern for efficiency. The question about the design decisions needed to create a macro language pertain to a hobby project which I am currently working on on designing a new shell. Taking the previous question in context would clarify the difference between adding macros to a parsed language and my objective. I hope the clarification shows that the question linked doesn't cover this question, which is two parts: If I want to create a macro language (for a shell or a web template, for example), what limitations and compromises (and guidelines, if exist) need to be done? (Probably answerable by a link or reference) Why have no macro languages succeed in becoming mainstream except in particular niches? What makes typed languages successful in large programming, while "stringly-typed" languages succeed in shells and one-liner like environments?

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• Game programming course materials: What should it include?

  - by Esa

  I am tasked to create the course materials for a game programming class, and I’d like your opinion on what aspects and areas of game programming, such as game state management, game object storing or simple AI, should I include in it? The course is intented to be the first step into game programming for students with novice skills in programming. There will be mathematics as well, but I found that there are multiple questions, with good answers, on that subject already.

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