@tster said:
@masklinn said:@tster said:I guess you have never used LISP/Ruby/Perl/ML/Smalltalk if you think that C++ is the most powerful language around.
Can we add Python, Haskell, Erlang, D, Factor and Self to the list?
Sure.. I just didn't want to make a long list and make it look like it was the definitive list... THere are certainly more.
Well you're right that I haven't used that long list of languages (I believe I said I am a young programmer). From what I can tell most of the languages listed are scripting languages, which generally speaking suffer from performance loss like that of Java. I'm not saying that they aren't powerful. Nor did I say that Java was not powerful.
The fact is that processing power is limited and you simply cannot give the BEST solution from scripted or byte-coded applications. It might require more work on the programmer's part to do, but it seems that a well written application in C/C++ will result in a much faster application than a functionally equivalent written in any of the scripting languages you have named.
I'm referring to the end result: the application from a user's perspective. Writing the application is all good; fun for programmers, etc., etc. However, without the user the application isn't really worth anything. I, myself, as a user, hate waiting for slow applications to complete a task. I wish applications written in scripted or byte-coded languages were written in a compiled language and the application was built into a native binary so I wouldn't have to wait as long. (And for the record I most enjoy writting in C/C++... No other language that I have used is as fun to write -- C++, Java, VB6, VBA, VB .NET, VBScript, JavaScript, PHP, HTML/XHTML/XML, ActionScript, Tcl).
RAD languages/tools provide the programmer with an advantage when developing fast solutions to small problems, but on a much larger scale performance needs to be considered.
The only two languages in the above lists that are compiled (from what I found) are ML and D.
ML has a short Wikipedia article and I've never heard of it until now. I can't say how useful it is, but looking at the small syntax example it looks like a nightmare. The small article suggests that it's not a very popular language. In fact, a google search for ML programming returned top ten results with dates in the 90s.
D appears to be the result of taking the good of C++ and adding to it lessons learned in C#, Java, and Eiffel. Sounds like a great language, but it also sounds like a derivative of C++. Shock. I'm sure it's a very powerful language, but it sounds like it's trying to sugar-coat C++ (even though it is apparently a separate language). The Wikipedia article on compiled languages appear to group it amoung the C family of languages (regardless of the fact that they are not actually C).
@Wikipedia: Compiled languages said:
C
The truth is that C has been around for over 30 years and is still a very popular language. The majority of open-source projects that I have used have been written in C or C++, which means they are still very much used today. C has influenced many languages such as C++, C#, Objective-C, Java, Perl, PHP, and D.
I have given my opinion, and I think I made it clear that I am a young programmer, so take it as you wish. Stop bashing me for giving my opinion! And stop saying "silly"... It's silly. C/C++ lets the programmer do the programming which is what I want from a language. I compare everything I have used with C++ and I always find myself wishing the other languages were more C-like.
I don't like programming approaches that look for the quickest solution to problems. The right solution is usually nowhere in sight. I known guys from college with this mind state and I'm confident you will see some of their code on this site before long.