Any Programmers in the House?

[Quetzal]

I know php and java.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I used to, and knew a good deal of HTML, JavaScript, BASIC, and even how to program on an TI-8whatever graphing calculator. That was more in high school and I've not really done any of it in many years, though this semester I am taking an electronics/robotics class that uses Processing.

 

[sun rise]

Now being retired, in the dark ages I programmed in COBOL (yes), BASIC, C, Perl and a few others. I still occasionally write a small perl or shell script. And I can write HTML as well if one considers that a language.

 

[Onyx]

I enjoy programming as a hobby, mostly C++, sometimes Java or whatever makes sense for a particular project.

 

[Notanumber]

Have you found any use for the programming languages you've learned?

I have written my own accounts, invoicing & timekeeping database program using Access & VB.

It is not polished, but it does the job.

Just had a self-assessment return check by the Inland Revenue and they seemed quite content with the info that it provided.

 

[Brent W]

PHP/MySQL/Javascript checking in

 

[Jedster]

So... who are RF's resident programmers or programmers in the making, and which programming language(s) do you know? Programming as a part-time job or even as a personal pursuit outside your primary work counts as well.

I'm currently learning C++. This is the most basic course of my degree, which should make me eligible to work as a full-time software developer. I'm also looking into Java at the moment. With any luck I'll be able to manipulate RF's code to make myself RF Overlord.

Long time retired, here's what I can remember
Machine code, Assembler, Cobol, Fortran, C, C++, Hope, Superbasic,Lisp, Prolog

 

[Debater Slayer]

Okay, I finally have enough time to peruse this thread and answer posts! Sorry for the delay. (Just got done with exams.)

My focus was using AI to do interesting scheduling problems. We did scheduling for railroads, broadcasting, and manufacturing. These days I teach computer geeks to teach their technologies so I get a nice overview of most of the cool and new programming languages and frameworks like Akka and Angular and Tensorflow and Clojure and on and on.

If you plan on learning 3-ish languages C++ is okay for one of them. It's a "C-family" language so it'll make learning C, Java, C# and Python that much easier. I'm not a fan of JavaScript - it was literally thrown together in a couple of weeks and it's got a lot of flaws - but it's friggin everywhere so it's one you ought to learn. I do think object oriented programming is still extremely common so you should add Java or C#. I lean towards Java, but they're very similar.

I gotta say a bit more about OO:

Your teacher will probably say that C++ is an OO language, and it is - kind of. The inventor of OO, Alan Kay, famously said: "I'm the guy that invented OO, and I can tell you that I didn't have C++ in mind"

Most modern languages are OO to a degree. Very few are PURE OO - Smalltalk is one that is. The most popular OO languages these days are "mostly" OO (Java, C#). JavaScript and Python can be OO, but they're not naturally as OO as Java and C#.

Is that confusing enough?

That's pretty detailed. Thanks.

Yes, I've been told that C++ makes learning certain languages easier. I'm not sure if it will end up being more useful than others for me when I have decided which field to focus on, though.

Have you ever had experience with development of mobile apps?

I know php pretty well using it a lot in work and have been having to delve into C++ and LUA heavily. I learned a lot of Python as well using for Machine Learning, also for work. Thats pretty much all I work on these days for my job, programming for multiple websites and triple A games, not as much computer tech stuff. C++ is pretty good if you want to do AAA games, Unreal, Unity etc and a lot of them use LUA also which kinda looks a lot like Python to me. I think I need more Javascript which is helpful in some of our projects, but have done a few things in it. For years I've done a tons of SQL scripting, sure has been helpful with PHP. Gosh I even had to do some C# in recent weeks but really just beginning in that.

That's very cool. Sounds like you do diverse work.

Which AAA games have you worked on, if you don't mind my asking?

 

[Debater Slayer]

I took Pascal in high school followed by some self taught VBA and C, however I did not become a programmer. Years later I learned shell with BASH. I'm studying some Python code currently (at the moment studying a parser called lib2to3 that converts Python 2 code to Python version 3 ). I plan to learn to develop with C and Python together. I'm drawn to whatever seems easiest balanced with whatever has the greatest utility, something that will let me use both system level routines and high level programs. Despite appearances I am not interested in learning multiple programming languages. I'm looking for the language that will be my last programming language and that will swallow most other programming languages (but not all. There must always be special purpose programming languages.).

Good luck! Thanks for the info.

I have written my own accounts, invoicing & timekeeping database program using Access & VB.

It is not polished, but it does the job.

Just had a self-assessment return check by the Inland Revenue and they seemed quite content with the info that it provided.

Congratulations!

 

[icehorse]

Have you ever had experience with development of mobile apps?

No easy clean solutions there that I'm aware of... Android development uses Java (hooray), but you still have to learn the Android development framework which is not trivial. iOS dev. uses Objective-C or Swift. Swift is a pretty cool new language, but there is a similar issue that in iOS you're still forced to use Apple's UI thing-y (Cocoa I believe), and it's also not trivial.

There are some simpler, 3rd-party tools that are easier and more fun, but I don't know if any of them are professional enough if you wanted to make an app you could sell in the app store.

There are technologies like Xamarin that allow you to "develop once" and run on both Android and iOS, but Xamarin is pretty darned complex.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Intel Assembly language ... PLM ... C ... C++ ... a bit of Java ...