Im going to start learning somthing new because DreamMaker, HTML, CSS, PHP and SQL wont take me far in the computer industry.
Which is the best language to learn?
ID:187552
 Nov 25 2004, 7:28 pm
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Nov 25 2004, 7:33 pm
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Ter13
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C++
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I recommend spending a week or two researching the two languages (and other options). Being able to independantly research and draw your own conclussions combined with being able to take into account the oppinions of others will get you far in the industry and in life in general.
That said C++ is a rather fun language to learn. | |
Eh... tough one. Java is yucky in its own way, but C++ is yucky in its own way too...
C++ probably has more serious applications, so go with that. Just be careful with C-style arrays. They're evil. -_- | |
Good starting language.
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Jermman wrote:
Good starting language. I hope to got your not refering to VB as good. I do my programing/coding on a Linux computer except for DM | |
Eww, VB... *shudder*
It's okay for learning first programming principles I guess, but not for anything serious. | |
C++ probably has more serious applications, so go with that. Just be careful with C-style arrays. They're evil. -_- There is no other style :). Just extra packaging. | |
It's okay for learning first programming principles I guess, but not for anything serious. VB is the best language by far that I've used for doing any kind of GUI development. So it's mainly good for building tools. | |
Theodis wrote:
There is no other style :). Just extra packaging. I meant as opposed to things like the STL vector class. You still have to deal with C arrays on occasion, and C arrays are eeeeeevil. I made a small typo in one game I was making that caused me to access an array index that was out of bounds, meaning that I was accessing random pieces of memory. This produced very subtle bugs, which took me ages to track down. Any other language would have given me an out of bounds error; but no, C/C++ is so obsessed with speed that it can't possibly do any sanity checks. I mean, that would SLOW THE PROGRAM DOWN by a fraction of a millisecond! OH THE HORROR! ... Must be against the C religion or something. =P | |
It may be easier to shoot yourself in the foot with C but when it happens in C++ you take out your whole leg.
It's much easier to fix something when you know how it works. With C its very simple to understand because an array is simple a block of memory with a few simple operators which make it easy to navigate. If you have an error its easy to tell since there was no extra padding put in place for you its just raw memory so as the programmer you should know exactly what it looks like. With an STL class this isn't true and if you corrupt memory and it doesn't crash right away you can run into some extremely weird and hard to track bugs which has happened to me on several times. Granted I generally use the STL container classes as they are very convenient. But when I need raw speed or need to deal with memory at a low level I still with just malloc()ing my memory and assigning it to a pointer or I used a fixed length array depending on the problem. Though I think you are understating how important that fraction of a millisecond is. A millisecond is a very very long time(generally used to measure access times of hard drives) and if you need to process a few million polygons you'll never pull off doing it in a reasonable time if you spend an entire fraction of a millisecond processing each one. When you're developing games every cycle counts and you shouldn't waste them doing bounds checks if you can avoid them simply by writing good code that doesn't surpass them. Also if you're sloppy and need the help most development tools allow you in debug mode to have the allocated memory aligned in such a way as to have your program crash if it attempts to access out of bounds memory. This makes the program take up more memory but is a good way to check if you aren't being sloppy. There is good reason that C is still largely used :). | |
OneFishDown wrote:
well he's using BYOND now, so even javascript would be a step up. Java Script is horrid | |
Visual Basic > Java
Java is a really bad starting language, when you start out you want something simple. I suppose DM is simple but visual basic is a step up. and im mean vb.net not vb6 | |
Kholint wrote:
WOO! Actionscript all the way! They're both practically the same language. Same syntax, different environment(Flash vs. a webpage). | |
Smoko wrote:
Im going to start learning somthing new because DreamMaker, HTML, CSS, PHP and SQL wont take me far in the computer industry. Ha! Ha I say! Well then I guess the reasonable success of my company over the last two years was a fluke eh? (granted it was not smooth sailing all the time, but that is expected when you go it alone) I happily make $40/hour doing HTML, CSS, PHP, Perl and MySQL *and* it's taken me farther (all the way to Europe in fact (from the pit we all know and love as the U.S.)) than sitting in a cubicle in Boston debugging C/C++/VisualBASIC code for half that rate, longer hours, and less personal benefits. Ah the joys of internet programming and self-employment! | |
