On Thu, May 03, 2001 at 09:02:08AM -0700, David Freeman wrote:
But I've just written my first kernel MODULE!!! and it work, which was a big surprise
What does it do?
One language I don't want to learn is C++.
I am interested as to why you should say that.
I get the impression that there are many people who think that C++ isn't a terribly pure language or that it doesn't have a particularly clean design. It is, however, very sucessful.
I don't think there is any doubt that a language such as C++ is a compromise as C was before it, but compromise isn't necessarily bad.
Considering C, I would suggest that without a language like C there would be no portable OS like Unix and Linux. Writing in Assembler would give the required level of run time efficiency and the ability to talk to the hardware when required but not the portability, and just about every other language would have been too inefficient, or unable to access the hardware at the required level.
When it comes to the emergence of C++ I would suggest that run time efficiency was still a concern, but there was the added incentive to use C++ - compatibility with C.
As time goes by, run time efficiency is becoming less of a concern and p-code and interpreted languages are now quite realistic for "serious" applications - even so, someone in our office was complaining today how much slower the Oracle GUI tools written in Java (8.1.6) are than the previous ones (7.3.4) not written in Java (I would guess at C++ but that is just a guess).
I Am amazed that there is such a holy war about programming languages, particully the language people first learnt was there favourite and all others are programmed as if they were using the first language.
I'm not sure that this is the case.
The first language I learnt was BASIC on the Sinclair ZX81. All variable names had to be kept short, there were no blocks, no named functions or procedures, IF statements couldn't have an ELSE part, there was no DO WHILE or REPEAT UNTIL so there had to be lots of GOTOs and GOSUBs.
I would not be caught programming now in the way that I had to for that version of basic.
I think it may be the case though that the general methodology that one first learns becomes the default. Those people whose first taste was with procedural programming may always find that more natural than OO or the kind of thinking required for Advanced use of SQL.
Steve.