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Elegant weapons, for a more civilized age

ghost of a past number — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 02:35:07 -0800

Do lisp and dialects make sense for general purpose scientific computing? I'm thinking of learning some variant of lisp as my next language, mostly out of masochism. My real-world computing needs are scientific/numerical, i.e. data manipulation, some statistics, lots of curve fitting and the like, with some data acquisition thrown in . So far I have been using C for the heavy stuff, perl for the quick and dirty and FORTRAN when I have to (I hang around with engineers).

Is lisp any use for such things? All the functional recursiveness seems pretty nifty, but I'd like to pick up a tool I can actually use.

Best Programming Language for an Engineer

warriorengineer — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:52:21 -0800

What would be the best programming language for me to learn for use as a Water Resources Engineer? I am a Water Resources Engineer, and I do a lot of modeling. In college, I took a class in which we used VB and a class in which we used Fortran. In grad school (masters) I used mostly matlab or just excel for problem solving. I am considering getting my PhD. and if I do, it is likely that I'll have to do a good bit of programming (Its very likely that I'll be writing some finite element method code). I am trying to determine which would be the best programming language for me to learn. I didn't really like VB or Fortran, and believe that they are both too limited. IF you have any question for me please ask. thanks.

hello, world (of programming)

papayaninja — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 21:37:27 -0800

What should my first programming language be, if I just want to have fun? And what are good books or websites for learning said language? I am looking to learn how to program. I don't have any ideas as to what I want to program, I just want to learn something for the sake of having a new skill and having fun. I'm sure the ideas of what I could do with any language will come when I have some idea how they work. There are plenty of other questions about which language to learn first, but they all have some purpose in mind, whether a specific program that needs to be created or to become a better employee and so on.

If it matters: I dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows Vista. I have previously used OpenSUSE 9 and 10 and have installed just about every other major distro at least once. I have reasonable competence when it comes to the Linux terminal. I'm a rising senior in high school and I am planning on focusing a lot on academics this year, so something easyish and fun is preferred. I have very limited experience with Visual BASIC. I wrote a text and button based choose-your-own adventure story with it for a school project and also a Twister caller so I could play by myself or with a small group of people. My dad helped with that last one, but I understood it at least. My friends ask me for computer help.

Finally, now that I know which language to learn, how do I learn it? Books? Websites? Podcasts? I'd be willing to spend a maximum of 30 dollars on books, though ten bucks is much appealing...

Thanks.

How can create a simple program to modify Windows Address Book and Outlook Address Book entries?

mrbloo — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 07:53:09 -0800

I'd like to create a simple program that would modify the phone numbers in my MS Windows and MS Outlook Address Books (reason is we got new area codes). What is the simplest programming language on windows and best way to get this done by directly accessing the address books (without exporting to CSV)? I've done some VBS with WMI, Windows batch scripting, perl, python, javascript, PHP.. so I understand programming but not programming with MS Windows DLLs and COMs and APIs etc.

I've done some searching and found it quite complicated to work with VC++ or a similar language on MS Windows so far. Any input would be much appreciated. Thank you very much in advance.

What languages are good for Windows apps?

crapmatic — Sat, 31 May 2008 13:10:31 -0800

What programming languages are good for writing a standalone shareware program for Windows? Specifics inside. Some things that I'd like:

A. I don't want to tackle a learning curve on an obselete or soon-to-be-obsolete language. There's Delphi but its future seems uncertain and I hear a lot of people pining for the old versions.

B. Compiler/interpreter should be reasonably fast, as I intend to code some heavy processing functions. Unless VB has changed in the past several years, it's out.

C. I need to keep the source code private (so Python and PHP are out). This is a must. Also I don't want the code easily decompilable.

D. I'd like it to not be so obscure that I can't find decent help on the Web nor find any Rentacoder coders to help (I'm looking at you, Lazarus).

E. I'd like to produce easy ports to Mac and possibly Linux, but this is not a big deal.

So what should I be looking at? I guess .NET is a possibility but this goes diametrically opposite to my desire to ultimately have some portability to another OS. There's also Java but I can't recall if it allows private source code, and I always equate Java with 45-second JVM load times; if I have to deal with a sluggish JVM, forget it.

Best book for a beginner to learn C?

asparagrass — Wed, 21 May 2008 22:44:12 -0800

Best book for a beginner to learn C? I've never learned a programming language, but I'm hoping to learn C over the summer. My friend, a computer science student, is going to teach me as he learns it. We would like a textbook or reference book or work book of some kind. What would be a good choice? I've heard the K and R 'C Programming Language' is considered the 'bible' of C programming, but I am wondering if this would be an appropriate choice for a beginner.
Things to bear in mind:
1) my friend will be creating 'lessons' from whatever book we choose. We'd like it to be thorough and start from the basics, but density is not necessarily an issue. That said, I'd like the text to be readable for both of us.
2) Although I have never programmed anything before, when I was younger, I dabbled in a bit of Flash so I'm reasonably ok with computers, and I have some background in math and logic. I don't know if this will help.

Thanks for your recommendations.

Looking to re-enter my field, but I'm terribly rusty. Best choice to sharpen up?

Imperfect — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 10:35:49 -0800

I haven't worked in my field for over a year, so I need to spend some time getting back in the habit of programming, and probably to learn some more current skills. The problem is: which? I graduated from St. Lawrence Collge with a Computer Programming Analyst diploma. I came out of the course with a pretty good knowledge of COBOL, Java, C++, and Visual Basic. During and previous to that time, I'd taught myself PHP, Flash Actionscript, and some pretty exceptional Visual Basic.

None of the languages I feel really confident in are in high demand by most companies looking to hire people with my (lack of) experience, plus I've been doing non-programming work for over a year now due to a lack of local jobs.

I've accepted that I'm going to have to be willing to move to find a job programming, but the question now is, which language to bone up on in the meantime? I'm (in general) a very good coder, with very good business practices (version control, proper commenting, coding style, Code Complete is my Bible, etc.), so I'm not worried that I'm embarrass myself with a lack of professionalism. Actually, I stand out from the crowd of entry-level programmers in that respect. But what language or languages should I be focusing on to make myself seriously marketable?

I'm looking for online resources about the Scheme programming language.

billybunny — Tue, 21 Sep 2004 17:58:49 -0800

I'm looking for online resources about the Scheme programming language. I'm a computer science major, and though I've already taken a class in it, that was a couple of years ago, and I've whacked my head on a lot of stuff since then. I'm just looking for a simple, easy-to-understand introduction or refresher course. Oh, and book recommendations are cool, too. Just, ya know, I like things convenient. And free. Mostly free.