programming languages and visual programming under FreeBSD

[cpghost at cordula.ws]

On Sun, Jan 16, 2005 at 08:23:31PM +0100, koen de wijs wrote:
> Python.

Python is definitively a good language to learn programming.
You may want to try the various resources from the Python site:

  http://www.python.org/

Especially the Beginner's Guide would be IMHO a good place
to start:

  http://www.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide

Feel free to explore the other links too.

Programming is a very subjective task. People have strong opinions
about their favorite progrmaming language, favorite editors etc...
If you're not constrained by a project @work where you have to use
the same language than your co-coders, just shop around, and stick
to the language that best fits your way of doing things. Python
is a very good language, but others are good too :)

> What are the advantages of these languages above C and are there more 
> programming languages under FreeBSD?

You can program A LOT faster in Python and Perl, because you don't have
to deal with nitty-gritty details like memory management and string
manipulations yourself. The Perl and Python interpreters will do this
for you, so you can concentrate on the application you're writing
rather than on the idiosyncraties of the language. Typically, if you
can write a program in Python in a day, you would need weeks to do
it in C (and you'll have to rely on a lot of tested external libraries
if you don't want to debug everything yourself again and again).

But since Perl and Python programs are being interpreted rather than
compiled, they run slower than programs written in C. For example,
you can build a simple web server in an hour or so (a full blown one
in a day or two) in Python, and it would even run fine for moderate
loads, but you definitely don't want to use it for a heavily visited
site. In this case, you'll opt for a web server written in C, like
Apache or thttpd. But don't be fooled by this: some big sites *are*
actually using Python-based application servers (Zope or Plone). The
point to remember here is that most slow programs are spending most
of their time in rather small regions; and you can always recode those
regions in C if need be.

There are a lot of other programming languages in the FreeBSD ports.
Have a look at /usr/ports/lang, /usr/ports/java etc... and have fun :)

  http://www.freshports.org/lang/

> I don't want to start a war, where everybody says "What I'm doing is 
> best", like microsoft!
> I just want to know what are the common advantages of those languages.

Cheers,
-cpghost.

-- 
Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/