Programming languages: Perl, C++, or C?

Question

Programming languages: Perl, C++, or C?

Answer 1

I'll accept as true with others right here, it closely is dependent upon what you desire to do. Game programming, medical program, some thing that crunches numbers, opt for C++. Web progress, unix utilities, or automation program, Perl. C++ will also be plenty to swallow whilst you are first establishing out, however the payoff will also be beautiful giant, apart from the fame of the language, you'll be able to gain knowledge of plenty approximately how computing works, and what tons of different languages do for you in the back of the scenes (in the event you've written meeting, you realize what I imply right here). Perl programmers love Perl. To loss of life. I'm now not very acquainted with the language itself, however all my friends who use it swear via it. They also are the primary to confess to me that it is flexibility is at the same time it is finest triumph and downfall; it makes it convenient to do matters that might be very problematic in different languages, however the quantity of approaches to get matters performed could make knowledge ancient code difficult to do. I'd additionally toss in a advice for Python as a scripting language that is a bit of extra pleasant, if now not as widespread as Perl.

Answer 2

Ask people _within_ LM/Boeing which language to go for, Perl is very likely to be out, it was a dirty solution to a problem, and it is dirty to many uses, it will be nothing but dirty compare to others. My guess whomever in such places will say C mostlikely.

Answer 3

Perl is more of a scripting language and based on who you want to work with, Python would actually be a better choice, but you could learn both.



C++ can facilitate most of C. Learning C++ will help you with C, just remember that C is imperative, procedural based language and C++ is object oriented. The great thing is that most of C++ is somewhat backward compatible with C++, therefore you can use most of ANSI C inside C++, such as printf(),scanf(),malloc(),free(). Although you should usually keep C in a separate file from C++, but sometimes, you need a specific function.



Java can be very useful, but I believe that Python/C,C++ would be more beneficial in the area you are looking at. If you get into intense numerical analysis, you will probably have to be familiar with Fortran as well...and no it is not a dead language.



@Techwing:

Have you programmed intensively in Python? There are huge benefits of using Python. In our aerodynamics research, we use Python as an intermediate scripting language to run our CFD simulations. It's a great language. I believe YUM (package install used in RHEL, CentOS, Fedora) is python based to some degree. There are modules for that can help with nearly everything. Yes it has it's limitations, but having the benefit of interacting with other languages is a huge plus. Some of the modules I use everyday are NumPy, Matplotlib, PyMPI, and several others. If I need to do a quick job, Python is usually my goto language. If its computationally intensive, I might move to C/C++/Fortran. But I might still give it a Python interface so that I can use those routines again with less time writing programs and more time getting answers. There are many scientific applications on the open source market that implement a Python scripting engine for in program use.



I'm just saying Python isn't as bad of a Language as people make it out to be. By the way Java isn't really interpretted. Java uses JIT compiling and runs in a virtual machine where general Python is interpretted.

Answer 4

If you plan to program for a career, you'll have to learn more than one language.



The most useful general-purpose language today is C/C++ (they are very similar). Perl is an interpreted language that has only limited applications. Python is even worse. Java is also an interpreted language with limited applications, but it is perhaps somewhat more widely used than Perl.



C++ is only object-oriented in the minds of its inventors, and a lot of real-world C++ code is simple procedural code that doesn't use all the fancy additions to C++ that C did not have. It depends on where they programmer got his training and what his employer wants to see.



Older languages like Fortran and COBOL are still in wide use, but mostly in maintenance mode. Jobs are few but can pay very well, since the number of people who know these languages is also very small.



Languages like C# and Java have incestuous ties with specific vendors and one should be wary of them, even though Java is quite widespread and C# is being promoted very vigorously.



In any case, if you are a good programmer, you can learn a new language very rapidly, so you can always change as the market requires. Good programmers write excellent code in whatever language they happen to be using. Bad programmers can't write anything decent no matter how much practice they've had with a given language.