Language Quesition

[Buildology]

I would like to know if any program languages are easier the Visual Basic
i.e. Cobalt or something.
I am very new to this and would appreciate any information
Thanks
Bill

 

[xenou]

It's probably subjective A better question might be what your goal is in learning a language. Visual basic comes with a fairly easy to use set of built-in objects which makes it good for rapid development (especially forms and data connectivity). You can get a lot done quickly with an IDE such as Visual Studio. I've seen some .NET environments for development on the web also. Other languages are better in other circumstances though - if you're going to focus on web development you'd want to learn ASP.NET or PHP. Once you get comfortable with one language, much of the basics is going to transfer to any language you end up working with the most.

 

[Buildology]

Hi Alexander
Thanks for the reply
I understand what you mean about language in general.
but,
What does Visual Studio do and what is IDE stand for.
Thanks for the help.
Bill

 

[Norie]

Bill

There might be a computer language called 'Cobalt' but the last time I looked at the Periodic table that was the name of an element in it.

Perhaps you mean Cobol.

As for IDE, in this context, it normally means/stands for Integrated Development Environment.

 

[xenou]

IDE's -- "software to help you write software". Generally, good help files, compilation routines, debugging tools, graphical interfaces to help you with typical programming tasks - perhaps all the way up to version control and sophisticated tools for distribution.

In other words, you can write your code with Notepad - but when you need to get it done for a living, a whole barrage of development tools is available to assist you do it more quickly and effectively.

At any rate, for beginners, better to learn the basics of structured code and object-oriented design - a lot of stuff that will come in handy for you as you progress...(a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step...)...I started out with VB, but there's many choices and all have their strengths and weaknesses. (I'm actually still just using VB mostly - but I've dithered in Java and C and right now I'm in a class using PHP with interactive web pages). COBOL is interesting - I believe the stats make it still the most common language in use today, but because there's so much out there still running it. It's not the language new programmers are are learning so much...for better or worse...

Alex

 

[Buildology]

Thanks for the info
I looks like I have a lot to learn.

Bill
PS I hope you guys don't go anywhere.

 

[Norie]

Alex

What stats make you think COBOL is the most common language in use?

I've never, ever used it and have been programming for more than 20 years.

The only person I know that had exposure to it was my elder brother who learned it at uni, and looking at his books it wasn't too pretty.

 

[xenou]

See link below under how widely used is COBOL - also a lot of other interesting factoids - the wikipedia article seems interesting too (and funny). I don't know a scrap of COBOL myself. What's the market for COBOL programmers still today - I have no idea. There were still millions of them in 2002 and there must be many still. The only experienced COBOL programmer I ever met quite liked it... Anyway, the point is not that it is being learned, taught, or used for new software (I've only met one person who was actually learning COBOL), but that it is still the language in which a great deal of existing software is written in the business world. I was quite surprised to hear this myself. Any recent stats out there? Alex

http://www.csis.ul.ie/COBOL/Course/COBOLIntro.htm

 

[Norie]

Alex

I can quite imagine that there is plenty of COBOL code still out there, mostly in legacy systems I imagine.

And it's probably still there because doesn't want/see a requirement to update eg cost, laziness, obstinance etc.

As for my comment on it being 'ugly' I think that was based on how strictly everything had to be structured.

Well it looked that way to me anyway.

 

[xenou]

I thought the same from the little I've seen of it...but beauty is in the eye of the beholder? I've always thought that every language (or type of language) has its own standards for what makes well-written code. All in all, COBOL is verbose, and probably requires more code.

The standard "hello-world" in COBOL:

      IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
      PROGRAM-ID. HELLO-WORLD.
      PROCEDURE DIVISION.
      MAIN.
          DISPLAY 'Hello, world.'.
          STOP RUN.

In VB.NET:

Imports System.Console

Class HelloWorld

    Public Shared Sub Main()
        WriteLine("Hello, world!")
    End Sub

End Class

In Python (simplicity is a virtue here):

print "Hello, World!"

Alex
The Hello World Collection