> From: Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> Reggie Bautista wrote:
>
> > I haven't done much coding in... I guess it's been at least ten years.
I'm
> > just getting back into it now, and have another question for you or
anyone
> > else. Assuming that I am going to learn both C++ and Java, which would
you
> > recommend learning first? I have previous experience with BASIC,
FORTRAN,
> > COBOL, and Pascal, but as I said, it's been a while. I've been toying a
> > little lately with both Java and C++, trying to teach myself, but if I
dive
> > full bore gung ho into one first, then the other, what order would you
> > recommend? I have no problems with object-oriented programming and have
> > done some pseudo-code with a friend of mine who is just about to graduate
> > from DeVry, so learning either will really just be about learning the
syntax
> > of the language, not about programming concepts in general.
>
> Dan's answer to the question, when I asked him, was that C++ is more
> powerful, but it's harder to shoot yourself in the foot with Java, so which
> one you tackle first would depend on what you want to be doing with it.
> That was as decisive as he was going to be on the subject. :)
>From somewhere:
With the proliferation of modern programming languages which seem to have
stolen countless features from each other sometimes makes it difficult to
select a which language appropriate for your task. This guide is offered
as a public service to help programmers in such dilemmas.
The key to this guide is to remember its one and only easy-to-remember
and abide-by criteria - Shooting Yourself in the Foot.
C: You shoot yourself in the foot.
C++: You accidently create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot
them
all in the foot. Providing emergency medical care is
impossible
since you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are
just
pointing at others and saying, "that's me, over there."
C#: The gun fires just fine, but your foot can't figure out where
the bullets are and ignores them.
Java: The gun fires just fine, but your foot can't figure out what
the bullets are and ignores them.
Ada: If you are dumb enough to actually use this language, the
United
States Department of Defense will kidnap you, stand you up in
front of a firing squad, and tell the soldiers, "Shoot at his
feet."
Algol: You shoot yourself in the foot with a musket. The musket is
esthetically fascinating, and the wound baffles the adolescent
medic in the emergency room.
APL: You hear a gunshot, and there's a hole in your foot, but you
don't remember enough linear algebra to understand what
happened.
Assembly: You crash the OS and overwrite the root disk. The system
administrator arrives and shoots you in the foot. After
a moment of contemplation, the administrator shoots himself
in the foot and then hops around the room rabidly shooting
at everyone in sight.
80x86
Assembly: The gun isn't in the same segment as your feet,
so you can't shoot them.
BASIC: Shoot self in foot with water pistol. On big systems,
continue
until entire lower body is waterlogged.
COBOL: USEing a COLT45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place
ARM.HAND.FINGER on HANDGUN.TRIGGER, and SQUEEZE. THEN
return HANDGUN to HOLSTER. Check whether shoelace needs
to be retied.
dBase: You squeeze the trigger, but the bullet moves so slowly that
by
the time your foot feels the pain you've forgotten why you
shot
yourself anyway.
dBase IV version 1.0: You pull the trigger, but it turns out that the gun
was a poorly-designed grenade and the whole building blows up.
XBase: Shooting yourself is no problem. If you want to shoot yourself
in
the foot, you'll have to use Clipper.
Clipper: You grab a bullet, get ready to insert it in the gun so that
you
can shoot yourself in the foot, and discover that the gun that
the
bullet fits has not yet been built, but should be arriving in
the
mail _REAL_SOON_NOW_.
Forth: yourself foot shoot.
FORTRAN: You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out
of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you
run
out of bullets, you continue anyway because you have no
exception-
processing ability.
Modula/2: After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything
in the language, you shoot yourself in the head.
sh, csh, etc.:
You can't remember the syntax for anything, so you spend five
hours reading man pages before giving up. You then shoot the
computer and switch to C.
Smalltalk: You spend so much time playing with the graphics and windowing
system that your boss shoots you in the foot, takes away your
workstation, and makes you develop in COBOL on a character
terminal.
PL/I: You consume all available system resources, including all the
offline bullets. The DataProcessing&Payroll Department doubles
its size, triples its budget, acquires four new mainframes,
and
drops the original one on your foot.
Prolog: You attempt to shoot yourself in the foot, but the bullet,
failing
to find its mark, backtracks to the gun which then explodes in
your face.
PowerBuilder:
While attempting to load the gun you discover that the LoadGun
system function is buggy; as a work around you tape the bullet
to the outside of the gun and unsuccessfully attempt to fire
it
with a nail. In frustration you club your foot with the butt
of the
gun and explain to your client that this approximates the
functionality of shooting yourself in the foot and that the
next
version of Powerbuilder will fix it.
SNOBOL: You grab your foot with your hand, then rewrite your hand to
be a bullet. The act of shooting the original foot then
changes your hand/bullet into yet another foot (a left foot).
lisp: You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with
which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun
with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the
gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which
holds...
scheme: You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with
which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun
with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the
gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which
holds...
...but none of the other appendages are aware of this
happening.
English: You put your foot in your mouth, then bite it off.
SQL: You cut your foot off, send it out to a service bureau and
when it
returns, it has a hole in it, but will no longer fit the
attachment at the end of your leg.
pre .Net
Visual
Basic: You'll appear to shoot yourself in the foot, but have so
much fun doing it that you don't care.
VB.Net: You write about 100 lines of code to print "Hello, world!" in
a
dialogue box, only to have a UAE pop up when you click on OK.
This shuts down the program manager, leaving you nothing but
a
screensaver. You then fly to Washington where Bill Gates
shoots
you in the foot.
Unix:
% ls
foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o
% rm * .o
rm: .o: No such file or directory
% ls
%
---
Mac os X: Click on Shoot foot program even though it's designed for
windows, program runs, gives message "right click to continue", right
click attempt fails due to stupid mouse design. Drop mouse on foot
Windows 98: Double click "shortcut to shoot foot" program fails, program
crashes, reboot, error in registery, reinstall windows. Give up with
whole foot shooting program and go back to using a pen and paper
Windows 2000: Shoot Foot program fails, Contact Server Adminstrator
Windows XP: Cannot find Shoot Foot Program. Reveal Hidden Files, Are you
sure, yes, Run Shoot Foot Program, are you sure, yes. Shoot Foot requires
activation, do you wish to activate, yes. Bill Gates prevents you from
doing this. Bill Gates Shoots you in Foot. Any attempt to sue fails due
to small print in manual reading, "bill gates can shoot you in the foot
if you install this software"
Perl: You shoot at your foot. Or you could put your foot in the way of a
bullet. Or shoot up in the air and have the bullet land on your foot. Any
way you choose to do it, you've shot yourself in the foot.
Verilog: Create a status register. You'll have to wait until the next
clock cycle to determine if your foot has been shot, because the gun
fires in parallel with your other modules.
_______________________________________________
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
