On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 11:06 AM, Joseph Apuzzo <[email protected]> wrote:
> Times are tough, so we need some free things, how about a useful free
> ( not Libra ) books?
Joe, thank you for posting these Ruby links. They come at an
interesting time for me.
I've been doing Database Administration for, oh, 20+ years now, and
while it's still an exciting field, especially with XML stealing
thunder from RDBMSs after all these years, I'm yearning to get back
into some programming. I have this quaint idea that I should be able
to tell a computer what to do, instead of always relying on someone
else's program :)
My own programming background includes the standard procedural
languages, BASIC, VB, Fortran, COBOL, and PL/1 (my favorite) - no C,
unfortunately - plus various database/SQL related things. But during a
recent survey of the "modern" languages, I'm seeing of course that the
world now thinks in object-oriented terms: Java, C++, Ruby, and the
like. I'm slowly trying to wrap my head around this new (to me) way of
thinking. I mean, it does make sense: a dog is an object, and if you
call his bark() method, you don't care how he barks, you just want him
to bark.
I have a programmer friend who tells me the real reason why o-o
succeeded so well in the enterprise is because it lets big projects be
split up easily, ie, the GUI team doesn't have to know or care what
the widget team is doing. Makes sense, I guess, but if you do even
cursory research on this topic you'll see that, like most things in
life, it's neither black or white but rather a shade of gray.
I've been playing with Python lately. It's fully o-o but still has
enough procedural stuff to let you do simple things simply. Also, I've
been looking at JavaScript, which actually has almost nothing related
to Java, but instead is a powerful scripting language which runs in a
browser, ie. no runtime to worry about, plus everyone has a browser so
your target audience is huge.
Anyway, thanks much for the link, and I'd love to hear some comments
on computer programming for mere mortals if anyone wants to offer
some.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Frank L. "Cranky Frankie" Palmeri
Guilderland, NY, USA
Risible Riding Raconteur & Writer
“A man’s errors are his portals of discovery.”
- James Joyce
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
_______________________________________________
Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org
http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug
Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium
Apr 7 - Nagios
May 5 - Android
Jun 2 - June 2010 Meeting
