From: Josh Cheek Date: 2010-03-30T02:06:50+09:00 Subject: Re: Programming Language Comparison --00163692082bd4c8bd0482f38966 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 9:23 AM, Space Ship Traveller < space.ship.traveller@gmail.com> wrote: > Dear Friends, > > I'm working on some resources for teaching Ruby. > > As part of this, I'm studying what already exists, and whether or not it is > conducive to learning to program. > > I have put together a list of several programming languages and tried to do > a comparison. > > > http://www.oriontransfer.co.nz/education/learn-ruby/why/language-comparison/index > > The purpose of this comparison is to help people make a decision about what > language they would like to use for teaching people how to program. > > Another part of this is evaluating existing resources. I've put this list > together here: > > > http://www.oriontransfer.co.nz/education/learn-ruby/why/existing-resources/index > > The purpose of this list is to try and review the "best" resources for > learning how to program for each particular language. I'm really not sure if > what I've selected is actually representative of this - so if anyone has any > ideas or recommendations for additions or removals please let me know. > > > > ... I know this is all highly subjective, but if anyone felt like giving me > some feedback on these two pages, I'd appreciate that. > > P.S. I don't want to cause any grief :) > > Kind regards, > Samuel > Is the general syntax simple and concise? I wouldn't consider C's syntax to be simple and concise. It's type system leads to weird contortions and obnoxious typecasting that just add confusing lines to code. To do anything polymorphic you have to use void pointers and function pointers. You have to use esoteric naming conventions because it doesn't support namespaces. Compiling multiple source files requires knowledge of makefiles (I've switched to rake) which have their own esoteric syntax (and god help you if you use spaces instead of tab on some line somewhere). If there is a single comprehensive source of documentation (like ruby-doc.org), I don't know what it is, and I've looked and asked and been using C off and on for about 2 years. Prototypes duplicate your functions' signatures across files that you then have to remember to change if you alter your code, you have to include them to make your code visible to other files, and because code in your own file can't see code that comes after it, so you either deal with dependencies depending on where you wrote the code in the file in relation to other code, or you use a header. But even headers can have dependency issues when included in some other file in the wrong order. You can't just include the file your header is dependent on within your header, because C can only include files a couple files deep. Their type equality forces you to use typedefs because structures use some weird equality measurement that the type system won't realize is the same. Is it generally easy to write new code? I also disagree with C for this category. C does not support many abstractions like interfaces, namespaces, OO, closures, etc. So you end up with a lot of code duplicated, and bound to eachother. I'm not saying this is inevitable, just that it's really easy to for that to happen. This means that if you want to write new code, you end up being concerned you're going to break something you've already done. It also has very poor support for testing, because it is so static and brittle, which makes it dangerous to refactor existing code. You also have to always be aware of where things came from, and really let people know where they are going, because you have to manage all of your own memory, so if you don't free that 'object' or the user you return your result to doesn't free it, it's going to turn into a memory leak. Does the language have a type system conducive education? I think Java should be green here. It's static typing only gets in the way when you use things like containers. Otherwise, I think it is helpful for education to be able to look at the signature of the method, and see it takes a String and an int, or just a String, and it returns an array of strings. I always found that helpful when learning OO. And explicitly declaring that your variable is of type whatever is helpful when you are not very strong with understanding types. It also allows the compiler to find incompatibilities, and (ideally, at least) give you more useful errors. In this regard, I think Ruby should be yellow here. Ruby relies much more on naming conventions, because you can't display types in signatures. You can have code that will break because you passed the wrong type of variable, and it won't break, because you don't execute that particular piece of code. Then much later when you do, you get an unexpected error! That is fine if you understand how types work, you don't need all that extra code declaring this type or that type or casting between types. But if you are just learning, then having the compiler hold your hand would probably be conducive. Is it easy to reuse existing code? I think C should be red. If you want to do anything non trivial, reusable code pretty much means function pointers and void pointers, which means obnoxious typecasting and code/namespace pollution. You also have the risk that the library you are including has some function named the same as some function you are using, or in some other library you want to use, because there is only the global namespace. To get around that, you have to have really obnoxious names, usually preceeded by several characters to artificially namespace it, but it all just makes the code more cryptic. Also, I don't know where you would go to get existing code other people have written, is there any standard documentation like rdoc or javadoc? I assume not since I've read several books on C without any such mention. You also have to know how to build the code you are using, and know how to link against it. Does the language provide a useful and consistent set of object oriented constructs? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question, but C is not OO. To get OO like behaviour, you have to declare a struct with all types in it, go write your own create and destroy functions to malloc and free the code. Write all your functions with prefixes appended to their names to make it clear that they are related to eachother, accept the object itself as your first parameter (something oo does explicitly for you), and then pass everything in functionally, instead of calling methods. Ie let the prefix pr_ indicate we are defining a "method" for a person (which is just a typedefed struct). Then ruby's person.has_birthday; would look like pr_has_birthday(person,1); Now imagine if you wanted to chain methods. Are people in education already familiar with the language and environment? At my school (Wichita State), C would be green, C++ would be yellow, and Java would be green. Everything else on that list would be red. Are there good learning resources available for use in education? I think Java should be green, it's api is very very helpful. I don't know why C is green, for me it was just google and books (and now stack overflow ^^). Anyway, thats my opinion. Anyone is welcome to disagree, but as a pre-emptive rebuttal, if there is a resource that resolves the issue, but is not widely accepted or adopted, then I don't think it is relevant, because it is not the kind of thing a new programmer will know about or is likely to understand well enough to use. --00163692082bd4c8bd0482f38966--