C#, Java, or other.

[WizardHawk]

It's been a few years since I have done any major programming and I now have a few projects that will require I jump back in that water again. So the question is if you had to make a few fairly short/easy programs with minimal graphic requirements and mostly basic math functions and you hadn't been involved in any of the current languages, which would you jump into and why?

I have used both JS and C in the past, but haven't played with C in years and never jumped into full java.

At some point in time I've programmed in over a dozen languages. Doesn't take much for me to get back into the swing of things. Really just want to know what side any of you are on with the big two these days and if you could only choose one knowing either (or one not mentioned for that matter) are fully capable of doing the light duty things you are working on, which would it be? Can't rule out doing other projects moving forward so there's that.

Which one is easiest to get into, code, compile, and debug when you don't feel like spending a ton of time on the process?

I was leaning C#, but mostly because I've worked with creating libraries in M$ before and could see a use for some custom DLL's in making a few of these go faster as there are some cross functions I'll be working with. I'm sure Java has similar capabilities, but I haven't worked with it.

 

[WizardHawk]

Right. I'll take that as a no one here has any real programming experience kind of answer.

 

[KansasSooner]

All my programming was in the scientific and mathematical realm. I used mostly Fortran on IBM and DEC equipment, even when I did start on PCs with 386s it was still Fortran or Basic. Hell, I even used a lot of Visual Basic when I first started doing Windows, the only other experience with C or Cobol or PL/1 was all in classes back in the late 70s, early 80s. Did a lot of ALGOL and Pascal back then too.

What I do now is mostly write Open Office Basic (kind of like VB without all the niceties) for my Open Office spreadsheets. And really for simple math programs any Basic is enough to get the job done.

 

[Sleepy T]

Visual Basic seemed easy. C++ not as much. I took some of those classes for my degree... Thank god I don't have to do it for a living!!

 

[KansasSooner]

Visual Basic seemed easy. C++ not as much. I took some of those classes for my degree... Thank god I don't have to do it for a living!!

C (and it's later descendants) was a combination of assembler level and higher level programming languages. It is really not the first language one should learn. I was lucky I got to learn ALGOL first. Assembler level programming is a lot more difficult than higher lever programming. An understanding of their differences will make you a better programmer in the end though.

 

[WizardHawk]

I've worked with C, Pascal, Fortran, and many variants of basic. I've also dabbled in PHP, DHTML, ASP, some Perl, and a variety of different database systems from Dbase III all they way up to most of the main ones today.

Even when I was working in C I often preferred to write most things in VB just because of the quickness of banging out projects. It was a lot less structured. Things like not having to formally declare all variables just made it quicker and I'm kind of lazy at times lol.

I know all of the .net languages are quite formal in their structure these days so if I'm diving back into that pool I might as well pick one language to use for anything and stick to it. Still leaning toward C#.

 

[KansasSooner]

If, and it's a big if, I was going to seriously get back into programming I'd go with some variant of C, as much as I'm not fond of it. But the newest VB uses a lot more structure than the older VB. After my days in ALGOL I always used Option Explicit in Basic and declared all variables, hell I even did it Fortran which drove some of the old time Fortran programmers nuts because they always used the default variable assignments of Fortran.

 

[WizardHawk]

The formal structure is why I didn't make the jump to basic.net back when I was doing some of these smaller projects. They made all of their languages more or less follow the same structure. If basic isn't going to be as quick and easy then why use it over another unless you do a lot of VB script stuff for office. It's been several years since I had to write macros for office so I have no real reason to stick with basic.

My first couple of projects aren't that difficult and could be done on almost any language. Both are more or less updates of some older things I had done in VB.6.

 

[KansasSooner]

VB 6 was the last good VB... Still had it on my XP machine to the very end. Don't what to say except go with what you feel most comfortable with using.

 

[Shaqdaddy11]

I did C++ in a course work sent me on. Don't remember a fucking thing though.

 

[JDM]

What are you attempting to do?

 

[WizardHawk]

The stuff that I'm updating are casino gaming related.

One is a program I wrote to track blackjack hands and rate players based on the likelihood they are counting cards. It uses a 2d matrix with play correlation values that change each decision based on the current card count. So I had to program basic blackjack rules into the thing and have routines to handle the matrix data which is entirely different in different games/rules. All the surveillance staff needed to know was what a plus card is, negative card, and neutral cards. They pressed one of 3 buttons for every card they saw and it tracked the true count, running count, number of cards gone, number of cards left in the shoe, number of cards to the expected cut point, etc.

The other one is much simpler/quicker to get up to speed and really just acts as a glorified gaming specific calculator that not only computes odds/payouts and commission, but also aggregate payouts when a table hits the ceiling on each game. I've had variations of this even in a simple excel sheet, but we don't always allow surveillance to have office on this computers and we found that by making a custom interface laid out in a gaming sort of logical format they were more likely to use it instead of trying to figure it out in their head and the quicker they can approve payouts and get the games going again. Time is absolutely money in the gambling industry. Making surveillance faster and more accurate at their job is huge.

I do have some other more distant projects that might make some DB front end interfaces .

So short answer is, the stuff up front is basic math and fairly basic user interface stuff. The reason I ask why anyone prefers is I do have some things I will be doing down the line that are much more involved and I really don't want to learn more than one language at this point.

 

[JDM]

For that I'd probably use python personally, but you may need something heavier for your future projects. As for "learning another language", for the most part if you know one (barring something task specific. Some types of Languages used in machine learning are notably different), it's a matter of a few key words and minor syntax (for example java uses brackets for loops, python uses white space).

 

[WizardHawk]

For that I'd probably use python personally, but you may need something heavier for your future projects. As for "learning another language", for the most part if you know one (barring something task specific. Some types of Languages used in machine learning are notably different), it's a matter of a few key words and minor syntax (for example java uses brackets for loops, python uses white space).

Oh I get that fully. I just figure at my age I'm not interested in trying to keep those varying conventions straight like I used to. I don't need to learn how to program, but I do need to learn a modern variant and I'd like to stick to their way to minimize confusion.

 

[JDM]

It doesn't really matter then. Either java or python will get the job done., as would most any modern language.

If you were learning to code I would say python again because it's really clean syntax that also encourages clean, visually recognizable code (white space for blocks, instead of brackets which can result in some disgusting ass shit if the learner is lazy with structure), but if you know what you're doing that's not really an issue.

 

[WizardHawk]

I hadn't really considered python, but maybe I will have to add that to the list of possibilities. Given it's aim at ease of use, or at least readability I might have to weigh that in. Free doesn't hurt either.

 

[JDM]

I meant to say java or c lol.

I'm a python fanboy though. For anything short of a huge, processor intense program, it gets the job done, and I love its syntax. If you do happen to go that direction, let me know. I have a few resources that would help you jump right in.

I think I might have a couple similar java links as well.

 

[BritishDolfan]

I found C# really easy to learn. Never really done enough java to comment, but I'm not huge fan of it.

 

[JDM]

C# and java are practically the same language honestly.

 

[BritishDolfan]

C# and java are practically the same language honestly.

Well yeah. I think because I'm used to C# though I don't like how Java does certain things.