Survey posted 2006-08-11 04:02 by Jon.

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The first two choices apply to me. I'm a hardware guy at heart and I like to be able to control all the hardware directly and know that I'm working at the lowest level, so everything that's going on is what I'm telling it to do, and there's nothing "behind the scenes" that I don't know about. Oh, and it's great being able to optimize. Most of that also fits the second option, though.

Now I'll sit back and watch the flamewars that will inevitably spring up between high-level and low-level programmers (although I hope not).

Let the wars begin!!!!

HIGH-LEVEL PROGRAMS ARE THE BEST!!!

I meant to say 'programming'

Can't write a kernel in Java, though. ;-) They both have their uses, and there's a large gray area where either can be used and it depends on personal preference.

I once wrote an emulator (for a made-up machine) in QBASIC. It got 40,000 instructions per second on a 166 MHz Pentium MMX machine.

Also, if you had a chip that ran Java bytecode natively, I suppose you could write the kernel in Java.

But would you want too?

Not me, at least. It would be much easier just to use C, which is much better suited for the job.

Bash is a high-level language, and I like it and use it most often of all languages I use. It's fairly easy to pipe file streams from one command to another and make long and/or complicated pipelines without much trouble in Bash (or any other Bourne-like shell).

Bash is *great* for utilities, but unforunately not for GUIs or games. That's where C/C++ steps in (or assembly, if you're using a calculator).

If someone ported Scheme or Haskell to a calculator, then I would definitely say high level...as it stands, I still have to put up with AMS on my TI-92+ (since the on-calculator C compiler has a memory leak (at least the version I have)) & Z80 machine language on my TI-86 (since EOS is just too limited for some things, like generating TV signals through the link port (though the lack of a clock crystal adversely affects that)).

I think this that this question is a good idea, but I consider as a midle level language, and C is my favorite language.

Same here, C is the first programming language I learned (aside from TI-BASIC) and I've loved it ever since.

And although I don't consider it low level in the realm of calcs, I do consider it a relatively low level language for modern PCs. Heck, most languages don't even have pointers.

Great survey by the way.

I agree about C, it's what I use for all my PC programming and I consider it a low-level language in that context (especially since you can put bits of assembly in the middle of your code to optimize the parts that have to run really fast), and it would be a serious pain to write entire games in x86 assembly (which would also make them completely non-portable). For calcs, though, C is too high-level for me and I use Z80 asm.

C++ IS BETTER!

I'm glad you think that. For me I like BlitzBasic. It lets you do a lot more game programming with less knowledge; perfect for me!

I have to admit I have only ever programmed in C++ as far as software goes...

I just ment C++ is better than C; it can do everything C can and more...

nothing aginst other languages -- C is just out of date...

*nods*

I agree. :)

C isn't outdated, even though it can't do everything C++ can. Using C++ where you need its extra features is great, but there are still a lot of programs (especially system-level stuff) that just don't need to use classes and whatever. In cases like that, C works fine. Now if you want to see a language that's out of date, look at QBASIC. ;-)

Yeah, it's when you get into system programming that you really come to respect C. It was created for coding the UNIX kernel, and is still used today on the Linux kernel, where it continues to excel. When I teach people to program, I start them with C, not because its the easiest, but because it encourages good programming habits and has influenced countless other languages.

You shouldn't introduce people to a middle language its better for starting with VB or other objects language and then going to increase difficulty at this people will get more languages and start coding in a way that i call mixed language...

The problem with VB is that it is very Microsoft- and Windows-centric, which is a problem because 1) not everybody uses Windows, and 2) only Microsoft can make fully-compatible compiler software for VB (because it's a proprietary language which uses hidden features of the OS).

A good language is Java, which is object-oriented. The language proper is fairly nice, but Sun screwed up parts of it and some of the implementation of the toolchain. Also, the Java virtual machine is pretty bloated (kind of like Emacs).

Another good language is Python. It's also object-oriented, and it's good for beginners and experienced programmers alike, so a newbie won't "grow out" of it like they would with VB, for example.

My thoughts exactly. You also can't do a whole lot in VB , even though it's fun to drag around buttons and stuff on forms. Even file I/O is sort of a pain.

Yeah, the Java interpreter is pretty bad. I remember trying to write a Breakout game in Java, and it was hard to just get it to move the ball around at a decent speed while redrawing each frame (not even a full redraw, just erasing each object that had moved).

Another nice thing about Python is all the extensions, which means you can interface it to just about anything - networking code, sprite-drawing routines, the GNOME libs, anything someone's written bindings for. The speed seems decent too, I've seen some pretty complex games written in Python that run great.

Right, if you're writing a kernel or something like that there's no point in using C++, since you should be keeping it as simple and fast as possible, not using classes and other things which can bring in bloat if you're not careful. Just goes to show how outdated C *isn't*...

I once saw a serious project to do an OS in QBASIC :), & I still occasionally use it to prototype graphics programs (since SDL can be a bit annoying at times).

C can do everyting that C++ can doo just C++ makes it easier for people to program

and that's why it's out of date

Well you can say that for just about *any* language. If you wanted, you could even use classes in assembly, it just would be really painful. I don't see why C is supposedly outdated, though, since there are plenty of programs where you don't need or even don't want to use the extra features of C++.

For example, I'm writing (not completely accurate, since 0.9 is in the upload queue here and 90% of the code is finished) a Z80 asm IDE for Linux entirely in C, which uses someone else's assembler which is written entirely in C, and an app signer which is also written entirely in C. Writing it all in C was very easy, and I didn't even want to use any of C++'s extra features, they wouldn't have made it easier.

Blitz Basic for the Win!
I also like C and TI-89 BASIC.

i love c i created many awesome c programs such as 'Coloco File Editor'

Oops... Someone must've logged into my account....I didn't write that. By the way, Coloco File Editor is not an admirable piece of work; it is of about Word Pad quality.

Hmmm...time to change your password?