What language should I learn next?

[isaiahk9]

Hey, I'm planning on teaching myself a new programming language this summer. I've learned Turing, Visual Basic, Java and Actionscript so far.
Any advice? I'm kinda drawn to C++ because of its power, and because it would be easy to interface with engines (eg. Unreal Engine). At the same time, I'd like a language that's fairly simple to develop applications for. I've heard that Python and Perl are great for fooling around with. And HTML/xHTML would be great for web design...

Do you have any personal favorites that you'd recommend?

[SNIPERDUDE]

I'm a huge fan of Python myself - absolutely wonderful language. I'd say it's a tossup between C++ and Python.

[DtY]

If you're thinking about c++, give objective c a look. It's a lot like c++, but has a different oop syntax, and all methods are dynamically bound, whereas c++ methods are statically bound unless explicitly told to dynamically bind (virtual functions).

As an added bonus, any c or c++ library will work in objective c (you need to use objective c++ for c++ libraries).

[edit] If you do decide to go with objective c, I would suggest using only open source libraries, mostly if you look for "how to do ____ in objective c", you will get an answer that will use Apple libraries.

[BigBear]

If you know java the leap to C++ is not a large one, I would think without learning it you could use engines and pick up the subtle difference in syntax

[isaiahk9]

Thanks everyone.

@SNIPERDUDE: Out of curiosity, what's Python like?

[SNIPERDUDE]

http://xkcd.com/353/
http://www.jonasjohn.de/snippets/python/python-syntax-examples.htm

Really the syntax and simplicity of it is beautiful, and yet powerful enough to get almost any job done. Also has quite an extensive library, with more you can download.

[isaiahk9]

@SNIPERDUDE: Haha, love the xkcd.

Well, I'm almost completely convinced. Python looks pretty great.

Hey, if you're not busy, could you answer any of these:
Is Python capable of integrating smoothly into web design?
Similarly, can a Python program run over a LAN or over the internet?
Is the GUI incredibly anti-user-friendly (like how some languages won't let you import bitmaps, or takes over 7 minutes to compile)?
Oh, and a little something I've always wanted to try is to plug in a USB-video game controller. Can Python interface with accessories?

Thanx

[Insectoid]

Python, as an interpreted language is not that great for web design other than for server-side scripts, because the user requires the interpreter to run the code. Likewise, it won't take 7 minutes to compile because you don't compile it.

It should have a NET module or something in order to access the web or LAN or whatnot.

I dunno too much about PyGame, but it should allow you to import most image types.

Assuming a library has been written for whatever game controller you intend to use, then you can interface with it. I dunno how you can do it without the library unless you make one yourself, and I have no clue how hard that is. You might be able to do it hackishly with just a USB library but that would be messy.

[isaiahk9]

Thanks Insectoid. That answers pretty much all my questions.

And I wouldn't mind trying to hackerishly hack my way into a usb controller.

[DtY]

To expand on what Insectoid said;

Python makes a pretty good server side script, and thanks to jython, you can use it for client side as well, as long as the end user has java installed.

Python comes with a sockets library, which is a standard way to communicate over TCP/IP, and also has more specific libraries for stuff like http and ftp (it even comes with an http server library).

Python does not have a standard graphics library, but tkinter comes with the Windows package making it pretty standard. It's purely for widgets though, and it's really ugly. There are other common widget libraries like a gtk binding, and wxPython (wkWidgets), which are both rather common graphics libraries in C.

There is also pygame, which is mostly an SDL binding, it's pretty much for games, you can draw stuff to the window, and get keyboard/mouse input, &c, but it doesn't have any widget tools, this is probably more the library you are looking for. SDL only has support for loading images from bmps and xmps, but with the SDL_Image, you can load images from nearly any standard image format. Pygame can be compiled with or without support for SDL_Image, but all the binaries they distribute do support it. So, you're not guaranteed to be able to load anything but bmp and xmp, but it's good enough to assume you can.

As for game controllers, pygame has a module for getting joystick input, so as long as it's a standard controller, it will work just fine.

[isaiahk9]

Thanks DtY for the added detail.

And when I was talking about game-controllers I mean like xbox-usb-controllers or guitar-hero-controllers. I'd be seriously impressed if pygame has a module for those, but I'll fiddle with other usb modules.

[chrisbrown]

isaiahk9 @ Wed Jun 02, 2010 6:52 pm wrote:

And when I was talking about game-controllers I mean like xbox-usb-controllers or guitar-hero-controllers. I'd be seriously impressed if pygame has a module for those, but I'll fiddle with other usb modules.

I did a few quick searches and it seems PyGame can handle joystick input, which is all those controllers are. There won't be any specialized 360 or GH libraries, but you should be able to use them without too much hassle.

[DtY]

isaiahk9 @ Wed Jun 02, 2010 6:52 pm wrote:

Thanks DtY for the added detail.

And when I was talking about game-controllers I mean like xbox-usb-controllers or guitar-hero-controllers. I'd be seriously impressed if pygame has a module for those, but I'll fiddle with other usb modules.

I'm not sure, but you can probably get some drivers to make these look like normal joysticks to the operating system, where they'd work with pygame