switching from turing to c++

[Velocity]

okay everyone, as of today i will no longer be working on turing and will permanetly be learning more of and doing C++.

But for self peace of mind, which is more universal or more job applicable, more open, more challenging to learn C++ or Java.

Please vote below and let me know.

[Insectoid]

Java will make you cry.
C++ will make you doubt your sanity.

I recommend moving to C, which is very similar to Turing (from a style standpoint anyway). C naturally leads into C++, and is compatible with it, so you can mix C/C++ in order to very quickly learn C++ after learning C (and both languages are very important anyway).

So, neither. Learn C.

[crossley7]

I went from Turing to C++ and unless you want to only use the bare bones of C++ for a while (basically the features that are also in C) I would recommend picking up another language in between. The learning curve is extremely steep for picking up C++ and it took me almost a year to get comfortable with a relatively broad range of features (I still don't know much of it) and bout 9 months until I did anything that incorporated graphics libraries at all.

[Alex C.]

...this could be useful

[crossley7]

I forgot to include this in my other post, but based on my understanding, Java is far more portable in terms of computer to computer and can be used on webpages while C++ can't. Meanwhile, I can't say for sure, but I believe that C++ is used a bit more widely than Java for major applications.

Now my personal preference of the 2 is C++ just because of the simplicity of being able to easily make small short programs similar to how it is done in Turing with very little additional lines for things such as class declarations. I also prefer the shorter names for functions that just require a name and return value. I believe it is mostly just my experience but Java seems to need a bunch of additional lines of code that seem pointless. (Do NOT take my word for that though as I have not used Java enough to pass fair judgement even for beginners)

[Alex C.]

how hard is it to make a language anyways... :thinking:

[DemonWasp]

That depends: a real language, or a toy language?

A toy language (such as Befunge) is easy enough to implement, provided it's designed right.

A real language is an involved matter, usually requiring a team of dozens or hundreds of people, most of them with at least a Masters of Computer Science. There's a surprising amount of difficulty in what seems like a simple task. Even parsing a language someone else has already invented is pretty involved, and isn't usually even discussed until the second year of a Bachelor's of Computer Science.

[Alex C.]

...befunge looks pretty useless
ah well, 12 more years to go!!!

[Velocity]

okay thank you for the help, im sticking to C++

[[Gandalf]]

C++ is less applicable in the job market, and will make you cry at night (no really, at least while you're working with it). On the other hand, it might give you some good insight into why the designers of languages like Java or Ruby made the decisions they did.

[mirhagk]

C++ is also the basis for a lot of modern languages. Basically people saw it, and saw the problems, and attempted to fix them with a new language. Java was created to have simpler syntax, C# was created to utilize modern computer resources, and get rid of compiler inconsistencies, and objective-c. Well objective-c is what some people think qualifies as a language that's better than C++.

[btiffin]

Old guy raving;

If you lean toward the C and/or C++ path, check out ROOT/CINT by CERN. A C++ interpreter, built on a framework designed to count particles (and analyze them while doing so).

Anyone learning C++ can now explore in a console, and write scripts. Compile them later. I'll attest to its flexibility. See http://www.opencobol.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=1165&forum=1#forumpost5910. Try and gloss over the COBOL in that post if need be, the point is Masaharu Goto has written a powerful C and C++ learning tool while keeping scientists happy.

Cheers

[copthesaint]

Gandalf @ Sun Jan 22, 2012 wrote:

C++ will make you cry at night (no really, at least while you're working with it).

Java makes me cry at night, java is so unreliable, at my coop, we have 3 java programs that they use, and all of them need seperate version of java because they wont work on any other version :S lol. And dont even get me started about online reasources, if you find something online, and its outdated, it is likely that it wont work. I was a fan of java until I actually spent the time to work with it. Lol

[DemonWasp]

copthesaint @ Tue Jan 24, 2012 7:28 am wrote:

Gandalf @ Sun Jan 22, 2012 wrote:

C++ will make you cry at night (no really, at least while you're working with it).

Java makes me cry at night, java is so unreliable, at my coop, we have 3 java programs that they use, and all of them need seperate version of java because they wont work on any other version :S lol. And dont even get me started about online reasources, if you find something online, and its outdated, it is likely that it wont work. I was a fan of java until I actually spent the time to work with it. Lol

Then those applications were written in different eras. Your complaint is like noting that the 16-bit program from 1998 doesn't work so well on Windows 7 anymore, so you have to run it under Windows 95. If there hasn't been an update, that's on the publisher's head, not Java.

Also, I'm not sure what you're on about with "online resources"; I've usually only had problems with very old applets, and that's usually because half of their required resources return an HTTP 404 now.

Nothing you have mentioned is Java's fault.

[mirhagk]

It's not java's fault, but it's the inherit problem with an evolving language. Very few people actually update their java, which makes it a security problem.

Breaking changes too often could be Java's fault, but more likely it's the fact that one of the developers didn't update their java for years and years, so from one program to the next 10 years of programming passed.