RE: Jumpstart a programming ability

["Glenn Maxey" <glenn -dot- maxey -at- voyanttech -dot- com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Yvette Kirby Waters [mailto:yvetteki -at- noa -dot- nintendo -dot- com]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 4:50 PM
> To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com; Glenn Maxey
> Subject: RE: Jumpstart a programming ability
> 
> 
> Time to chime in from the C/C++ camp! :-)
> 
> I am not knocking Perl or JavaScript or any of the other 
> scripting languages.

It's okay to knock JavaScript, VisualBasic, and Java, because we all
know which software company -- still found to be an abusive monopoly by
the appeals court -- had their hand in deliberately polluting it... Just
don't go knocking my Perl. :)

FWIW, Perl is based on C and uses many of the exact same constructs. It
deviates from C in its $ variables and system variables (like $_).

If you know Perl, you know enough C/C++/Java to be dangerous.

You also have something that you can use directly on documents of
technical publication. You can use it not just for content manipulation,
but for management, system management, content generation, etc.

I mean, Perl is useful and doesn't require elaborate development
environments (MS Developer Studio) and religious studying of
compiler/linker options to run.

I don't claim to be the best programmer. What I like best about Perl is
that I can do things iteratively quickly. IOW, I put a skeleton
structure in place with debug print statements, run it, add things, run
it, refine it, run it ... over and over until I get it right. I code
on-the-fly and by-the-seat-of-my-pants. 

I know that there are better ways to code, but I don't have the luxury
of the development life-cycles to write requirements, specifications,
code, and test. I just need to get it done.

> For technical writers, these are 
> probably more widely used, and therefore useful for the 
> majority of end user and especially web-based apps.
> 
> HOWEVER <grin>.... Knowledge of a low-level programming 
> language like C/C++ gives you, as a writer, a solid grounding 
> in programming languages in general.  It's like seeing the 
> structure of the house the clapboard and paint.  I have found 
> that the coursework I did in C/C++ has made learning 
> subsequent languages like Java that much easier.

I can't really argue against any of the other points except that I can
program in C/C++ and other languages. I know how much of them I really
use. Perl is just the C-like language that allows me to get the job
done.

If you have the opportunity to go deeper into the big languages, by all
means do so. 80% of what you learn in one language can be carried over
into the others (with the exception of LISP -- a concept in and of
itself).
 

> >>> "Glenn Maxey" <glenn -dot- maxey -at- voyanttech -dot- com> 07/03/01 02:37PM >>>
> Instead, my recommendation is Perl.
> 
> You aren't limited to having it only work inside of a flaky browser; 
> you aren't limited to the security restrictions of the browser.
> You aren't limited to HTML (javascript). 
> You aren't limited to Microsoft applications (VisualBasic).
> 
> Perl is an interpretted language, meaning I don't have to
> save/compile/link/run; I just save/run. 
> Perl can be plugged into your Web-server so that you run Perl scripts 
> instead of CGI scripts. 

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