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        riddles >> suggestions, help, and FAQ >> The best computer language
        
(Message started by: hiyathere on Sep 19^th, 2007, 11:42am)

Title: The best computer language
Post by hiyathere on Sep 19^th, 2007, 11:42am

I'm planning to major in computer sciences in college. However, I'm not sure which computing language is used the most in today's world. I would just like some tips on which languages to study.

Title: Re: The best computer language
Post by towr on Sep 19^th, 2007, 12:14pm

Most used in corporation is still COBOL. I don't recommend learning it.
Most used on the internet, might be any of Java, PHP, ASP.
Most used for (consumer) software, most likely (visual) C++
Most used in cognitive sciences, LISP/Scheme (US) and Prolog (Europe), if memory serves me right.

It really depends on what you want to do with it. However, learning algorithmic thinking is more important than the specific language. Four distinct flavour are imperative programming, object oriented programming, logical programming and functional programming.
I'd concentrate on the first two. And personally I'd recommend C/C++ (C is imperative, C++ object oriented; but you can use a mix).

You could also use PHP to make web-pages and web-applications; it makes it easier to share your creations with the world.

Title: Re: The best computer language
Post by Sir Col on Jun 8^th, 2008, 7:24am

If it's publicity in search engines you want, bbhit, then that's what you'll get...

http://www.drivers-software-download.org/ are spam monsters!

http://drivers-download-driver.com/ are a bunch of morons!

http://drivers-download-center.org/ cannot be trusted!

I guess "bbhit" stands for "bulletin board hit"; either that, or "brainless buffoon hijacks intelligent threads"

Title: Re: The best computer language
Post by Grimbal on Jun 9^th, 2008, 12:48am

I think that by linking to their pages you just improve their page rank. By correlating it to "spam monsters" you only achieve that people who search for "spam monsters" might find their site. That hardly harms them.

What he (it) did was to link their URLs with "drivers" and "download" so that when people search for these words, the search engines return these URLs.

Title: Re: The best computer language
Post by SMQ on Jun 9^th, 2008, 5:48am

Ah, but if I do this:

* removes bbhit's spam post above
We're left with just Sir Col's links. It may not hurt the spammers much, but it certainly doesn't help them. :)

on 06/08/08 at 07:24:53, Sir Col wrote:

I guess "bbhit" stands for "bulletin board hit"; either that, or "brainless buffoon hijacks intelligent threads"

Too bad they're not still called "bulletin board systems", eh? ;)

--SMQ

Title: Re: The best computer language
Post by 1337b4k4 on Sep 15^th, 2008, 5:59pm

general purpose scripting language like python and ruby are also excellent.
I especially recommend python.

Title: Re: The best computer language
Post by BenVitale on May 30^th, 2009, 12:29pm

PARI works fine, too. I use it in Number Theory.

The program PARI can perform some very large scale integer arithmetic.

I have a request:

which program is effective enough to deal with large-size integers (over 10,000 digits)?

I'm looking for a program that can perform gcd and a² mod(n).

Title: Re: The best computer language
Post by towr on May 30^th, 2009, 1:39pm

Matlab is probably quiet effective.
But you could do better programming something yourself, if that's all you need.

Title: Re: The best computer language
Post by BenVitale on Jun 1^st, 2009, 1:27pm

on 05/30/09 at 13:39:23, towr wrote:

Matlab is probably quiet effective.

I used it before...
I was introduced to a program called GMU, which needs to be used with PARI. It is a bit faster, but not that fast. I was looking for something that would blow me away. No such luck.

Quote:

But you could do better programming something yourself, if that's all you need.

I'm a bit lazy for that... I like doing math, not so much programming. Oops! I may have said the wrong thing. I get the impression that mods on this site enjoy programming very much so

Title: Re: The best computer language
Post by towr on Jun 1^st, 2009, 2:00pm

on 06/01/09 at 13:27:48, BenVitale wrote:

Well, such programs are always interpreted, so you're just hitting the limit of what's possible. To get faster you need to compile it. Some math programs can export code which you can compile, though. I think matlab can do that; but it's been a while since I've really used it.

Quote:

I'm a bit lazy for that... I like doing math, not so much programming. Oops! I may have said the wrong thing. I get the impression that mods on this site enjoy programming very much so

Perhaps, but that doesn't mean we insist others must like it, or that they pretend to. It's perfectly fine to say you don't like programming, and it will help us to respond more fruitfully to your posts.