Which programming language among c, java or c++ should I learn ?
I would start with C. It is relatively simple, and both Java and C++ borrow a lot of C's syntax, so the effort you put into C will pay off for learning the others as well. Once you have a good handle on C, I'd move on to C#, Java, or C++. C++ is the most complex, Java is probably the easiest to learn and the most popular. You could start with Java, but I think a good foundation in C will help you understand a lot of what goes on behind the scenes in Java (e.g., memory management). Folks who start with a high-level OO language often are led to program as if memory and CPU were infinite, due to being too insulated from the nitty-gritty details of what really has to happen to execute their program. @M
Programming Language design tradeoffs between Java and C in terms of efficiency and safety (reliability)?
Can you describe (and possibly give concrete examples) of some design tradeoffs between efficiency and safety (reliability) between those two languages? Maybe give some concrete implementation examples (describing it, not the code).. I am an intermediate Java user. I implemented Rijndael 256 algol- recently for my school project. I have some C experience, but it is pretty limited. Although Java is real convenient, but I am thinking of getting more real with C.. I know that C is more closer to the machine level, and ..(maybe on how primitively C arrays are implemented and how freely and/or explicitly primitive you can point and dereference..) But what makes C more unsafe say.. rather than the programmers clumsiness.. what hacks can u do in C and not in Java say... what can u achieve in C that you cannot in Java ? explicit access to memory location ? if so for what .. other than screwing your memory or maybe crashing your system, is there any good use for that ? I have not that much C coding experience to really grasp more clearly than what I have now So can anybody give or clarify with some good points or examples ? Thanks for your contribution.
I recommend my brother should learn a programming language or two - but what should he learn?
If he doesn't already know any programming languages, he'd be best of starting with a language that has an easy syntax. Of the languages you listed, python has, by far, the easiest syntax for beginners to pick up. As for marketability, that actually doesn't matter that much; until he learns how to structure programs (which is largely language independent), he'll be useless as a professional programmer. Once he understands programming logic and structure, then it shouldn't be too difficult to pick up new languages; at that point Java, PHP, Java Script, C++, and C# are probably the most marketable of those listed, though Python is up and coming. Perl is on the decline, since it is very difficult to maintain. By the way; XML is not a programming language. It is used for data manipulation (like storage and/or communication).
Which programing language(s) should I learn to fulfill my (math) major requirements?
Well, a simple question with a not so simple answer. The problem, in my eyes, lies with the fact that you only have two semesters worth of programming. C++ would benefit from quite a bit more time imo, as there's a lot more to know to use the language effectively. Personally I'd go with 2 semesters of python but that's not an option. Python is easier to learn as you don't need to worry about a lot of things that you must learn in C++. You can write scripts quite a bit quicker in Python, and it has a lot of good libraries for numerical computation (where the actual algos are implemented in fortran and C) such as numpy and scipy which are widely used in the scientific community. For the long-term I would personally recommend learning Python and C/C++, and then learn CUDA as numerical analysis and parallel computing on a graphic(s) card is pure win. From the choices you have though, C++ and Python. Both are useful, and both you should look at obtaining competency in eventually. Edit: According to your additional details, I'd take C++ in the Summer and then another C++ course. With 2 semesters of C++ under you belt, picking up Python should be relatively easy and C++ will be far more useful should you decide at some point in the future to further your knowledge of it. Java, is not overly useful for someone in the Sciences as its main draw is platform independence.
Which language is better between Python and Java (I am in high school)?
Python is easier to pick up, but it not ‘strongly typed’ and ‘compiled’ like Java. This means that Java solves a lot of syntax errors with the compiler before the program is run, but also you have to tell the computer more to make the program compute what you want and you have to do more work BEFORE the program is run; Python leaves this all until WHEN the program is run. This basically means that there’s a trade off between the two and what happens when you run the program.Errors are generated at runtime in Python (also in Java) but syntactic errors (typos, mispaced characters) are caught before hand in Java using the compiler. You can run a Python program with SOME types of ‘syntax errors’ as long as the program doesn’t run that part of the code; this is why unit tests are so prevalent with this and other ’scripting’ languages. Because they don’t strictly have a compiler stage (or at least not the same as Java), unit tests are required to get ‘code coverage’ of all of the program, before the program is run during tests, not just at run time, and essentially take the place of a compilation stage for catching the errors that are normally aught by a compiler...Basically this means Python is easier to get a program up and running, but Java creates more stable programs with less work.I would reccomend starting with Python, due to it’s ‘pseudocode’ like syntax, to make things easier to start. Once you’ve learned a bit about programming, move on to Java and see what the difference is.
Is it any good if you learn programming at underage?
I'm 16yo. I have great knowledge of Java (syntax, standard libraries, Swing, LWJGL, bytecode) and fairly good knowledge of C# (syntax and standard libraries.). I also know C++'s basic syntax but that's all of it. I like computing and programming (especialy in Java) but I wonder, will this knowledge ever be of use to me? Or did I just learn this for a joke? What would I be able to do with this? Thanks in advance. :)