I wish to learn a programing language for systematical, (rather than entertaining) purposes.

What I don't want:

• To make games
• Extremely Complex Coding (ASM)
• Extremely Inefficient Coding (VB)

What I do want:

• Easy To Cross Platform (to some extent)
• Widely Supported Languages (to some extent)
• The program to be "Extract & Run" (i.e. no registry keys, basically coud be portable &c)

Can you help me out?

You look like you know what you want. I would suggest either C/C++ or Java. These are cross-platform languages and are very portable. If security is big, I'd go with Java. Let me know if you need more information.

Regards,

Ax

Hi Ax,

I am kind of gnawing on this question as well.
I know my way around php (at least I like to think so) I can read javascript just enough to use other peoples scripts and I have just started experimenting with VB.NET
It looks easy enough and the .Net makes it widely usable.
Is that a good choice or would you recommend switching to one of the Visual (C#, J#, C++) languages?

Hey Metallica,

Personally, I use VB.NET but that's mostly because I'm used to coding ASP pages in VBScript. I find it less-than-complex to do code conversions between VB.NET and C#. The nice thing is that you can use both in your applications (at least web apps).

If you have a Java or C background, J# and C# will come easier, while VB.NET comes easier with a VB background (obviously!). If you have NOTA, the choice is up to you, but you'll find that most .NET applications and examples online are coded in either VB.NET or C#.

Here's a good rundown of the VB.NET/C# differences:
VB.NET and C# Comparison

MS also has a White Paper on the topic:
"Differences Between Visual Basic .NET and Visual C# .NET" white paper is available

So do your research and see which one will work out best for you and what you are trying to accomplish.

Regards,

Ax

i would highly recommend C#, it is the 'forgiving' version of C++ (ie it will not let you compile something that will crash your system)

i'm using C# at the moment and it is quite an easy and logical language! in fact i would strongly recommend using any of the 'C' family (.NET) as they seem to be becoming more widely available in microsofts attempt to beat java (also if you purchase visual studio professional you get J# - java compiler in there anyway!)

just have a play and see which works for you!

ry

p.s. i don't see how anyone can call VB a "programming language"!

This post has been edited by Ryan_88: Nov 28 2007, 06:39 PM

Almost certainly because you don't know what VB.NET (the "evolution of Microsoft's Visual Basic") is...

You may be thinking of VBScript, which is a scripting language based on the Visual Basic programming language.

This post has been edited by stettybet0: Dec 3 2007, 02:30 PM

Any of the major imperative-style languages fit all your requirements. This is basically C and all its derivatives, C++ and Java being the most widely used. They are platform-independent, widely supported, and compile on any system with a compiler (though the machine code itself will not be portable).

However if you consider VB to be "inefficient", I don't know if this is really what you are looking for.

You might prefer a scripting language like Perl or Python or PHP. These tend to be simpler and cleaner to code, have large standard libraries, and are often designed for systems tasks. Code will be shorter and easier to read. They will still be platform-independent, widely supported, and portable. But obviously execution of a script requires the interpreter to be installed on the target machine, and tends to be around 10 times slower than native compiled code.

What do you intend to do with your language of choice?