Technology Any developers in here?

[Groove]

Any coders or developers in here? I used to do some of that in my old career and recently got back into it, actually in some projects that are benefitting my residency program and am having a great time re-learning some things. I've started learning Python and Objective-C. I was primarily first off looking for a solid cross platform scripting language and began with perl. The problem I have with perl is code readability and maintainability of projects after I'm gone. Python syntax was much more easier to follow and read and actually reminds me of a lot of the vbscripts that I used to write. Any other tech nerds that do a bit of application development?

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[movax]

Any other tech nerds that do a bit of application development?

Yo!

Python is a great scripting language to know. I prefer PHP for my web development, though I recently began some .NET work for a startup using Windows Azure.

Python is nice and easy to learn, and meets the criteria for cross-platform; has a healthy amount of system-calls too, so you can do some basic management like tasks too. Just need to make sure target system has the interpreter and you are good to go.

One disadvantage though (going off memory here, please correct me if I am wrong) is that Python doesn't care much about backwards compatibility; even going from 2.5 to 2.6 can break stuff.

 

[aSagacious]

You might find this article of interest: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/06/microsoft-developers-windows-8/

It points out the direction that Windows is moving in terms of language preference as well as those of most portable devices, etc. Most generally, Windows is apparently making a push towards applications designed in HTML5 and Javascript. However, for home use I love using Python (quite user-friendly).

 

[aSagacious]

One disadvantage though (going off memory here, please correct me if I am wrong) is that Python doesn't care much about backwards compatibility; even going from 2.5 to 2.6 can break stuff.

This is true. Especially if one is using the add-on modules (MatPlotLib, etc).

 

[movax]

You might find this article of interest: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/06/microsoft-developers-windows-8/

Yeah, that's pretty horrifying. I've got ATL, MFC, WTL, COM, .NET, etc already around for me to access WINAPI and do what I please. They need to keep **** like HTMLx and CSS on the web where it belongs. No doubt this will allow people to develop quick, web-like apps for Win8 (which is the idea, I'm sure), but I don't foresee most real developers abandoning their existing platforms just to hop on a bandwagon.

Windows 8 is the first mainstream desktop variant of Windows that will run on two different architectures in a long time (x86/64 + ARM). "Apps" that are HTMLx/CSS won't care about the underlying architecture as they'll be rendered by the operating system, but I would have to put out both ARM and x86 builds of my software, potentially.

C#/.NET is great for RAD on Windows, though I tend to stick to un-managed code and use C++ in conjunction with MFC or similar, or sometimes just straight to winapi.

 

[Groove]

Good deal, I tend to have more use for scripting languages for day to day stuff and file processing, "duct tape" projects, etc.. and was previously using a ton of vbscript, when in hindsight I wish I had been using Perl but our environment was very .NET and vbscript/jscript heavy. I was enjoying learning Perl but damn.. the syntax makes things more efficient but I can't even read my own code several weeks later so I have no idea how someone else would be able to maintain a robust Perl project, so that's what got me interested in Python which I'm digging very much at the moment. I wasn't a heavy coder in my past life, more of a network engineer but did database, interface, web app, system processing apps, etc.. Used VB .NET and vbscript more than anything (with a little bit of java) but that's just because it was easy to learn. I'm enjoying objective-C, and am mainly learning that for iPad/iPhone development. One thing I like about Python so far is the robust community support and modules/extensions available. I've even been looking into Django as a web framework.

It's been a long time since I've coded much of anything so I'm going to master Python and "re" remember some of my OOP and basic programming concepts before I move on to other stuff but it's nice to finally sit down years later and get back into software development to some degree. Good to know I'm not the only one on here that has a tech geek side.

I read that article also...Ugh. I can remember going from VB6 go .NET and would hate to be a .NET developer with years invested in the framework and to know that was all going to be wasted for future Windows development. I don't quite understand what they're doing. Then again, I'm using Mac OSX these days and only bootcamp into Windows on occasion...usually to play the occasional game more than anything else. In fact, the recent release of "Duke Nukem Forever" is the only reason I booted back into that partition, but how could I not? Damn, those were some fun college days with Duke3d.

 

[movax]

Good deal, I tend to have more use for scripting languages for day to day stuff and file processing, "duct tape" projects, etc...

Definitely...good to know one swiss-army-knife style language in addition to a traditional language like C. Lots of flexibility. I have Python scriptss that run pre/post-build to support building my C applications.

I don't quite understand what they're doing. Then again, I'm using Mac OSX these days and only bootcamp into Windows on occasion...usually to play the occasional game more than anything else. In fact, the recent release of "Duke Nukem Forever" is the only reason I booted back into that partition, but how could I not? Damn, those were some fun college days with Duke3d.

.NET was a big strategic initiative on their part, and while it got off to a rocky start with 1.1/2.0/2.5 coming out right after one another, I think it's done a pretty good job for the Windows platform. I think it's pretty good for your average "business" application; you've still got plain C++ + windows.h if you want to skip past the CLR.

 

[1UP]

You have to admit, going to HTML5/JScript makes sense in the context of a unified development environment. It's architecture agnostic, which they will need going forward with ARM. Write something in HTML5/JS and you could run it on Windows, Mac, 'Droid, etc... on any arch. with no problem. Making it so there is no need to port between platforms will be good developers in the end because they can cast the net as wide as they want with one release with no additional effort.

However, it is a kick in the ass for all the developers that have migrated to .NET, Silverlight, etc... If they are going to make this change they will have to stick to it no matter what as this will use up any goodwill MS still had in the developer community.

 

[movax]

You have to admit, going to HTML5/JScript makes sense in the context of a unified development environment. It's architecture agnostic, which they will need going forward with ARM. Write something in HTML5/JS and you could run it on Windows, Mac, 'Droid, etc... on any arch. with no problem. Making it so there is no need to port between platforms will be good developers in the end because they can cast the net as wide as they want with one release with no additional effort.

It's a web language though. While there is a trend towards webapps (and an accompanying subtrend for deploying these webapps as stand-alones you can download), the language was designed to be rendered in and displayed in a sandbox, namely a browser. Real applications are still going to be written in a systems language where you have the permissions and API(s) to access Windows and assorted functionality.

So simple little apps that would be equally at home on a website somewhere may go for this, but most "real" software is just going to ignore this and keep writing in .NET / etc. (in Visual Studio, it's just a few clicks to tell the compiler what architecture's CLR you're building towards, i.e. x86 or x86-64. Hopefully it won't be too hard for ARM as well)

 

[bubbachuck]

... benefitting my residency program ...

i do write code, but it's more for research. i respect people who actually write practical apps because it's not something i know how to do . care to share what types of apps you're writing to benefit your program? that sounds intriguing.

 

[movax]

i do write code, but it's more for research. i respect people who actually write practical apps because it's not something i know how to do . care to share what types of apps you're writing to benefit your program? that sounds intriguing.

You'd be surprised how similar supposedly "professional" and "practical" code is to "spaghetti, writing this with Google open on another monitor, I hope this isn't critical" code. There are millions of lines of poorly written, "enterprisey" business logic making the world go round...