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Blogs are often thought about as “internet magazines”, which is somewhat applicable. However, one of the nice things about blogs is that you can be less formal and more personal. Here are a few personal musings, in a sloppily written and poorly structured fashion, on  programming languages.

The idea for this post came to me when I was having a discussion with my brother. He loves C, but hates C++. I love C++, but hate C. Well, I don’t hate C – but given the choice, I select C++ over C any day. I just can’t get around as efficiently in C. I like C++ because that was the first real programming language that I learned. He learned Java as his first language, but he likes C because that was the first language that he learned that directly interacts with the hardware. (Java runs in a virtual machine, and is thus, detached from the hardware). I’m more of a hardware guy than your traditional Comp-Sci dude, so I can appreciate that. However, I find C++ to be my personal balance between hardware level control and abstraction.

Speaking of one’s first programming language, I have also noticed that higher education does not start their introductory programming classes in the same language. My school started me off in C++, while many other schools start people off in Java. I feel that this goes a long way for how you think of programming.

For example, I am only now breaking out of my naive mentality that dictates “oh, if it doesn’t require compiling, it’s not a real programming language”. If you started off in Java, or another highly abstracted language, you very well might not have this mentality. I would argue that languages that require compiling vs. languages that don’t are very different breeds. (I once worked on a project where we had to physically burn the program into the chip!) However, I no longer suffer from the affliction that forces me to think of non-compiled languages as inferior.

I think the language that broke me of this mentality, more than any other, is SQL. As of late, I’ve been developing a love for databases – the same as what was once my phobia. They’re extremely powerful, and enable you to do a lot of really cool things. Now, one usually doesn’t compile SQL, but it allows the programmer to use loops and functions and variables and if-thens just like any compiled language. Additionally, when I write mondo SQL queries, I try to take advantages of keys and indexes in order to reduce strain on the hardware. My recent exploration into the world of PHP has also helped.

With the future moving more towards cloud computing anyone, like my former self, who feels that non-compiled languages aren’t real languages will be handicapped.

My new attitude is that if it doesn’t have conditional paths of execution (if -then) it’s not a real programming language. Let’s see how long that lasts!

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