Reading04

It is quite important the choice of programming language in software development and computer science. When reading this question, the first I thought I had was a Operating Systems project, we did the project in C and that was a not so good of a decision. The TA that graded our project said, “If I could give you points for audacity, I would.” Yeah, we felt that through the project. There could have been a different programming language that we could have used in order to make our lives a bit easier.

When thinking of how “programming languages are not just technology, but what programmers think in” I feel like the different languages that are used force you to think in different ways to get to a solution. Graham was saying you wouldn’t want to program in machine language or how you have to pick a language depending on what kind of program you are writing and this is definitely not what we did during the planning portions of our project. So, over all it is important to consider what programming language to use. I’m currently in Operating Systems and working on projects in C allow me to figure things out differently than I would if I was writing in C++. This distinction is really beneficial to learning various techniques. The class really makes you think in a different way.

I don’t think programming languages are ‘better’ than the other. I do think that people like some more than other based on their way of thinking. Just like its a different way to think in, each different programming language changes that way of thinking a bit from others. So it may feel like some programming languages are more powerful than others, but it’s probably that some can do things in a better than others, but that doesn’t make them more powerful just a different mindset because where one lacks the other may have that strength. It would probably be wonderful for one programming language to have it all, but unfortunately, that is not the case so using different programming languages depending on the project is the way to go about it.

Throughout the evolution of programming languages it seems like we always start with laziness. People would create, what is now something as seen as necessary, in order to make things easier for themselves. These are the ‘features’ that we still see in the various programming languages and would struggle ourselves without them. For example, Lisp was different with the nine things that Graham said in Revenge of the Nerds. A couple are garbage collection, recursion, or a function type. These are some that we take for granted at times while programming. These are features that we will continue to see as programming languages continue to develop.

x