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What are you programming in?

Catwell

What are you programming in these days? For me it's Assembly and some C/C++. But it seems that it's becoming time to move past all the old tried and true languages for the new. Now you have to know C#.net, Java, and whatever syntax you need for whatever new processor you have to work with. For example, you can't be a straight HTML programmer anymore, you need to know Flash, SQL scripting, CSS, Shockwave, HTML5, and whatever the flavour of the month is, to a high degree of proficiency. It's a lot to know. So, how do you choose what to learn? A few people I knew several years ago were learning Python and Fortran from some reason or other, boasting it's where Engineers have to migrate. Neither of them used those languages. Now they are studying Java and Objective C. To avoid this cycle of learn then learn another, what should we all program in?

 

Cabe

  • 0

    When I was at university we had to learn one or two languages a year. 8051 assembler, C, C++, BASIC, assembler, Visual BASIC and several more I can't remember

     

    I don't think there will be one tool for all jobs ever. If there is, and with the trend to multicore MCUs it could be something like F# recently launched by Microsoft, either that or some kind of graphical programming

  • 0

    at uni i was taught assembly, c/c++ and java, since then i only use assembly (pic/avr) and c for embedded systems, c++ would be nice sometimes but this still has too much overhead for micros....

     

    i also program verilog for fpga's, still a language i guess...

  • 0 in reply to mokum
    Lee, have you ever used the automated code generation in Matlab or Rhapsody/any other UML tool? I just wondered how those compared to hand grafting
  • 0

    First answer the question "What are you programming for?"

     

    R

  • 0 in reply to awinning

    no, i havent used them, i would like to try out matlab for code generation as i have used matlab for just about everything else..... it has never been something that i have needed to date.

     

    as for UML i only cover the basics at uni, i think i have only used it once since.... as part of a small scale C++ project that interfaced a PC with an AVR data logger

     

    i played around with the auto gen in MPLAB when starting out with the PIC32 (my primary project at the moment is PIC32MX795 based data aquistion unit), it wasnt to bad but preferred to hand code the perpherals myself, (PLIB.H is also good but far from perfect....lol).

    cheers

  • 0

    When I was at university we had to learn one or two languages a year. 8051 assembler, C, C++, BASIC, assembler, Visual BASIC and several more I can't remember since then i only use assembly for pic and sometimes c  but this (C) still has too much overhead for micros....using assembly you know exactly what you want to do. You are closer to the MCUs

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    Languages are a tool.  Saying that you prefer one over the other is like

    saying that because Agilent make the best Spectrum Analysers

    (which they may?) means they make all the best test instruments.

     

    If you understand the principals of what you want some hardware/firmware

    do, then the process of manipulating the syntax of a language to achieve

    that end is of secondary importance.

     

    Learning how to drive one's text editor more efficiently is probably going to

    give you better productivity gain than swapping from one high level language to

    another.

     

    I mainly use C and occasionly some Assembler.  The latter for low level

    interrupt handlers and occasionly on some 8/16 bit micros to squeeze a little

    more performance from some CPU intensive tasks.

     

    I switched from Fortran IV to C in 1980.  Most engineers used to use

    Fortran as it had the most extensive and portable libraries.  C had a

    better library set, so most switched in the late 70s, and early 80s.

     

    Also, with pointers, C had an in-built mechanism to efficiently deal with

    memory-mapped registers, and, being first written for PDP computers, it ran

    easily on DEC computers.  This allowed more code to be written in C as

    against Assembler.

     

    DEC computers were the dominant computers in engineering and computer

    science departments globally in the late 70s, and through the 80s.

     

    I have used Pascal, Delphi, VB, VC++, G++, shell scripts, awk.

     

    I am playing around with an application at the moment, where I am porting

    a shell script to run with tk/tcl.  If my firm's clients didn't use Windows, I'd

    write the app to run as a GUI app under Linux.

     

    Ie it is just a question of using the tool best suited to the task, and then

    manipulating that tool to do what I want.

     

    David leComte

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    I program mainly in C but then I use mainly embedded 8 bit processors.  I use assembler when I need to for speed, and for hardware specific sequences where I want to ensure things are performed in an exact sequence and not optimised.  On the PC I've used a bit of C++, Visual basic, and also visual basic in EXCEL which I've used to open a com port in excel and import data directly into cells to debug an algorithm (think poor persons matlab.)  We learned Modula II in Uni, and never used it since.

     

    Some language decisions are based fashion. What will happen to flash based websites now that the all powerfull apple doesn't support it on it's ipad?  Some people will move away from flash entirely because they want their website to be ipad compatable and want the same code to run across several platforms.  I've been looking at using some flash on a web interface to get the fancy graphics and animation running that marketing and sales wants because at the moment the web configuration is too technical looking?  Now flash is out because people might want to use it on the ipad, oh and can they have an app, but without increasing the budget...

     

    At the end of the day it's what gets the job done, and also falling in line what the rest of the company are using at the time.

    Dan.

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    For micros, I prefer C: low overhead, lots of libs and compilers to choose from. Furthermore C is

    quite portable, if you put a little effort in it.

    For PC, Ada is my choice.