L3DT Users' Community

Ah, Joel delivers again. My apologies to any Java programmers out there:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html

A personal highlight:

Joel wrote:Now, I freely admit that programming with pointers is not needed in 90% of the code written today, and in fact, it's downright dangerous in production code. OK. That's fine. And functional programming is just not used much in practice. Agreed.

Whoa, L3DT is entirely made out of pointers, and pointers to pointers. At one point there is a pointer to a pointer to a pointer that gets passed by reference. No wonder debugging L3DT 2.3c was so hard.

(actually, the debugging was hard because I occasionally start up a delayed-execution thread to free a block of memory and then go ahead and use it, hoping that the code executes before the thread starts. Why? Coz it's naughty and fun and tricky to crack.)

He goes on:

Joel wrote:But it's still important for some of the most exciting programming jobs. Without pointers, for example, you'd never be able to work on the Linux kernel. You can't understand a line of code in Linux, or, indeed, any operating system, without really understanding pointers.

Ah, that's what I want to hear. Pointers and recursion; your friends.

Cheers,
Aaron.

Oh my- I shouldn't really be in this thread cuz I ain't no programmer but I did get into it for a couple of years on and off. It's a very cool endevour. I taught myself C and C++ programming with Builder and Microsoft VC++.
I absolutely see the value in pointers. I was shit scared when I first came to learn them, as a programming friend of mine had spoken of 'the dreaded pointers'. OK, having everything managed for you is great but it limits you. It's like having a automatic gearbox in a car. C is like driving a formula one car (I'm told)- dangerous but damned powerful once you get the hang of it. I really wanted to get the hang of Win32 coding- I just loved being able to actually put up my own dialog boxes on the screen made to measure. Even had one in Tolkien's Elvish script
I agree. Recursion has to be the coolest thing of all in programming. I read a book on programming theory and it was talking about recursion. I didn't know what the hell is was talking about. In theory I got it (ravel/unravel), but I just didn't see how those 6 lines of code could actually work on a computer. It was only later that I learned about the stack. Yes, imagine trying to understand recursion implementations when you don't even know that the stack exists!
Nah, Java was not for me. I mean they're actually teaching people to program Game code in Java: university courses, etc. It's OK if you're progrmming for mobile games, but it's not quick enough. In my book, if it can't be used to program cutting edge game engines, then I wouldn't learn it. hat's a very narrow point of view, but that's just me. It does have the advantage of being pretty similar to C++ though so you could migrate to C++ once you've learned Java.
The problem is with computers is they suck you in. I find that when I really get into an app I always end up wanting to program it- scripting, etc. But I'm not really cut out for it.
I've not programmed for a couple of years now. I admire anyone that can do it well.

I chose C/C++ because that is my choice when I have a choice. Howerver, at work I am suppose to stay away from C++ and code everything in C# .NET. I sneak in some C++ code when nobody is looking through