Metanet Forums

This is just a reference of which Metanet folks are good with which programming languages and that you might ask for help assuming you had a project or a class of some sort, etc.

Only entries so far are the ones I know off the top of my head. Post here where you prefer to be placed.

AS3

• Geti

Bash

• sidke
• taaveti

Basic

• GamingWolf

C/C++

• Slappy
• smartalco
• Tsukatu
• GamingWolf
• taaveti
• scythe (not C++)

C#

Euphoria

• taaveti

Haskell

J

Java

• Tanner
• GamingWolf
• taaveti

Javascript

• sephr
• smartalco
• sidke
• taaveti

Lisp

Lua

• Geti
• scythe

Perl

• taaveti

PHP

• incluye
• smartalco
• sidke

Python

• Tsukatu
• sidke
• GamingWolf
• taaveti

Ruby

• incluye

VB

• GamingWolf

Java

C++, as well as X/HTML and CSS, of course.

PHP, javascript/jquery, a good amount of C++, and getting in to some python

Put me down for C/C++ (but you should feel bad about combining the two into one category) and Python.

js, php, and python
also bash that is fun stuff

it's now fully understood that java will never be interesting to learn unless tanner teaches it

edit
while not programming languages people are putting them anyways: html, css

Basic, Visual Basic, a bit of C, C++, Java, Python, X/HTML, CSS

I like to think that any amount of OOP will allow me to go into other like-minded languages.. if I bother.

I'm slowly getting into Perl, CGI, and PHP for server-side reasons. (Stuff in that ilk is going to be difficult for me except the fundamentals until I do some more studying into networking itself)

*is ready for intellectual backfire*

I'm interested in learning lisp but I probably won't get anywhere with that for a while. If anyone here knows it, advice would be welcome.

GamingWolf wrote:I'm slowly getting into Perl, CGI, and PHP for server-side reasons. (Stuff in that ilk is going to be difficult for me except the fundamentals until I do some more studying into networking itself)

PHP/Perl has jack-all to do with networking. PHP should be really easy to learn with the other languages you listed. Perl is just crazy. This is my rough experience with it and reading other people's Perl code.

c/c++ (plus lex/yacc if you want to consider them separately), python, some perl, various shell scripts (bash, csh, etc.), euphoria, some java, some javascript, some knowledge of a few assembly languages (I can probably answer basic questions about hc11, ppc, x86, mips, and maybe others, but I've never used any of them professionally), and just general knowledge questions.
[edit]Oh, and some SQL and pl/pgsql, although I'm probably not the go-to guy for difficult database questions.[/edit]

smartalco wrote:

GamingWolf wrote:I'm slowly getting into Perl, CGI, and PHP for server-side reasons. (Stuff in that ilk is going to be difficult for me except the fundamentals until I do some more studying into networking itself)

PHP/Perl has jack-all to do with networking. PHP should be really easy to learn with the other languages you listed. Perl is just crazy. This is my rough experience with it and reading other people's Perl code.

As long as I can make stuff compile on the server's end that will be fine. I guess the networking code in itself is separate from the actual language that's needed to make it work effectively.

Scrivener wrote:I'm interested in learning lisp but I probably won't get anywhere with that for a while. If anyone here knows it, advice would be welcome.

I've been trying to do this for the better part of a year, and so far I really haven't made much practical headway.
I started off reading Practical Common Lisp, following this extremely helpful book, and even reading part of the way into the 1,000+ page ANSI specification for Common Lisp, but I'm having problems finding a good way of gradually building up my practical coding experience with it.
I started off primarily with GNU Common Lisp (CLISP) and Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL), which people on various IRC channels have told me are just fine to start off with.

One recommendation (more like mandate, really) that I keep running into is to learn emacs and love it, because apparently the Superior Lisp Interaction Mode for Emacs (SLIME) will read your mind, pick up your kids from school, and give you blowjobs under the table. I've resisted because I'm on the vi side of the "vi vs emacs" debate, and I'm sure that's causing me some complications.

The only real practice I've had with it are attempts at Project Euler problems. I'm starting to wish it was used heavily in my classes, because I still haven't reached the point where I can appreciate Lispiness.

taaveti wrote:[edit]Oh, and some SQL and pl/pgsql, although I'm probably not the go-to guy for difficult database questions.[/edit]

Yeah, I only listed my "feel free to come to me with obscure questions" languages.
Following the example set by some of you, I'm starting to think I should have included Mandarin Chinese on the grounds that I've seen what it looks like before.

One of my programming classes at KU was entirely in Scheme (well, technically it was in a dialect of Scheme called PLT Scheme which has since turned in to Racket), which is just a Lisp derivative.

I could definitely see where that style of programming could be useful. Functional/procedural programming has its place, but I think it has the same place as array processors (one of my current classes is computer architecture) in that they are useful for some things, but unless your particular needs happen to be suited to that style, you're much better off just sticking to a more general language.

GamingWolf wrote:As long as I can make stuff compile on the server's end that will be fine.

PHP is fairly easy to jump in to, so you shouldn't have any problems getting stuff to work. One tip: use the documentation on php.net. It is a ridiculously well documented language with masses upon masses of predefined functions for working with strings, arrays, DB connections, etc.

I've come to love PHP purely because of the array implementation, which are fully dynamic, weakly-typed, and fully keyed. Switching between PHP at my job and C++ in my classes last year was annoying as shit because I could implement some awesome array related manipulations in PHP in about 10 lines, where-as C++ would be about 50 lines and a couple more headaches.

smartalco wrote:PHP at my job and C++ in my classes

Goodness me, it's the two worst programming languages ever invented. If you had said you use Basic in personal projects, I would have cried tears of pity for you. Tears.

Ahahaha.

What do you have against PHP? Granted, I would never want to use it on anything very large scale (how Facebook and Wikipedia run off of it at a decent rate I have no idea), but for throwing together small-scale web apps, it is quite handy. (Pulling rows out of a SQL DB and throwing them in to a table for viewing? Like 5 lines.)

As for C++, well, I've noticed the trend of colleges not liking to change their course requirements very fast.

And fuck Basic, we used that shit in high school, never again.

Lua and Actionscript 3 (or really anything based on ECMAScript) are the only ones I'd be confident in giving solid advice on, though in a pinch I suppose PHP, perl and bash too. I'm rusty as anything at C++, and I've only just started re-learning C (for like the third time).
I code mostly for game-creation related reasons, thus all the high-level stuff.

smartalco wrote:Perl is just crazy. This is my rough experience with it and reading other people's Perl code.

I often hear people deride Perl for being incomprehensible when it's not the language's fault: it's the programmer. Exhibit 1: Gitweb is just one 7000 line perl script that fantastically well formatted and commented and totally readable.

Where is AlliedEnvy on this list?

oeuvre wrote:Where is AlliedEnvy on this list?

/everywhere/

smartalco wrote:What do you have against PHP? Granted, I would never want to use it on anything very large scale (how Facebook and Wikipedia run off of it at a decent rate I have no idea), but for throwing together small-scale web apps, it is quite handy. (Pulling rows out of a SQL DB and throwing them in to a table for viewing? Like 5 lines.)

For practical purposes, I approve of it, just because it does make it quick-and-easy to throw together a webapp, and because of its speed.

From a purely semantic and practice standpoint, the language is a fucking mess. Why are all variables prefixed with $? (Rhetorical question, I know about the ${} thing.) Why is every single goddamn function stuck in the global namespace? Why are there so many naming inconsistencies in all those functions? Why does === exist? Why are used but unset constants automatically transformed into strings? Why must they babysit the programmer in so many ways?

And why are there VARIABLE VARIABLES

hairscapades wrote:

smartalco wrote:Perl is just crazy. This is my rough experience with it and reading other people's Perl code.

I often hear people deride Perl for being incomprehensible when it's not the language's fault: it's the programmer. Exhibit 1: Gitweb is just one 7000 line perl script that fantastically well formatted and commented and totally readable.

This is an atypical and even discouraged coding style among Perl programmers.
Perl is for smartasses who like the idea that someone has to really know what they're doing to understand their code, and think they're clever enough to read their own code weeks to months afterwards. These people will only end up outsmarting themselves. I know, because I was one such smartass (and in many ways still am).

incluye wrote:Why does === exist?

So you can check for identical types as well as values? O_o

incluye wrote:Why are all variables prefixed with $? (Rhetorical question, I know about the ${} thing.)

Finger workout.

Why is every single goddamn function stuck in the global namespace?

Because the lazy side of me approves of it and I love it.

Why are there so many naming inconsistencies in all those functions?

Does it matter? If the language didn't have such got-damn-fantastic documentation on php.net I might care, but I don't.

Why does === exist?

This is actually useful and entirely makes sense, I'm not sure what you are complaining about.

Why are used but unset constants automatically transformed into strings? Why must they babysit the programmer in so many ways?

1) I have no idea
2) I have no idea what you are complaining about here

And why are there VARIABLE VARIABLES

Because it is the most awesome totally useless feature I have ever seen. (Anecdote: when I first started trying to learn C++ in like 9th grade (horrible idea), I tried doing something like this only to find out it was impossible, I have since realized what I was trying to do is completely absurd)

I'm sure will all be okay with the 'best' language until someone decides another one is deemed better and then we'll all feel bad for not using it. All the languages I know where taught to me. (Basic was taught to me at a young age but I found it kinda pointless for what I wanted to do) Anyway it's the differing syntax among languages that bugs me to no end. I just want to be like okay... I know how this works but doing something similar in another language causes something entirely different and stupid crap like that. That said.. I can just translate anyway if one language is deemed more efficient for the job. (But that would require a heavy knowledge of how compilers themselves work.)

GamingWolf wrote:I'm sure will all be okay with the 'best' language until someone decides another one is deemed better and then we'll all feel bad for not using it. All the languages I know where taught to me. (Basic was taught to me at a young age but I found it kinda pointless for what I wanted to do) Anyway it's the differing syntax among languages that bugs me to no end. I just want to be like okay... I know how this works but doing something similar in another language causes something entirely different and stupid crap like that. That said.. I can just translate anyway if one language is deemed more efficient for the job. (But that would require a heavy knowledge of how compilers themselves work.)

See, that's the thing, apparently Lisp is supposed to be the "correct" way to do things from an academic computer science perspective. While I was learning more about it, I kept running into this sentiment that Lisp is extremely elegant, very well scalable, and utterly lacking in the kinds of stupid problems that would make imperative languages like C bend over backwards to handle. A lot of the computing world has this battle between quick & dirty solutions that work 80% of the time and "correct" solutions that end up losing out horribly because they take longer to develop, and C vs Lisp is exactly (apparently) one such battle.
But I just don't have enough experience with Lisp to verify any of this, so right now I just don't see it. Take this as hearsay for the time being.