About programing, a general question

[DB]

On 12/17/2010 01:10 PM, users-request at lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
> Subject:
> Re: About programing, a general question
> From:
> Parshwa Murdia <b330bkn at gmail.com>
> Date:
> Fri, 17 Dec 2010 17:40:11 +0530
>
> To:
> Community support for Fedora users <users at lists.fedoraproject.org>
>
>
> On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 4:24 PM, <J.Witvliet at mindef.nl
> <mailto:J.Witvliet at mindef.nl>> wrote:
>
>     To avoid religious wars....
>     The "best" programming language, is the one you feel most
>     comfortable with, obviously.
> >
>
> You say correctly, 'The "best" programming language, is the one you feel
> most comfortable with, obviously.' As I am new and starting just, so I
> guess (with all the suggestions I get and from searching too) that
> either Python or C language would be a good start. Pascal is now less
> used. However, I agree with you that programing principles remain the
> same for any language, indeed.
>
>
> --
>
> Regards,
> Parshwa Murdia
>
>
Hi Parshwa,

I've enjoyed reading these many suggestions...  Something I had the good 
fortune (?) to learn about in the 1970s was "Structured Programming", 
particularly the "Methode Wrnier".  (Yeah, I was working in Luxembourg & 
we got sent to Paris to learn M. Warnier's work...)  The one thing 
Warnier did NOT teach was a specific language!  We learnt how to 
structure & analyse:

What the client wants to see as output;
What we have available as input and;
what are the "conversion processes" we are going to need to make.

Particularly important is to recognise what is Always there (ie present 
(1) time), may be Present or Absent (ie is present (0,1) time) and 
something which is present One or More times (ie (n) times).

As you can imagine, if we need a repetitive structure (present (n) 
times) in the output, we must have a repetitive structure in the input & 
must construct a repetitive structure in the processes.  Sounds all so 
gloriously simple!

I can (or could!) write code in Fortran, Pascal, C, Series 32000 
Assembler (anyone remember that????) & a couple of other 
machine-oriented codes.  Which one do I use to encode my solution?  The 
one which is either easiest for me to code OR the one which has the best 
set of operators for the problem.

As you (and many of your co-respondents say,) take a simple approach & 
see what you are comfortable with.  Kernighan & Richie is a good place 
to start,  Warnier is an interesting place to understand structure (if 
you can still find copies!!)

Hope it helps

Dave