Programming for linux.

[Dæmonite]

I'm interested in basically learning to code, however my experience is limited and all in windows. What languages do you guys suggest? What are some good tutorials for these languages with linux developement in mind?

Thanks for your time!

[solo]

Hi,

I'm currently studying Perl; a scripting language mostly, and finding it fairly easy so far (it's only been a couple of weeks). However, I'm finding that different minds learn things differently. Learning object oriented programming should be a good goal; and I've read that Java would be a good language for that (because of similarities with C/C++). OTOH, you may just want to jump right in with C, or C++.

Of course I have to mention O'Reilly books... Many of their books are online for your perusal, and this would be a good place to take a look, and see what language structures pique your interest. Different languages have different capabilities also, so it depends on what you'd like to accomplish with a given programming project.

[MandK_10]

There is a programming section of this BBS. You will find the answer to these and other questions there.

Just to give you a heads up though, C and C++ are what linux was writen in (for the most part), so support for C and C++ programming is built into every system. If you type in "c programming tutorials" into any search engine you will get enough good hits to keep you busy for months.

The other languages you will hear about include, but are not limited to this list that I found in the Programming languages mini How-to found here (http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Programming-Languages.html) :
Perl
Beginner: Yes - OOP: Yes
Examples: Scripting, sysadmin, www
Comments: Powerful for handling text and strings

Python
Beginner: Yes - OOP: Yes
Examples: Scripting, application scripting, www
Comments:

TCL
Beginner: Yes - OOP: No
Examples: Scripting, sysadmin, applications
Comments:

PHP
Beginner: Yes - OOP: Yes
Examples: Www
Comments: Popular for web databases

Java
Beginner: Yes - OOP: Yes
Examples: Cross-platform applications, www
Comments: Spreading to new areas, eg. e-commerce infrastructure

Lisp
Beginner: Yes - OOP: Functional
Examples: Emacs modes (for Elisp), AI
Comments: Variants Elisp, Clisp and Scheme

Fortran
Beginner: No - OOP: No
Examples: Mathematical (scientific) applications
Comments: Variants f77 and f90/95

C
Beginner: No - OOP: No
Examples: System programming, applications
Comments:

C++
Beginner: No - OOP: Yes
Examples: Applications
Comments:

Have fun.

[ 20 August 2001: Message edited by: MandK_10 ]

[Strike]

I'd start out with Python (http://www.python.org). The implementation in Linux is really easy to use, and the language is really clean and fairly simple while still being very powerful. It's also capable of being put to very good object-oriented use (though it doesn't have to be if you don't like OO).

For examples of code - www.codeexamples.org (http://www.codeexamples.org) (maintained by LNO members TheLinuxDuck and kmj)

[Strike]

That list is kind of blah, in my opinion.

OO in Perl is an after-thought, so it's not as well done as in languages that did pure OO from the start (like Python and Java).

The examples for each are very limiting and not very representative of the ranges of any programming language on there.

I don't think anyone uses tcl as a main programming language anymore.

I would NOT say that LISP is for beginners. Sure it is a very simplistic language, but pure functional programming doesn't have many analogs in everyday life (not as much as OO and procedural programming do anyway) and as such it's not a good way to begin programming (in my opinion), though it does have some very neat stuff to it that every programmer should learn.

I don't know of any new projects being done in FORTRAN, and the only reason people learn it now is to maintain old stuff, as far as I know.

And that's all I have to say.