Programming language discussion

I’m a big fan of SQL/PSQL/TSQL, etc. it can be amazingly quick when you pack a lot into views, SPs and UDFs. Unfortunately, it can be pretty obtuse as well as you found to your cost I guess. I’m pretty sweet on RDF and SPARQL ATM, but again it’s obtuse stuff.

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If you use TSQL a lot have a look at RedGate SQLPrompt , an amazing time saver

Also many yards of rope with which to shoot yourself in the foot.

Not so much currently, but will take a look all the same thanks :slight_smile:

Or simply blow the entire leg off :wink: I still love the language.

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Mixing metaphors….sigh.

I reserve the right to mix whichever metaphors I see fit, however if coding in C++ dont mix your semaphores.

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I don’t think you guys have an accurate picture of the current usage of various computer languages:

I think the Tiobe one is probably more accurate, because the Stack Overflow one seems too heavily weighted to Web developers. Both show that C and C++ are still widely used.

https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

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It is not only been used, but also the most popular and most active, next I think are python, and java.
However, the old C programmers tend to use C++ as C because they don’t get the OO concepts.

Interesting, but that’s pretty much what I’d have expected. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve seen a similar survey but they don’t change that much. My main comment, PERL still has a 0.79% higher share than it deserves :stuck_out_tongue:

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Not only do they not get it, some have a phobia of using overloaded operators or exceptions. Those are very powerful tools if used correctly.

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Reaches up and pulls down the old Camel Book

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That is true. I’ve seen a lot of it over the years. However, it is not something you could get away with these days at most C++ shops in the age of code reviews.

(For any non-techies here, a code review is when your code changes need to be reviewed and approved by your coworkers. It is now standard industry practice, but did not exist as a formal process with tooling when I started 35+ years ago.)

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You can still get away if your job is to maintain legacy software. All you need to do is to fix bugs.
Our organization tend to delegate such people to do QA, OPS, or maintain legacy products or promote them to management or fire them (such as cruel world) if they are not adaptable to the ever-changing technology.

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FWIW while there’s been discussion of languages it’s often the other aspects of development that are missing in graduate/inexperienced programmers. These include:

  • creating large changesets that are difficult to review;
  • checking in code that breaks the build, wherever I’ve worked I’ve tried to introduce a fine for this and the pot gets spent on the Christmas do, always a way to win friends and influence :wink: ;
  • methods/functions that are too long/overcomplex; and
  • a tendency to think that compiler warnings are merely advisory and can be ignored, the code works who cares about unchecked casts, or similar.

That’s the C++ feature I miss most in languages that don’t support it.

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Ah, I just got a teary lump of nostalgia in my throat.

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Where I work, we are kind of on the cutting edge in build and release management. It is almost impossible to make a change that breaks the build. Every change set has to build before it is committed. Library changes automatically test build all dependencies. Theoretically there could be a race, but the tools are really good and I’ve never seen it happen.

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Just wanted to give you guys a sense for what software firms usually ask by viewing the following sample design questions:

Interesting article that feels pretty relevant here

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I know others might disagree but these modern languages are the future to replace C & C++ for a large number of lower level new projects particularly in the Open Source community (I am not saying all, and they will not replace legacy code).

You only have to see the uptake of the likes of Go & Rust (among others) for low level developments for writing things like router protocols to sit on top of the Linux kernel to see how powerful they are. Feedback from the developers are that they have been up to 5x to 10x faster to develop (some of this might be BS of course).
I used to listen to Floss Weakly and it was a surprise how quickly developers were looking at these for newer projects and even rewriting the code in young startup projects to get the benefits of the faster development cycle.

Bookmarked this one for a read this evening thanks Killdozer :+1:

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Management has been trying to replace programmers for years; at least 40 years by my recollections…

In most cases these ‘high level’ languages are incapable of doing any meaningful computer science work beyond simple business applications. Case in point, I’m guessing that the compilers for ‘high level’ languages are written in either assembler or C++.

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