Programming Languages

[DarkHorseRising]

R is very heavily used by our genetics scientists at work for producing statistical analysis of their results. Many of the graphs they create from the R tools actually end up in their published papers. I know zero about how R works internally though, I've only had to install new library packages for users when they need them.

What do you use it for application wise?

Absolutely anything to do with statistics... it's ridiculously powerful, can perform the most obscure tests, works well with any sort of data... I hated everything about it until I understood its power. Now I just grovel :P

 

[cyberjosh]

I know markup languages like HTML and CSS extremely well, and a tad of Javascript and PHP, but I haven't coded in ages, and withoout practising programming the knowledge gets buried. I enjoyed programming, but life has been turning out differently that it was two years ago. Not much time or need left for website coding.

Out of interest, anyone here still use Perl, or is it really outdated nowdays? :D

Nope, Perl is still alive and kicking. Very prevalent in Biotechnology environments actually. There are entire O'Rielly books about how to write bioinformatics programs in Perl. The main reason being that there is a lot of text manipulation and file parsing that needs to be done (reading the ATGC genome sequences from files and transforming it into other formats or performing statistical analysis on it).

And actually it was Perl that taught me how to use regular expressions. And I don't think I would even understand a lot of Linux/Unix commands if it weren't for the similar syntax of Perl. It has served me well.

I've had to deal with a little PHP, mostly with CMSes like Drupal and Joomla. And I really, really wish I understood CSS better. I could use it for my own website. I'm almost better off hiring someone else to do it though. I can never seem to figure it out, it's always trial and error with me.

 

[stovebolts]

Wow Josh, I didn't know you were into all that! Awesome!

Ambrose,
You'll find that most of your errors will be syntax errors. Not a biggie because you can always find the syntax errors.

What's important is that you learn the tools in each library and how to use them. Of course, the better you are at flow charting, the easier it is to program because if you can flow chart and you know your libraries, then all you have to do is place the tools you'll need in the appropriate place in the flow chart and it all comes together. If your programming logic doesn't pan out, it's because your flow chart wasn't right.

Like I said earlier, I'd have a hard time writing a very basic program in either C or C++ because I haven't written code in either for well over 10 years.

 

[Ambrose]

Wow Josh, I didn't know you were into all that! Awesome!

Ambrose,
You'll find that most of your errors will be syntax errors. Not a biggie because you can always find the syntax errors.

What's important is that you learn the tools in each library and how to use them. Of course, the better you are at flow charting, the easier it is to program because if you can flow chart and you know your libraries, then all you have to do is place the tools you'll need in the appropriate place in the flow chart and it all comes together. If your programming logic doesn't pan out, it's because your flow chart wasn't right.

Like I said earlier, I'd have a hard time writing a very basic program in either C or C++ because I haven't written code in either for well over 10 years.

Yeah just writing my first simple python scripts I found that most of my errors were syntax errors. Pretty common thing to happen. To be honest I like both python and c++. Both of them are pretty powerful languages. One is just a little slower to run than the other. C++ is great for long scripts/programs.

 

[yoamocuy]

Huh, I had never heard of VHDL until you mentioned it here. I looked it up and sounds quite low-level. I suppose the closest I've gotten to low-level programming (other than an assembly class I took) is some Ladder Logic Programming on an Allen Bradley PLC in an Pre-engineering class I took. It was quite fun to tinker with. My uncle's company uses PLCs in almost all the machines they build so I've seen them in action for large machines as well. What do you use VHDL for in your work?

VHDL is used for CPLD's and FPGA's which are both used heavily in digital circuit design. Basically you use FPGA's or CPLD's if you can't find a microcontroller or microprocessor that has enough processing power to do what you need to do and you don't want to spend the time and/or money to develop an ASIC. I don't know if I'd consider VHDL a low level language like assembly. A lot of the syntax in VHDL is similar to C++ if you use behavioral coding versus architectural coding but one of the big differences is that you have to consider hardware limitations when coding. For example, last summer I was working on a circuit where part of it had to wait for a small pulse in one of its inputs, then it had to wait for a certain amount of time before sending one of its other outputs high. I used a wait for command to wait for the desired amount of time because it seemed logical and when I simulated it everything looked great. When I tried to compile the code it didn't work though because the circuit couldn't be realized with digital logic. I don't know if that made sense :/ Basically when you code something in VHDL the computer goes back and puts together a bunch of and gates, or gates, etc... to make the circuit function as you described it. If it can't be formed with those gates then it can't be formed at all.

 

[Nick]

Nope, Perl is still alive and kicking. Very prevalent in Biotechnology environments actually. There are entire O'Rielly books about how to write bioinformatics programs in Perl. The main reason being that there is a lot of text manipulation and file parsing that needs to be done (reading the ATGC genome sequences from files and transforming it into other formats or performing statistical analysis on it).

And actually it was Perl that taught me how to use regular expressions. And I don't think I would even understand a lot of Linux/Unix commands if it weren't for the similar syntax of Perl. It has served me well.

I've had to deal with a little PHP, mostly with CMSes like Drupal and Joomla. And I really, really wish I understood CSS better. I could use it for my own website. I'm almost better off hiring someone else to do it though. I can never seem to figure it out, it's always trial and error with me.

Nice! Never knew Perl was that big still. And I had no idea you were that into programming!

It's interesting about the CSS. I've always considered it to be somewhat basic, at least compared to other coding I see, but it's really the only styling code that's used on the web, so it's still important. Maybe the reason you have trouble is that the syntax is very different to Perl etc. Maybe the reason I love it is becasue I'm a pretty visual person.

Like when I write:

div#navcontainer ul li a,
div#navcontainer ul li a:link,
div#navcontainer ul li a:active,
div#navcontainer ul li a:hover, 
div#navcontainer ul li a:visited
{
display: inline-block;
width: 209px;
height: 39px;
background-image: url(nav.png);
text-decoration: none;
}

^that in CSS, it just makes sense to me. But when I'm faced with some of this forum's sourcecode in PHP, it takes me a lot longer to even begin to understand what it means, let alone code it myself, whereas that above CSS is part of the stylesheet for a website I freelanced for.

            {vb:raw template_hook.header_userinfo}
			<vb:comment><p>{vb:rawphrase last_visited_x_at_y, {vb:raw pmbox.lastvisitdate}, {vb:raw pmbox.lastvisittime}}</p></vb:comment>
		<vb:else />

 

[stovebolts]

^that in CSS, it just makes sense to me. But when I'm faced with some of this forum's sourcecode in PHP, it takes me a lot longer to even begin to understand what it means, let alone code it myself, whereas that above CSS is part of the stylesheet for a website I freelanced for.

PHP uses the same principal as CSS where your variable, functions etc are created on other forms (libraries). The hardest part of PHP is knowing which form carries the value for which variable and of course, you have global variables and local variables, so it can be a lot of fun finding where everything is.

What makes PHP so difficult, is they don't have one master sheet, like your CSS sheet where they define everything, so you have to go to the top of each php sheet and see the other files they are referencing. C and C++ do the same ie. include.h and whatever other libraries you want to reference.

 <vb:comment><p>{vb:rawphrase last_visited_x_at_y, {vb:raw pmbox.lastvisitdate}, {vb:raw pmbox.lastvisittime}}</p></vb:comment> 
        <vb:else />

 

[Ambrose]

PHP uses the same principal as CSS where your variable, functions etc are created on other forms (libraries). The hardest part of PHP is knowing which form carries the value for which variable and of course, you have global variables and local variables, so it can be a lot of fun finding where everything is.

What makes PHP so difficult, is they don't have one master sheet, like your CSS sheet where they define everything, so you have to go to the top of each php sheet and see the other files they are referencing. C and C++ do the same ie. include.h and whatever other libraries you want to reference.

 <vb:comment><p>{vb:rawphrase last_visited_x_at_y, {vb:raw pmbox.lastvisitdate}, {vb:raw pmbox.lastvisittime}}</p></vb:comment> 
        <vb:else />

Yeah I remembered C as soon as you mentioned the reference libraries feature.

 

[stovebolts]

Ambrose,

All programming languages flow somewhat the same. Some are just a bit more complex than others. I've spent hours and hours reverse engineering php to make a simple change so I share in Nick's frustration with php. Some parts of PHP is like a spiders web and it's easy to get lost.