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posted by martyb on Friday November 04 2016, @07:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the choose-logically dept.

We've had this question asked before I believe but it does no harm in asking it again and again. After all, opinions change as does the software ecosystem. Quincy Larson of FreeCodeCamp.com asked this question via Medium: What programming language should you learn first? He thinks JavaScript is the way to go and his arguments are cogent and well thought out. However, I am somewhat hesitant to suggest someone learn to code in JavaScript first. My first programming language (in 1981!) was Fortran on a Control Data mainframe. The interactive environment the OS provided was pretty simple and the language provided few opportunities to hang yourself. JavaScript, by comparison, while it may not have those evil pointers of C/C++, it offers functional features and plenty of rope to hang oneself.

So, opinions please.


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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 04 2016, @10:10PM

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Friday November 04 2016, @10:10PM (#422647) Homepage Journal

    You mean like the site you just posted to?

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday November 05 2016, @12:53AM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday November 05 2016, @12:53AM (#422696)

    If Soylent requires 1M lines of Perl to do what it does, the programmers should be given an obfuscation award.

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    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 05 2016, @02:22AM

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday November 05 2016, @02:22AM (#422718) Homepage Journal

      Nah, only a little over 175K. Not counting external perl modules.

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      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday November 05 2016, @02:30AM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday November 05 2016, @02:30AM (#422721)

        That's teamwork, and libraries for you. I've developed a couple of "big things" solo, and I can usually get more or less any "big thing" done in 100KLOC (C or C++). Put more people on the team and things tend to inflate. Bring in big libraries that need tweaking and things inflate fast (as you start adding the forked library code to your maintenance base.)

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        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 05 2016, @09:30AM

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday November 05 2016, @09:30AM (#422783) Homepage Journal

          Mind you, there's thousands of lines of dead code in there that we simply do not use. There might still be some D2 code in there as well as all of the AJAX code, for instance.

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          • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Saturday November 05 2016, @11:02AM

            by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 05 2016, @11:02AM (#422797)

            Yeah, but as ever the trouble is you don't know exactly _which_ thousands of lines are unused so it all just has to stay there with (possibly) no function except to scare and confuse the uninitiated...

            • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 05 2016, @12:33PM

              by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday November 05 2016, @12:33PM (#422811) Homepage Journal

              Oh the bits we do use do that just fine. Which I don't quite understand. Sure, it takes a while to really get a handle on the overall functionality but most of the fixing we do only requires minor changes to one or two files, so you don't need to understand the whole thing to get some useful work done.

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          • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday November 05 2016, @01:17PM

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday November 05 2016, @01:17PM (#422819)

            That's why my solo projects topped out around 100KLOC, around 5 or 6 years in we'd do a major refactoring (language change once, reboot on new hardware and systems the other), and rebuild without the cruft. Even along the way I endeavor to get the dead code out - it causes more trouble than benefit when you're sifting through it years after the last time it was active.

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