What programming language?

Hi everyone. I've been a programmer for a few years, as a hobby. I mostly do PERL, and I'm pretty good with it. I'm not too good with OOP. I've learned some C++ in school. I learned some C++ out of school. I am proficient with C++, even though I use my book when programming with it. Also, anything I've needed to do in C++, I can do in Perl twice as fast, so I don't have alot of practice with it.

So my question is: What language should I learn? I want one that is robust enough to do low-level programming (IE parallel port), and still have easy to use GUI. I heard VB is good, but I've also heard it's like selling your sould to bill gates. :-/

Any thoughts?

Awesome VB replacement: Delphi. No need to use MS products :)
And yes, you can do parallel port programming, and ASM code if you want. Also a great interface IMO :D

Delphi is basically object pascal :)

What I don't like about it: for every delphi example, there are like 20x VB examples :(

Personally, I would say stick with C++. Sounds like you've already got your foot in the door, and it will complement your PERL knowledge nicely (as their problem domains don't overlap all that much). C/C++ is in extremely widespread use, so even if you don't consider it your 'language of choice' it is a good one to know, and it will handle any low-level task you ever want to do with it.

That said, for GUIs it's only as good as the library you use (and most are pretty clunky). .NET (managed C++) does it pretty well (for Windows, of course), but then you're back to selling your soul to gates ;).

That's my $0.02 anyway. I'm sure others will differ.

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Originally Posted by mushin

That said, for GUIs it's only as good as the library you use (and most are pretty clunky). .NET (managed C++) does it pretty well (for Windows, of course), but then you're back to selling your soul to gates ;).

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Please stay awy from .NET!!! :chase:
Its slow :(

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Originally Posted by 0l33l

Please stay awy from .NET!!! :chase:
Its slow :(

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I find loading in the debugger to be inexplicably slow, but otherwise I wouldn't say it's particularly slow. I believe there are some objective benchmarks you could check out. I'm hardly a fan of Microsoft, but they did alot of things right in .NET (except for the stupid name...) They don't employ a huge pile of top language gurus for nothing.

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Originally Posted by mushin

I find loading in the debugger to be inexplicably slow, but otherwise I wouldn't say it's particularly slow. I believe there are some objective benchmarks you could check out. I'm hardly a fan of Microsoft, but they did alot of things right in .NET (except for the stupid name...) They don't employ a huge pile of top language gurus for nothing.

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That, and you can always run ngen on your .NET executable. Good thing v2.0 and 64-bit support will probably be out by the time I set up my carputer :yum:

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Originally Posted by mushin

I find loading in the debugger to be inexplicably slow, but otherwise I wouldn't say it's particularly slow. I believe there are some objective benchmarks you could check out. I'm hardly a fan of Microsoft, but they did alot of things right in .NET (except for the stupid name...) They don't employ a huge pile of top language gurus for nothing.

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Look at Centrafuse. Even after rewriting all the skin code with win32 API, people are still compaining that its slow!

You can port Delphi application to linux using Kylix :)

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Originally Posted by 0l33l

Look at Centrafuse. Even after rewriting all the skin code with win32 API, people are still compaining that its slow!

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Let me guess, it's because 90% of carputers are underpowered? ;)

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Originally Posted by 0l33l

You can port Delphi application to linux using Kylix

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...and increase your user base by a whole lot of two linux carputer users out there :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by lastberserker

Let me guess, it's because 90% of carputers are underpowered? ;)

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Exactly why I'm not building a VIA machine :) But really, the language is slow, just download a copy of CF for yourself. Even VB is faster :)

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...and increase your user base by a whole lot of two linux carputer users out there :rolleyes:

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Hey, some people use linux :lol:

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Originally Posted by 0l33l

Exactly why I'm not building a VIA machine :) But really, the language is slow, just download a copy of CF for yourself. Even VB is faster :)

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Oh, I will. Now that I have my setup running on a desk (wow, those MiniATX boards are tiny!), I'm going to try all popular software (and some hardware as well) to see what I want to keep :yum:

Still, CF being slow doesn't mean .NET is slow - I saw a few nice C#/.NET applications that run like champs. And I'd rather through more CPU/memory than my spare time at apps I code ;)