Re: advice for the undergrad (OL)

[dinosaur@gilvary.net]

don ohmes wrote:
> Phew! Having dabbled for a few hours in Visual Basic, I am relieved to hear it is not as easy as Keesy indicates. Although Bill could make it MUCH easier to self-teach, imo.

For some people, it might be easy, just as there are those who can pick 
up human languages more easily than others can. C++ is just so 
notoriously difficult that I had to reply.

> If you have a moment, what one language would you recommend?
>
> Don

For a career in paleontology? I would defer to Mr. Keesey (or anyone 
with more knowledge than I have of computation in modern paleontology 
work) on that. My response in general to "which language to learn?" is 
"what do you want to do with it?"

It does seem just a bit odd to me that a programming language would fill 
a "language" requirement for an academic career in life sciences. I 
followed the thread with interest when the discussion centered on the 
relative utility of Spanish, Chinese, etc. I don't personally understand 
why knowing PHP or Ruby would be of great help in following the progress 
of the field, nor why it would no longer be as important to follow the 
field if one can program a computer as it was before the proliferation 
of inexpensive computing power.

 Thanks,

 Joe

> --- On Sat, 7/5/08, dinosaur@gilvary.net <dinosaur@gilvary.net> wrote:
>
> > From: dinosaur@gilvary.net <dinosaur@gilvary.net>
> > Subject: Re: advice for the undergrad
> > To: "DML List" <dinosaur@usc.edu>
> > Date: Saturday, July 5, 2008, 4:13 PM
> > T. Michael Keesey wrote:
> > > From: "Sarah Werning"
> > <swerning@gmail.com>
> > > > Many programs also accept computer programming
> > languages as second
> > > > languages
> > > Really?? That's kind of odd, since programming
> > languages are much
> > > easier to gain fluency in. Well ... you have to learn
> > one first, and
> > > then the rest are pretty easy. If you know
> > ActionScript, for example,
> > > then you basically know JavaScript (they are derived
> > from the same
> > > standard), can fairly easily learn Java, C, C++, C#,
> > PHP, etc. and
> >
> > After doing software development these past twenty years,
> > I'd like to 
> > meet someone who can fairly easily learn C++. :)
> >
> > Learning the rudiments of any language, human or machine,
> > might take 
> > only a few months. Acquiring fluency (or in machine
> > languages, 
> > proficiency) is completely another matter. I can say
> > "spacibo" or ask 
> > for "dva piva" after listening to a CD, but
> > I'm not going to appreciate 
> > Pushkin for some time yet. The hypothetical Java programmer
> > might 
> > understand a looping construct, but that's a long way
> > from being able to 
> > design and implement a non-trivial application.
> >
> > > it's not too much of a stretch to learn Perl,
> > Python, Ruby, BASIC,
> > > etc. Some elements appear in almost every programming
> > language, like
> > > "if" blocks, "for" and
> > "while" loops, mathematical operators,
> > > functions, etc.
> > >
> > > Anyway, it takes at most a year or so to learn a
> > computer language
> > > (and usually just a month or two), while human
> > languages can take
> > > anywhere from a couple of years to a decade. Seems odd
> > to equate them.