Which programming platform is best overall

[robsuttonjr]

I am really in a daze trying to keep myself focused on one programming language. I am faced with the problem of creating an application available to Mac's and PC's. Visual Basic does not seem to be a portable as say writing a web application. I just want to settle on one solid programming platform that can be used universally. I don't want to have to learn a new language each time the environment the app is used in changes or the layout and feel of such an app. Now I am perplexed by .NET vs the Sun suite of programming tools. Anyone have an opinion on what is the best programming platform that would allow creation of applications transparent to the OS/computer accessing programs developed?

 

[lck092580]

If this is how you feel then i recommend that you seriously reconsider your choice of persuing this. The programming field is now filled with competition and if you're not willing to adjust to new platforms then you probably won't make it.

I find joy into learning new languages.. C++ was easy for me since i've spent a year with java. I'm teaching myself vb scripts and it seems easy too.

Here's a quote from one of my professors:

It is my belief that concentrating on the general ideas and the the Big Picture without worrying about details, will produce an individual who may be computer-literate but certainly not a productive computer professional. At the other extreme, an individual who masters the intricate details of a particular environment without being able to abstract, will be obsolete as soon as that environment becomes obsolete (which happens quickly in the computing field). A blend of the two approaches is essential for confronting today's ever-changing state of this field which is nothing short of Evolution in Action with an Adapt or Die paradigm. Luckily, while technological details are changing rapidly and in a revolutionary manner, abstract concepts are evolving slowly and incrementally. Hence by understanding how today's details fit in the general abstract scheme, we should be able to easily adapt and quickly comprehend tomorrow's technologies.

 

[pipk]

#1 You make learning a language sound like a real hassle. I agree with #2. One of the great thing about computer languages is that fundamentally they are all very similar, you use the same logical processes and constructs so once you have one language under your belt, it is much easier to take another one on board and so on.

Sticking with one platform and never broadening your horizons is a good way to make yourself open to being in trouble should anything happen to the platform you are using, whether the plug gets pulled or just if companies move away onto other ones.

If portability is what you are after then you can do a lot worse than Java. I am not sure what is going on with the whole M$ thing these days and whether C# and J# are taking off I don't know (I am sure they arevery popular, but I am not aware of their cross platform portability) - Microsoft knows that Java is a great platform, thats why they want to stifle it, it is a great threat to their industry market share. But Java has evolved to a point now when it is extremely applicable across a whole range of personal and business applications and indeed has a whole load more available libraries/APIs than C++ has ever had.

It is good to have a strong core language, but I would never recommend that you concentrate solely on Java, don't put all your eggs in one basket and you will have a much better appreciation of the IT world in general - and it will make you a better programmer.

Good Luck

 

[grokker]

If you want to center on a universal client delivery platform, consider making your application thin-client browser based

A page is a page, wether its served up by .net or java or php or Perl or whatever. If your initial deployment is to Windows and Mac, there is nothing stopping linux mozilla users from instant acccess to your application.

Your main design decision is: what level of client sophistication do you want to support? If you want to support the bare-minimum, than your application will be a 'classic' server-side app with all the GUI limitations and state-management klugeyness that entails.

If you want to stretch the newer client capabilities in DOM scripting, you will need to expend additional effort in cross-browser scripting, but the payoff in application capability will be enormous. With IE 5+ or the latest mozilla, you can just about create ANY application functionality was once only possible with traditional GUI tools such as VB, PB, Delphi, etc.

You can even create fully state aware thin clients that communicate with the server through scripted SOAP calls.-