absolute beginner

laurence997 · 22-05-2009 11:58pm

Sorry if this is butting in but I am also wondering what programming language to learn. I'm not really interested in designing websites and would rather learn how to control hardware(motors etc.) from a computer.
thanks.

Anima · 23-05-2009 12:57am

C would be the best language for that.

nobodythere · 23-05-2009 3:36am

laurence997 wrote: »

Sorry if this is butting in but I am also wondering what programming language to learn. I'm not really interested in designing websites and would rather learn how to control hardware(motors etc.) from a computer.
thanks.

C would be good for this, it allows low-level hardware control through dos or unix.

If you want to do it on microchips, I suggest you get a PIC programmer and some PIC chips (16F84 is the most used one) and try to program them to do a few things.

Also you might be interested in dutchforce the electronics forum: dutchforce.com

laurence997 · 23-05-2009 4:44pm

Thanks for the help. Just one question. . . Is C programmaing the same as C++?

I will see about getting the PIC programmer and PIC chips from maplain.

Anima · 23-05-2009 6:00pm

C++ is a subset of C, which means it can do everything C can do plus a few more things. If you learn C, it won't take much to move to C++.

Webmonkey · 23-05-2009 6:30pm

Anima wrote: »

C++ is a subset of C, which means it can do everything C can do plus a few more things. If you learn C, it won't take much to move to C++.

C a subset of C++

- Yep, once you learn C, C++ should be fine. Big difference is C++ can be done both OOP and Procedural, and C just procedural.

Anima · 23-05-2009 7:05pm

Heh oops :P

I should of said superset.

laurence997 · 23-05-2009 11:53pm

Webmonkey wrote: »

Big difference is C++ can be done both OOP and Procedural, and C just procedural.

May I ask the difference between OOP and Procedural.

pauldiv · 24-05-2009 3:33am

laurence997 wrote: »

May I ask the difference between OOP and Procedural.

You could start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_programming

Re - C/C++ for electronic circuits.
I prefer Linux myself and found that there are plenty of good free electonics packages in the software repositories. There are emulators for many PIC Microcontrollers and all the tools you need for starting to learn about embedded development. Linux is perfect for this type of work.
There are also good books on Embedded Linux.

Have fun.

eddyc · 24-05-2009 11:23pm

Sorry to butt in on the thread but I was wondering does anyone have experience with objective-C, would this be a decent language to start with, I'm on the Mac and the dev tools you get with it seem pretty good, I was wondering because I wasn't sure if I should start with something more standard like Java, C++ etc..

laurence997 · 21-06-2009 7:05pm

Can I ask what a programmable logic controller (PLC) is then? I notice that it has only a few commands in its language.
This is a link to a site that shows how to use one to control Hallowe'en attractions. I presume that they cannot be used as effectively as something with hundreds of commands in its language.
http://www.thebells.net/Halloween/PLCC/PLCC.doc

Any help telling me how effective or uneffective these are would be greatly appreciated.

CarefulNow · 22-06-2009 12:16pm

laurence997 wrote: »

Sorry if this is butting in but I am also wondering what programming language to learn. I'm not really interested in designing websites and would rather learn how to control hardware(motors etc.) from a computer.
thanks.

I just finished my Leaving Cert and I did the new subject 'Technology'. For the project we used a PICAXE board. They can control lots of different things e.g. motors. We used software called PIC Logicator to program the PIC. It is very easy to use and you don't need to have any knowledge of a programming language. The PIC can also be programmed using the BASIC programming language.

raher1 · 30-03-2012 9:20pm

Is Phyton the best? Over java?

conor.hogan.2 · 30-03-2012 9:32pm

Sonye wrote: »

Is Phyton the best? Over java?

Neither is better, just different.

Python is known to be more friendly to beginners, Java is more widely used.

raher1 · 31-03-2012 10:42pm

What's the best Conor?

srsly78 · 02-04-2012 9:47am

eddyc wrote: »

Sorry to butt in on the thread but I was wondering does anyone have experience with objective-C, would this be a decent language to start with, I'm on the Mac and the dev tools you get with it seem pretty good, I was wondering because I wasn't sure if I should start with something more standard like Java, C++ etc..

Obj-C is only used for mac and the iphone. Better off learning a mainstream language like java or c++ if you don't want to be limited to a single type of job.

fergalr · 03-04-2012 2:05am

srsly78 wrote: »

Obj-C is only used for mac and the iphone. Better off learning a mainstream language like java or c++ if you don't want to be limited to a single type of job.

...in case he is still deciding 2.5 years later - whats with this thread necro?

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Neither is better, just different.

Python is known to be more friendly to beginners, Java is more widely used.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Oe9SteE3M&t=18s

Its an impossible question to answer, absent a particular context.

I'd say that, all other things being equal, python is probably 'better', in that its more productive, cleaner, elegant, unless the project is large, or many person, and you need better tool support, in which case probably java has an edge.

I'd probably pick python for most projects I'd set out to do.

conor.hogan.2 · 03-04-2012 2:28pm

Exactly, not better just different.
But for a beginner I would favor Python (or Ruby possibly) over Java.

absolute beginner

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