No. Good programmers make programs for fun. Pretty much all papers are a pain in the butt (at least for school). Mainly because the mark you receive is completely subjective and based on how much your views align with those of the professor and/or marker. I had a similar assignment for a programming languages class where we had to design our own langauge and state what features would go in and what would stay out. All those who wrote languages like Prolog (the profs favorite) did better than those who wrote languages like C++.

If I were Hamlet (which I''m not), I''d go with comparing STL to Java''s Standard Library. Chances are you can find the design goals of each of them on make comparisons to portions that do the same job. You don''t have to learn the language (which I doubt your prof actually wants you to do), but you will have to read some tutorials and possibly some white papers (which I suspect your prof wants you to do)


University is a fountain of knowledge, and students go there to drink.

As part of my job i have been asked to write a document comparing visual basic, python and ruby. I have no intention of learning them completely in order to understand their core differences. Obviously I have a rough understanding of them from articles I''ve read and the little amount of visual basic, perl and ruby i''ve used. I can find detailed descriptions of the languages specifications etc and can compare and contrast their abilities without being a guru.

That''s what your professor wants you to do. Be able to understand the key terminology to do with the two languages, what it means, what the tradeoffs are, possibly how a feature can be approximated in the other language. These are things that can be understood without going in depth.

Actually it''s been a really interesting exercise for me and I intend to make more effort to use python in my work when it''s appropriate (ie within the bounds of company policy. It''s appropriate to use python far more than i would be allowed to).

In answer to your question: yes

The best way to use Python is to make all your files as such:

somefile.py



Or, if you''re forced to work in a Perl environment:

somefile.pl

quote:Original post by petewood
As part of my job i have been asked to write a document comparing visual basic, python and ruby.

This sounds like the sort of thing which management asks for, expecting to be able to understand the differences in a couple of sentences. Unfortunately, it''s far more difficult.

quote:
I have no intention of learning them completely in order to understand their core differences.

That sounds sensible, but learning a language is far more than a simple matter of syntax (as I''m sure you''re aware). I always say it takes around 6 months of significant use and studying to really figure a language out. There''s various factors you simply can''t appreciate just by looking at syntax. For example, what synergy do you achieve with a combination of various language features? What are the common idioms you need to use to communicate your intent to other programmers? Obviously, it''s not feasible to learn each language well and pit them against one another fairly, so what do you do? In industry, there are usually firmer criteria which help you make a decision. Unfortunately, those criteria are most often political. Things such as "what do our programmers currently know?", "how well supported is the language?", "how much does it cost?", "how long will it be around?" are all questions that get asked.

Unfortunately, some folks completely swallow the hype put out by companies like MS, Sun and IBM, and end up asking meaningless questions like "is it a pure OO language?" It''s really unfortunate that the people who make these decisions tend to be technically clueless, so let themselves be guided by buzz. For instance, the fact that some people think Java is superior to C++ because of what it left out is absolutely ridiculous, and is actually a symptom of "stupid programmer syndrome". If you have intelligent developers, you don''t need a syntactically emasculated language.

quote:
Obviously I have a rough understanding of them from articles I''ve read and the little amount of visual basic, perl and ruby i''ve used. I can find detailed descriptions of the languages specifications etc and can compare and contrast their abilities without being a guru.

Another useful source of information is Usenet. Groups such as comp.lang.python are actually very mature in discussing language comparisons, and you can read discussions of the relative merits of Python, Ruby, Perl, Lisp, Smalltalk, C++, etc, with a refreshing lack of childish arguing. If only the Gamedev community were more mature.

Do a comparison of Brainf*ck (or some other obscure language, say, err, Amiga E) against C++

I very much doubt he knows what brainf*ck is... so he''ll have to do some research himself to be able to mark it


Stu M