AquaticSquirrel
Member
Thanks! I'll grab that one then.
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Programming |OT| C is better than C++! No, C++ is better than C
- Thread starter Kikarian
- Start date
Thanks! I'll grab that one then.
HarryHengst
Member
Besides Head First Java you probably want another book, as HFJ only covers Java 5. One of these will probably be fine:
Building Java Programs - a back to basic approach
Either Core Java (both Vol I and Vol II) or Core Java for the Impatient. The second one is basically a condensed version of Core Java Vol I & II.
After you passed the beginner stage take a look at some of these:
Effective Java (2th edition)
Java Concurrency in Practice
Well Grounded Java Developer
Java 8 in Action: Lambdas, Streams, and functional-style programming
I would call it realistic myself.
Many thanks... I'll at least look at the points discussed there. I've never thought there would be enough material to write a book on debuggers.
Because it doesn't do anything better than other languages. Like usually languages have some sort of hook, something that they are designed to handle whether that be expressibility of certain concepts, approachability to novices etc. For Java it was the JVM which allowed you to run the same code on different machines, in 2016 plenty of languages have multi platform runtimes and they are faster than Java. But Java is also very slow evolving, it lacks many ergonomic features that have been added to contemporary languages and the tools used are still fairly primitive when you stack it up to things like Visual Studio. And finally while virtually all usable languages are open-source and many have nice developer communities, Java still has Sun which seems to want to litigate people for using Java APIs.
OminoMichelin
Member
That's enough downsides for most people. Boilerplate code is another common complaint.
I tend to agree that these days you should learn java only if you have to (for a job or for school); there are a lot of good alternatives for whatever you might want to do.
You don't even need it for android programming most o the time if you use xamarin.
HarryHengst
Member
While all this is true, Java has quite an amazing ecosystem around it. While some other languages have it beaten in specific niches (Python is the obvious choice for scientific computing for example), Java can be used for pretty much anything if you want to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_performance#Comparison_to_other_languages
The JVM is pretty quick, not sure which VM you're referring to that beats it by any significant margin.
Hard to know what you mean by ergonomic features, but Java 1.8 introduced some features similar to Scala that make working in it a bit more elegant.
IntelliJ IDEA is quite an impressive and feature-rich IDE. It's also the same as the core for Android Development Studio.
First, there's http://openjdk.java.net/
This isn't really a point against Java. Also, the development community for it is great. There is a library for everything under the sun, as well as lots of documentation and queries answered.
I think GC is tricky if you're running high performance applications, but it's also manageable with some tweaking. It's also not the only language that uses GC, and in doing so these languages do allow developers to make fewer mistakes and develop more quickly. It seems to me like a fairly reasonable tradeoff. Though a JVM without stop-the-world GC would certainly be welcome
As for the verbosity, it rarely becomes such an issue when using an IDE. Also, by comparison, C++ is just about as verbose as Java unless you use typedefs as shortcuts. You could attain a similar effect by encapsulating painfully verbose parts of your code, too.
I'm not here to be Java's defense force, I just find it wearisome that many people bag on a select few languages without making a valid case against them.
HarryHengst
Member
I guess most peoples idea of Java programs is something akin to Fizzbuzz enterprise edition.
Plenty of languages have good ecosystems to the point where this again isn't better than anything else. Python does, C# does, JS/Node is like an order of magnitude larger than anyone, even fledgling languages like Swift and Rust have quickly built fairly robust ecosystems and will almost certainly outpace Java within a few years.
You could pretty much swap C# in any situation you use Java and be happier. Again it's not to say Java is like PHP level terrible but there's simply better.
Why would I be happier? I'm open minded and curious. I haven't used C#, so I'm not familiar with the novel features it offers.
Syntactically it's very similar but the language itself is just nicer and filled with a lot of useful sugar (Linq, nullable types, generators, async await). Visual Studio is the best IDE, period and natively supports C#. JetBrains also makes an awesome plugin for Visual Studio called ReSharper which if you love their Java stuff you'll love it too. The release cadence for new features is also faster.
It used to be a harder sell because it was Microsoft siloed but now that's it's open source and runs on Linux it should easily fill the niche that Java used to have there.
cpp_is_king
Member
Part of it is just how well do you understand the operating system? If you have a weird crash in the middle of nowhere, how do you trace that back to a heap corruption? Nowadays the answer might be "run it under ASAN", but what if it's in a core dump? There's definitely an art to debugging
CoffeeJanitor
Member
python
Linq: This seems like a JDBC equivalent, correct me if I'm mistaken.
Nullable types: Java 1.8 Introduced the Optional type: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/util/Optional.html
Generators: Java 1.8 introduced the Supplier interface: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/util/function/Supplier.html
Async wait: Java 1.8 introduced the CompletableFuture type: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/util/concurrent/CompletableFuture.html
I'm sure that C# is nice to work in, but I'm still not entirely convinced why a person should switch to it. More importantly, suggesting that new developers eschew such a ubiquitous and competent language is misleading.
cpp_is_king
Member
Linq is nothing like jdbc. It lets you write sql queries for arbitrary data structures. Like if you have an array of Foo's, you can return a generator for all those where Foo.x == 7. You can use this to do joins across containers, just like sql.
C# also has a vastly superior generics model, and recently has gotten a really, really good concurrency model with the async and wait model that runs circles around everything else out there.
Reflection in c# is way better than in Java too (at least last time i used Java)
The tools are also miles ahead of Java tools
C# also has a vastly superior generics model, and recently has gotten a really, really good concurrency model with the async and wait model that runs circles around everything else out there.
Reflection in c# is way better than in Java too (at least last time i used Java)
The tools are also miles ahead of Java tools
Taking my first ever computer science class today. Its gonna be my minor. Im a little worried. I mainly code games with C# and Javascript (self taught), but this class is apparently about data types/python. Not only that, its a 3 hour class... bleh.
I really hope I can find computer science classes that will help me with my main goal of making games. Or atleast help me understand coding better and how to do things more efficiently.
I also really hope i didnt make a horrible mistake making this my minor. I think I can do it, but I really hope I dont get in there and its too late to realize I bit off more than I can chew.
I really hope I can find computer science classes that will help me with my main goal of making games. Or atleast help me understand coding better and how to do things more efficiently.
I also really hope i didnt make a horrible mistake making this my minor. I think I can do it, but I really hope I dont get in there and its too late to realize I bit off more than I can chew.
cpp_is_king
Member
Also c# has attributes which are very powerful way to incorporate aspects of declarative programming
Spoiled Milk
Banned
Java has GC at scale problems? I thought Hotspot was incremental? And someone has some kind of fancy concurrent GC for it, too.
Also, cppking is right on the money about C#. I didn't appreciate attributes+reflection until I saw what wizards can do with magic.
Also, cppking is right on the money about C#. I didn't appreciate attributes+reflection until I saw what wizards can do with magic.
Then again, Java seems to be the most popular language in the world. According to the same site, it was the language that saw the highest increase in rating in 2015. Furthermore, it seems to be the second most employable language after SQL. Despite its shortcomings, I don't think saying that learning C# over Java is such a clear-cut case.
cpp_is_king
Member
It's clear cut if you replace "employable" with "enjoyable"
I'm not arguing enjoyment, I'm arguing employability and usage.
CornBurrito
Member
I can't wrap my head around this MASM assembly code...
Would anyone mind answering/explaining my bolded questions?
1. Why is there an exchange call there? 0 was placed in ecx. So wouldn't the following mul ebx simply result in 0? Instead of multiplying the value that was in eax by 10?
2. Why is DWORD PTR buffer used here? Earlier on in this code the author had typed " mov esi, edx ;move the address of buffer into esi"
so the address of the buffer should be in esi, right? Why then use buffer? I've tried subbing this line out with DWORD PTR [esi], or [esi] but that isn't moving the value in eax into the buffer.
Would anyone mind answering/explaining my bolded questions?
Code:
readVal PROC
push ebp
mov ebp, esp
pushad ;push all registers to save
startAgain:
mov edx, [ebp+12] ;@address of buffer byte array
mov ecx, [ebp+8] ;size of buffer byte array into ecx
;read the input
mGetString edx, ecx ;invoke the getString macro to read in the users string
;set up registers for conversion
mov esi, edx ;move the address of buffer into esi
mov eax, 0
mov ecx, 0
mov ebx, 10
;load the string in byte by byte
ByteByByte:
lodsb ;loads from memory at esi
cmp ax, 0 ;check if we have reached the end of the string
je finished ;if so jump to finish
;check the range to make sure char is a int in ascii
cmp ax, 48 ;0 is at 48
jb error
cmp ax, 57 ;9 is at 57
ja error
;adjust for value of digit
sub ax, 48 ;-48 for value of digit
[B]1. xchg eax, ecx ;place character value in ecx[/B]
mul ebx ;multiply by 10 for correct digit place
jc error ;jmp if carry flag is set meaning overflow pg. 191 textbook
jnc errorFree ;jmp to errorFree if no carry flag is set pg. 191 textbook
error:
mDisplayString errorMessage
jmp startAgain ;start over bc invalid input
errorFree:
add eax, ecx ;add the digit (in correct spot) to the total of int
xchg eax, ecx ;exchange for the next loop through
jmp ByteByByte ;examine next byte
finished:
xchg ecx, eax
[B]2. [/B] [B]mov DWORD PTR buffer, eax ;move eax to the pointer to save the int in passed [/B]variable
popad ;restore all registers
pop ebp
ret 8
readVal ENDP1. Why is there an exchange call there? 0 was placed in ecx. So wouldn't the following mul ebx simply result in 0? Instead of multiplying the value that was in eax by 10?
2. Why is DWORD PTR buffer used here? Earlier on in this code the author had typed " mov esi, edx ;move the address of buffer into esi"
so the address of the buffer should be in esi, right? Why then use buffer? I've tried subbing this line out with DWORD PTR [esi], or [esi] but that isn't moving the value in eax into the buffer.
cpp_is_king
Member
But I mean, it's not like C# is unemployable, or even hard to find a job in. It's #4 on that same list. Even with C++, which is #6 on that list, I could find a job within a week if I needed to.
I also expect C# to gain in popularity over the next couple years.
I also expect C# to gain in popularity over the next couple years.
Well, you said learning Java over C# isn't such a clear case yet C# is directly behind it in on your list meaning it's still extremely prevalent. Anecdotally you will have no problem getting a job using either language if you're slightly competent so why settle for Java if you don't like it?
The metric seems to be most available positions, not popularity. But note that the quality of a language isn't really related to employability. I wouldn't set out to be making 150K using Rust just yet and there are certainly lots of legacy apps that will fetch top dollar because because nobody else can deal with them but they need maintenance. So when I say switch to C# might make people happier I'm not saying "all Java devs should switch careers" but rather as a business decision if I was granted the opportunity to pick a technology, I'd use C# over Java most of the time. And I say it as an interesting language to check out if you spend lots of time in Java. Any worthwhile dev is polyglot.
It's hard to rebut the argument "I don't like this". I just want people to try, or at least consider things before they adhere to a forum consensus as dogma.
For a bunch of intelligent people, developers seem to enjoy demonizing languages. Why is that? Demonizing is myopic and misleading, especially for people that haven't gotten a chance to try things out. If someone asked me if they should write a distributed system in Brainfuck, I'd tell them it's probably not the right tool for the job, since it would be difficult and doesn't have the library support needed to get it done in a reasonable amount of time. But should I dissuade them from learning the language? Of course not.
Every language I've used in my career has some quality or qualities that shine. If I want to quickly write a script, especially if parsing text, I'll use Perl. Embedded and/or high performance needs? C/++. Easily deployable and performant application that can rely on decades of libraries? Scala or Java.
I'm not saying that these are the only languages that can fit into these niches. They're just the ones that I am most familiar with. If you told me you're more comfortable scripting with Ruby or Python, who am I to tell you that is wrong?
I implore you to reconsider responding to the question, "How can I solve X with language Y" with "Don't".
It is incremental, but a system whose GC settings are not tuned correctly can still end up spending an inordinate amount of time performing GC. Consider an application that regularly receives large transient blobs of data. If your GC strategy cannot handle a message of that size, it will go straight into your tenured working set which is only cleaned during a mixed GC event.
I can respect this standpoint.
AquaticSquirrel
Member
Thanks for all the advice on books and Java in general.
I'll look into all of those books over the next year or two to get up to speed.
As for why I'm learning Java: I'm already familiar with the very basics of the language so won't take too long to get up to speed and in my job I currently work support and we use Java as our main language so I want to transition into the development team eventually and I've made this know and spoken to them about it so it will eventually be on the cards at some stage in the future.
I'm also going back to college in September and Java is thought there so makes sense to get into it from that perspective.
In regards to C# it doesn't seem a million miles away from Java so if I end up leaving this job or having to work with C# I imagine I could get to grips with it fairly quickly considering the familiar syntax/concepts it uses.
I'll look into all of those books over the next year or two to get up to speed.
As for why I'm learning Java: I'm already familiar with the very basics of the language so won't take too long to get up to speed and in my job I currently work support and we use Java as our main language so I want to transition into the development team eventually and I've made this know and spoken to them about it so it will eventually be on the cards at some stage in the future.
I'm also going back to college in September and Java is thought there so makes sense to get into it from that perspective.
In regards to C# it doesn't seem a million miles away from Java so if I end up leaving this job or having to work with C# I imagine I could get to grips with it fairly quickly considering the familiar syntax/concepts it uses.
Spoiled Milk
Banned
Gotcha. Care and caution. In that case I would either move the blob off heap, or I would increase heap size to be more appropriate for the expected working set.
cpp_is_king
Member
Yes. But note the line I have marked 3 above. It unconditionally jumps back above. So the next iteration through this loop, ECX will not be 0.
Pay attention to the semantics of the LODSB instruction.
http://www.intel.com/content/dam/ww...r-instruction-set-reference-manual-325383.pdf
Look on page 591.
The no-operands form provides “short forms” of the byte, word, and doubleword versions of the LODS instructions.
Here also DS
operand. The size of the source and destination operands is selected with the mnemonic: LODSB (byte
loaded into register AL), LODSW (word loaded into AX), or LODSD (doubleword loaded into EAX).
After the byte, word, or doubleword is transferred from the memory location into the AL, AX, or EAX register, the
(E)SI register is incremented or decremented automatically according to the setting of the DF flag in the EFLAGS
register. (If the DF flag is 0, the (E)SI register is incremented; if the DF flag is 1, the ESI register is decremented.)
The (E)SI register is incremented or decremented by 1 for byte operations, by 2 for word operations, or by 4 for
doubleword operations
So after LODSB executes, ESI will not contain the address of the buffer anymore. If you imagine a loop like this:
Code:
while (*buffer != 0) {
// do something
buffer++;
}You can think of ESI as containing the value of "buffer" in this example. It increases each time through the loop.
I highly recommend checking out this post if you find the topic of GC interesting: http://product.hubspot.com/blog/g1gc-fundamentals-lessons-from-taming-garbage-collection
cpp_is_king
Member
Certainly learn both languages. It's just that everyone I know who has learned both languages (including myself) overwhelmingly prefer C#.
CornBurrito
Member
Ah thanks a ton.
Spoiled Milk
Banned
Saved.
Could I also ask for some course advice? I'm trying to trim my coursework, and I will need to drop a few courses.
Here's some that I'm considering: a course in optimization, distributed systems, parallelization and concurrency, advanced OS architecture. Currently, I'm leaning towards the first three, and dropping the fourth.
I don't really know how useful any of these courses are. I'm choosing parallelization because multi-cores are important, but I don't even know if I will ever need to write software using multiple cores (or if I'm even smart enough to do that). I keep seeing distributed systems popping up in job postings, so I'll take it even though I don't really know what it is (something about networks of computers doing a task). I'm dropping advanced OS architecture because I highly doubt I'll need to know that much detail about Windows/Linux/whatever.
Edit: Forgot to mention our school has a stream for machine learning. I was initially interested; however, speaking with employers, they are essentially hiring PhDs in machine learning and MSc in Data Science for anything related to data mining. So for me to waste precious courses on ML at an undergrad level is a complete waste of time.
Here's some that I'm considering: a course in optimization, distributed systems, parallelization and concurrency, advanced OS architecture. Currently, I'm leaning towards the first three, and dropping the fourth.
I don't really know how useful any of these courses are. I'm choosing parallelization because multi-cores are important, but I don't even know if I will ever need to write software using multiple cores (or if I'm even smart enough to do that). I keep seeing distributed systems popping up in job postings, so I'll take it even though I don't really know what it is (something about networks of computers doing a task). I'm dropping advanced OS architecture because I highly doubt I'll need to know that much detail about Windows/Linux/whatever.
Edit: Forgot to mention our school has a stream for machine learning. I was initially interested; however, speaking with employers, they are essentially hiring PhDs in machine learning and MSc in Data Science for anything related to data mining. So for me to waste precious courses on ML at an undergrad level is a complete waste of time.
Spoiled Milk
Banned
Parallelization will be a very complementary class to distributed systems. Drop the first or the last. If you take the last course, it will set you up very nicely for a career in operations. Potentially.
cpp_is_king
Member
Can you paste the course summary for optimization and parallel programming?
If the parallel programming course is going to focus on OpenMP or something, then it's a waste of time.
I'm not saying learn Java just to get employed if you don't like it. But it seemed like some people were arguing don't learn Java because it's not fun and/or C# is better. I pointed out that Java is more popular across the programming landscape and is more employable, albeit not by a large margin.
I think you're confusing the two rankings. The first one, measuring popularity, as far as I understand takes amount of hits across 25 different search engines. The second one, measuring employability, finds hits on a job search site.
I see... That may be interesting, although I admit I never really have a lot of interaction with the OS, at least not the ones that make the code crash. That really depends what you're coding, I guess.
I agree... I support the idea of learning at least a language each year (I often learn two, in fact, a real one and a toy one for fun). Even if you don't use those afterwards, it broadens your views.
But once you've worked with it (and I've been involved in Java teaching, trying to show enthusiasm for it ^_^ ), there always will be languages you like and other you dislike. For good or bad reasons...
Then, all depends on what they allow you to do. I'm not fond of Python (although I don't dislike it as much as 10 years ago) but it's often really nice to do quick'n dirty code, so I use it quite often.
It's just I really don't like Java syntax and paradigms, and I don't see a single situation were I can't think of an alternative I prefer (Android development may be an exception to some extent, but I think native Android is Java++ levels of unbearableness) Should Java disappear in the language limbo, I personally wouldn't shed a tear... and (my) world would be a better place.
I'd say half of this at least is a joke, a way to vent frustration. I think that more than often, if you're against a language, you've practiced it, suffered because of it, and try to recover.
Well, I agree...
Learn Java (and Brainfuck too).
And use Java as often as Brainfuck afterwards
If Scala can be a substitute to Java, what kind of use I would have for Java?
That depends a bit on who you ask, and I say that doesn't mean much anyway.
They also produced this graph:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Tiobeindex.png
short-term increase may not be the best indicator...
Hits could very well be people asking for help more often because the language is awful
esmith08734
Member
Have another interview tomorrow for an entry-level programming job. The guy recommended I go over OO concepts and some web principles. I am kind of thinking what would would be appropriate white board questions. Seems like finding duplicates and counting them in an array, comparing two arrays and finding common values, and reversing a String are very common. Not really sure what else to go over. I will probably go over traversing through a Binary Tree.
Some basic OO principles: encapsulation, polymorphism, inheritance, abstraction. Encapsulation means objects are self-contained. Polymorphism refers to using an interface to create multiple classes. Overriding is done at run time and it has same name and parameters but different code. Overloading is when you have the same name but different parameters or arguments. Inheritance is when a child class inherits the properties of the parent while having the means for containing unique properties as well. Interfaces are method signatures with no implementation. Abstract classes are similar but at least 1 method is not implemented, but some can be. Umm..interfaces are preferred (to me) over abstract classes because an abstract class can only extend once while you can create multiple interfaces.
I am just rambling. The web stuff is a little troubling. He recommended jQuery and JavaScript and it would be 'cool to know Angular'. I am reviewing Angular now, just getting a fast introduction to it. SPA? Single page application. jQuery is a js library. Need to cram, lol.
Some basic OO principles: encapsulation, polymorphism, inheritance, abstraction. Encapsulation means objects are self-contained. Polymorphism refers to using an interface to create multiple classes. Overriding is done at run time and it has same name and parameters but different code. Overloading is when you have the same name but different parameters or arguments. Inheritance is when a child class inherits the properties of the parent while having the means for containing unique properties as well. Interfaces are method signatures with no implementation. Abstract classes are similar but at least 1 method is not implemented, but some can be. Umm..interfaces are preferred (to me) over abstract classes because an abstract class can only extend once while you can create multiple interfaces.
I am just rambling. The web stuff is a little troubling. He recommended jQuery and JavaScript and it would be 'cool to know Angular'. I am reviewing Angular now, just getting a fast introduction to it. SPA? Single page application. jQuery is a js library. Need to cram, lol.
AquaticSquirrel
Member
So I purchased Head First Java from Amazon (.co.uk because Ireland is good enough to set up your HQ and get tax breaks but not good enough to actually have a dedicated website...blargh)
Lots of sellers wouldn't ship to Ireland but finally got one in the end. So I think I'm all set for a little while to dive into Java, TDD in general and also improve my overall programming.
Going to keep learning Python too and web development in general. Javascript is on hold for now as I can properly dive into it once I'm more solid overall.
Lots of sellers wouldn't ship to Ireland but finally got one in the end. So I think I'm all set for a little while to dive into Java, TDD in general and also improve my overall programming.
Going to keep learning Python too and web development in general. Javascript is on hold for now as I can properly dive into it once I'm more solid overall.
AquaticSquirrel
Member
They might also ask you about the DOM, JSON, Relational Databases (SQL), ReST, MVC design patterns. In case you want to look into those. I think you'll do fine! Good luck man!
Do you mind if I ask what is the main language the job will be using and what is the main language you know now? Does the job specialize in web development?
esmith08734
Member
They might also ask you about the DOM, JSON, Relational Databases (SQL), ReST, MVC design patterns. In case you want to look into those. I think you'll do fine! Good luck man!
Do you mind if I ask what is the main language the job will be using and what is the main language you know now? Does the job specialize in web development?
I will look into all of those, the things you mentioned. Thanks!
I use Java. The job is a .NET position, but they have a big team, so they work on a bunch of stuff, so it's not limited to just .NET frameworks, if that makes sense. I know the transition won't be so bad, if I need to use C#. Java was just the language I learned in school.
JeTmAn81
Member
Yeah, C# and Java are really similar. Sometimes I can look at code and not even be able to tell which one it is. Definitely do as much cursory brushing up on those web concepts that you're not familiar with. Hopefully they will mostly test you on fundamentals that carry over to any programming job rather than just specifics of a language you might not have tons of experience in.
CornBurrito
Member
I'm trying to write a program that converts an integer into a string. But I'm having trouble because neither my textbook nor the professor really covered STOSB, and we're required to use it.
Numbers are entered 10 at a time into an array. They are then passed individually (looping through the array) to this procedure.
Any help would be appreciated. I'm getting really odd results.
Like entering: 15, 23, 222, 445, 232, 12, 112, 3, 21, 2
gives: 15
23
,222
,445
,232
212
,112
13
121
22
So I'm getting random commas, and just plain wrong numbers at certain points.
Code:
writeVal PROC
pushad
mov eax, [esp+40] ;number to convert to string
mov edi, [esp+36] ;tempString address
mov ebx, 10 ;will need to divide by 10
std
numToString:
mov edx, 0
div ebx ;divide by 10
add edx, 48 ;add 48 to convert from int to ascii
push eax
mov eax, edx
stosb
pop eax
cmp eax, 0
jne numToString
mov edx, [esp+36]
call WriteString
popad
ret 8
writeVal ENDPNumbers are entered 10 at a time into an array. They are then passed individually (looping through the array) to this procedure.
Any help would be appreciated. I'm getting really odd results.
Like entering: 15, 23, 222, 445, 232, 12, 112, 3, 21, 2
gives: 15
23
,222
,445
,232
212
,112
13
121
22
So I'm getting random commas, and just plain wrong numbers at certain points.