Tuxman wrote:I'm pretty sure that there is a purpose for every language
Malbolge. End of story. It exists pretty much only to do your head in. Yes, you. Personally.
I mean, who couldn't love a language based on something literally called
Brainfuck? Not only does it legitimately allow you to swear in public, but it takes poor nikos' innocent threads so off-track that you just have to giggle.
As to the "purpose of every language"... ever since I was a kid and learned C, I never saw a reason for other languages to exist. Considering they are mostly all written in C in the first place, why not just write whatever you want this "language" to do in C yourself? Seems kinda silly. Sure, I learned Pascal in the day, and Ada (someone once said it was the up-and-coming thing, but it fizzled and went bump in the night instead), and Cobol and even punched around some Fortran. But once I discovered C, I was like, "I can now die happy, and all humans are fools".
Tuxman wrote:C# has AlphaFS. Kilmatead should be surprised.
Oh boy, long pathnames, and hard-links. Cutting edge, that is. So, like, these kids don't know how to use the WinAPI stuff that's already there (and has been for decades), they need to repackage it just to celebrate their own inanity? Kilmatead is surprised all right, surprised no one seems to have the cop-on to know a scam when they see one.
I don't have anything against C# personally - if people want to use it, more power to them. What I don't like is the educational lobotomy that goes with it. You won't learn squat about programming, but you will learn an awful lot about running around looking through about a thousand functions for the one you want, and leave the church at the end of the day no wiser as to how that function actually works. C# seems to be the anti-education language.
sanferno wrote:I understand you would suggest me to get a good knowledge of C++
Simple philosophy: if you learn the hardest thing first, everything after that is going to be chocolate cake. C++ is not the hardest thing, but nor is it the easiest - I personally think C (no "++") is all anyone really needs, but I'm weirdly retro that way. But C++ is not a bad foundation to work with, as it makes other stuff look like snowflakes.
sanferno wrote:The thing for me is that I have not found a good reference or learning book to been able to develop in C++ and, if needed, have a GUI (in my case 99,99% of the times in Windows)
Learn by doing, not by reading. You got yourself a PHD in real life, so you're already ahead of the game. Except programming is more about imagination, surprise, and elegance than it is about academic study. So, just go out and find some code that looks interesting, and rip it to shreds figuring out what it does and why someone did it that way.
Doing GUI stuff in WinAPI doesn't require a book - it's all free and there for the taking, in any language. The internet is full of simple examples of how to create a simple GUI, and that's where you start. If you want to get all hung up on proprietary stuff like MFC and all that - go ahead - but at least learning the API will give you a hint as to why all these other frameworks exist and how they work. Again, learn the hardest thing first, and it's all downhill from there.