Computer Programmers, to me!

[Iormlund]

It's an Intro to Programming class. Of course it's focusing on getting the terminology right.

Meh.

There's a great deal of lingo defining key concepts shared across pretty much all languages (inheritance, polymorphism, encapsulation, static/dynamic typing, lazy/eager evaluation, lock, exception, actor, object, instance, tail-recursion, heap, stack, lifo, fifo and a million more).

However the one in question is certainly not one of them. Everyone knows what an 'i' is for when they read your code. Nobody will ever give a crap about how you call it.

[Iormlund]

Ah VB...so nice but so useless ...

Heh. I've earned my salary writing VB and I can vouch for it being neither nice nor useless.

[Eddie Teach]

lazy/eager evaluation,

That's a new one on me.

[Josquius]

Ah VB...so nice but so useless ...

Heh. I've earned my salary writing VB and I can vouch for it being neither nice nor useless.

What doing?

I really like VB but have never really gotten much practical usage out of it. I've done some good things with VBA and excel, which I suppose could be useful for heavy duty business work (not really IT), and then there's VB.net which apparently has utility though is a bit platform specific; I was studying that though have decided to give up and transfer over to trying to build up my more mundane web skills.

[Maximus]

Ah VB...so nice but so useless ...

Heh. I've earned my salary writing VB and I can vouch for it being neither nice nor useless.

I don't think I've encountered anyone who actually used it before but I agree about it being a horrible language.

[DontSayBanana]

Number one seems like a very, very poorly phrased question.

In several languages, "+=" is a shorthand for "var = var + [increment]."  However, to use that shorthand, the variable needs to already be initialized.

And yeah, 10, 5, 9, and dunno what to tell you for the fourth- there's a lot of heavy local preference in the jargon: in my program, we almost always referred to that variable as the accumulator.  You're more likely to need to know that the process of using those variables is "flow control."

[Iormlund]

What doing?

It is used widely as a scripting language for HMI/SCADA platforms - for example in Siemens WinCC/WinCC Flexible range.

My employer also used it in its previous in-house SCADA (which is only now being migrated to VB.NET). We've also used it in the past to develop graphic interfaces to DBs, though we migrated a while ago to Web apps on that front (it's a lot easier when it comes to patching).


I've also used VBA for Excel macros, usually to deliver automated production metrics to customers according to a legacy format.

[DontSayBanana]

I don't think I've encountered anyone who actually used it before but I agree about it being a horrible language.

Never professionally, but it was the second programming language I learned.  Having focused heavily on Java in school, I tend to prefer C# for when I need a Microsoft programming language.

[merithyn]

Number one seems like a very, very poorly phrased question.

In several languages, "+=" is a shorthand for "var = var + [increment]."  However, to use that shorthand, the variable needs to already be initialized.

That was a different question (which I got right). This was an application question.

[DGuller]

I've used a fair bit of vb before and this inner/outer count stuff is new to me, how odd.

You've used a fair bit of vb, and the concept of nested loops is new to you?  What exactly did you use it for? 

[Berkut]

Hehe.

You know what is funny?

One of the things in software engineering I loved the most in college was the concept of recursion. Just thought it was the coolest thing ever. Yeah, that is pretty geeky. Whatever.

Now, in the real world, I think if I tried to pull some recursion in actual code, most of my peers would have me drowned in a bathtub.

[Josquius]

I've used a fair bit of vb before and this inner/outer count stuff is new to me, how odd.

You've used a fair bit of vb, and the concept of nested loops is new to you?  What exactly did you use it for? 

Ack, thought it was a seperate thing ,not just integers with those names (don't you need spaces between int and the names in VB? Its been a while). I've done nested loops of course.

[DGuller]

Hehe.

You know what is funny?

One of the things in software engineering I loved the most in college was the concept of recursion. Just thought it was the coolest thing ever. Yeah, that is pretty geeky. Whatever.

Now, in the real world, I think if I tried to pull some recursion in actual code, most of my peers would have me drowned in a bathtub.

That's my experience as well.  In computer science classes, it's cool to make the code as clever and compact as possible, until it's denser than a black hole.  In real world, simple is almost always better, especially in my field, where most of the programmers aren't really programmers, but rather applied statisticians that program occasionally.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Hehe.

You know what is funny?

One of the things in software engineering I loved the most in college was the concept of recursion. Just thought it was the coolest thing ever. Yeah, that is pretty geeky. Whatever.

Now, in the real world, I think if I tried to pull some recursion in actual code, most of my peers would have me drowned in a bathtub.

That's my experience as well.  In computer science classes, it's cool to make the code as clever and compact as possible, until it's denser than a black hole.  In real world, simple is almost always better, especially in my field, where most of the programmers aren't really programmers, but rather applied statisticians that program occasionally.

Unless you are trying to get a job at Google or one of the other SV darlings, in which case you need to whip all this shit out again.

[DontSayBanana]

Hehe.

You know what is funny?

One of the things in software engineering I loved the most in college was the concept of recursion. Just thought it was the coolest thing ever. Yeah, that is pretty geeky. Whatever.

Now, in the real world, I think if I tried to pull some recursion in actual code, most of my peers would have me drowned in a bathtub.

Recursion's a great way for handling sequences with a known stopping case, but that seems to be the sticking point- most often, programmers are looking for sequential operations where the stopping case is unknown.  I suppose it could be a good way to handle parse trees- I'll just have to play with it.

That said, there's a mythical camp out there of people who are very pro-recursion; I have yet to meet one of them.