[sdiy] Programming Language Recommendation

[Spiros Makris]

When I went through the microcomputer courses 6-7 years ago we started from
8085 assembly, then moved on to 8086 assembly and embedded C. I was first
taught programming on my first semesters, Python then C, but I seriously
hated it. It's not that I felt I *couldn't* do it; I *didn't want to.😂*
Amazingly, going through the microcomputer lab turned me around. I loved
how implicit assembly is - you tell it to do things and there's nothing
cryptic as to what is going on. For a person that was a hardcore analogue
electronics fanatic, this was a very natural process.
One could argue that 8085 is an ancient piece of crap, but it is simple and
its lack of modern features has an incredible educational value at this
stage. I think everyone would become a better person if they had to program
for a while without division and multiplication operations available to
them.
Nowadays programming is part of what I do for a living, so it has to be a
bit faster to develop and easier to handle. I have settled with C++ on my
embedded projects and didn't have any problems so far. I don't want to use
assembly ever again, but the experience of learning it was indeed valuable
and wholly recommended for anyone trying to get into this field on a
professional or academic level.

I don't like python at all, but I had to start learning it since there are
so many useful tools developed on it. I'm still on my first steps, but it
promises me that I will be able to do fancy things very quickly without
having to really understand what the hell I'm doing; I sure hope it
delivers, because even looking at it is painful.

On Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 8:57 AM Ben Bradley <ben.pi.bradley at gmail.com> wrote:

> It's good you know C++, I think every compiler that outputs for ARM
> (perhaps even for most 8-bit processors) is both C and C++. The
> "problem" you now have is if you want to learn C, you need to
> "unlearn" the parts of C++ that aren't in C. Having learned C circa
> 1987 and C++ slowly over the last 10 years or so, that's not a problem
> for me.
>
> If you want to learn assembly also, I think that would be good. It
> might possibly be helpful to learn assembly before learning C (that's
> what I and many old-timers ended up doing, so we might have a bias for
> that), but if you want to learn assembly, it's different enough from
> C/C++ that I think you can learn them together with no problem. I
> suggest often looking "under the hood" at a compiler's assembly
> output, or even doing single-stepping at the instruction level, so you
> can see 1. what the compiler turned your source code into, and 2. how
> the processor works at the assembly/machine level. Be sure to turn off
> optimization when you do this, else you may not recognize the object
> code as having any connection with what you wrote.
> There's this guy on the amazing things that modern compilers do:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0sz5WbS5AM
>
> I do have a long rant on languages and how I learned them that I was
> about to write, but I should put it in a blogpost, if not a book. I've
> semi-jokingly thought of writing a book titled "C programming for C++
> programmers."
>
> On Wed, Dec 2, 2020 at 9:47 PM Shawn Rakestraw <shawnrakestraw at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Please don't go into extreme detail (unless you really want to). I ask
> too many simple questions and I feel bad that everyone spends great amounts
> of time with it.
> >
> > I am thinking about programming ARM chips like the STM32 for something
> like Braids. I know that I will not be making my own Braids module anytime
> soon, but I would like to start thinking about the language I need to
> learn. I know the most about C++. I also realize that my question may be
> better asked as what libraries should I load / study up on.
> >
> > Thanks guys/gals
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