Why Learn Basic Programming Skills?

[DeltaLover]

Originally Posted by traynor

Thanks! That is a great idea! BASIC (if "meaningful variable names" are/were used) is an excellent way to learn to program. I may have some in a backup file from the old days somewhere. If I do, I will post it.

With the risk of sounding spirit of contradiction, I have to refer to the following quote of Edsger Dijkstra:

It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.

[badcompany]

Originally Posted by traynor

http://www.fresherqueries.com/. If you don't recognize the names infosys and wipro, you are probably not in the IT field. Infosys has some of the best technical communicators available, and their training materials are designed to convey complex information in simple, understandable terms. The way technical instruction should be conveyed. Links to training materials are on the left of the main infosys page.

Alternate links:
http://www.fresherqueries.com/2014/0...tutorials.html

http://www.fresherqueries.com/search...dy%20Materials

This is some really good stuff. I like how it's broken into bite size pieces. You can watch one whenever you have some time to kill.

[traynor]

Originally Posted by DeltaLover

With the risk of sounding spirit of contradiction, I have to refer to the following quote of Edsger Dijkstra:

Differences of opinion are what make a horse race. "Expert" commentary on pretty much any point can be located, if one is interested enough to search.

[traynor]

Originally Posted by badcompany

This is some really good stuff. I like how it's broken into bite size pieces. You can watch one whenever you have some time to kill.

The part where it gets really interesting in when you get to the more "advanced" tutorials by others, and think, "Oh, yeah. That's really simple. That is just (whatever)." Because you were presented the basic concepts in basic fashion--without the useless window dressing of complexity some feel is necessary to inflate their (self-perceived) "position" in life. College professors--for some unknown reason--seem to relish making simple things seem incredibly obscure and complex.

It is not so much that technical material is complex as it is that there are substantial shortcomings and deficiencies in how it is taught.

One of the better academic teaching projects (by a consortium of universities, as a response to the horrendous dropout rate in computer science classes--caused by too many talking heads and too few David Malans and Mehran Sahamis) is:
http://www.bluej.org/

[traynor]

"BASIC (a backronym for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use.

In 1964, John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz designed the original BASIC language at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. They wanted to enable students in fields other than science and mathematics to use computers. At the time, nearly all use of computers required writing custom software, which was something only scientists and mathematicians tended to learn.

Versions of BASIC became widespread on microcomputers in the mid-1970s and 1980s. Microcomputers usually shipped with BASIC, often in the machine's firmware. Having an easy-to-learn language on these early personal computers allowed small business owners, professionals, hobbyists, and consultants to develop custom software on computers they could afford.

BASIC remains popular in many dialects and in new languages influenced by BASIC, such as Microsoft's Visual Basic. In 2006, 59% of developers for the .NET Framework used Visual Basic .NET as their only programming language."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC

...

"BASIC's fortunes reversed once again with the introduction in 1991 of Visual Basic ("VB"), by Microsoft. This was an evolutionary development of QuickBasic, and included constructs from other languages such as block structured control statements including With and For Each, parameterized subroutines, optional static typing, and more recentlyTemplate:2001 a full object oriented language. But the language retains considerable links to its past, such as the Dim statement for declarations, Gosub/Return statements, and even line numbers which are still needed to report errors properly.

An important driver for the development of Visual Basic was as the new macro language for Excel.

Ironically, given the origin of BASIC as a "beginner's" language, and apparently even to the surprise of many at Microsoft who still initially marketed it as a language for hobbyists, the language had come into widespread use for small custom business applications shortly after the release of VB version 3.0, which is widely considered the first relatively stable version. While many advanced programmers still scoffed at its use, VB met the needs of small businesses efficiently wherever processing speed was less of a concern than ease of development.

By that time, computers running Windows 3.1 had become fast enough that many business-related processes could be completed "in the blink of an eye" even using a "slow" language, as long as large amounts of data were not involved. Many small business owners found they could create their own small, yet useful applications in a few evenings to meet their own specialized needs. Eventually, during the lengthy lifetime of VB3, knowledge of Visual Basic had become a marketable job skill.

Microsoft also produced VBScript in 1996 and Visual Basic .NET in 2001. The latter has essentially the same power as C# and Java but with syntax that reflects the original Basic language."

[traynor]

I think learning a bit about programming (and downloading the free Visual Basic Express Edition from Microsoft) could give an entire new dimension to the capabilities of the average bettor.

Take special note of that Wikipedia line:
"Many small business owners found they could create their own small, yet useful applications in a few evenings to meet their own specialized needs."

No rocket science or lofty abstractions needed. Just tell me who is going to win the seventh at Aqueduct.

[MJC922]

Originally Posted by DeltaLover

With the risk of sounding spirit of contradiction, I have to refer to the following quote of Edsger Dijkstra:

Just as there are beer snobs, apparently there are code snobs. I promise you this, someone like Francesco Balena can do more with two lines of VB than this guy will do with 20 lines of anything else.

[DeltaLover]

Originally Posted by traynor

I think learning a bit about programming (and downloading the free Visual Basic Express Edition from Microsoft) could give an entire new dimension to the capabilities of the average bettor.

Take special note of that Wikipedia line:
"Many small business owners found they could create their own small, yet useful applications in a few evenings to meet their own specialized needs."

No rocket science or lofty abstractions needed. Just tell me who is going to win the seventh at Aqueduct.

Disclaimer

Let's make it clear, that here we are not having neither a Holly war nor any other kind of a fight... We are just expressing our opinions and experiences, so they might be helpful to someone.

I will have to completely disagree about the simplicity of VB development. The bulk of current VB.NET development is very complicated and has a steep learning curve. It is not about the language itself, but the gigantic and extremely ackward ecosystem that comes with. When you talk about VB.NET today, you probably refer to MVVC, Microsoft Prism Library and silverlight which is far from simple or intuitive. More than this the related commercial components (like Telerik, ComponentOne or DevExpress)are not only expensive, but also require a great deal of expertise to fit then within the rest of the MVVC and prism framework.
As a language, I would agree that VB.net is very close to C# and has been extended tremendously to support almost the same functionality as C# (or any other .net language). Still, I find it extremely ugly and verbose and I really do not enjoy writing code in it. There is no doubt, that you write useful application in VB.net, I still do not think it is neither the easier nor the most flexible language; there is a long array of other languages that you can write better and easier code and without having to pay anything to M$...

Some of the things I find restrictive about vb.net are the following:

Talking about VB.net, I find its syntax extremely verbose and awkward, take for example the Overloads (!!) keyword, by the way since I referred to overloading is it even possible to overload the assignment operator in VB.net?

One of the things I like in C# is the dynamic keyword, which I have used for some interesting cross language communication components, can you tell me how you can do the same in VB.net?

How easy it is to port VB.net code to any other operating system?

I like extension methods as they are implemented in VB.net, but can you really add a brand new property or field to an existing class? Why not? Even more than this, can you override an existing method?

Do you find the syntax of LINQ intuitive and can you write LINQ code without resharper?

[Tom]

How to program and what to program are two separate discussions.
Once you are ready to write, what do you write?
What questions do you ask?

I can see writing to do grunt work, like calculating speed and pace figs from times, class ratings from earnings, whatever, but what do you write to learn something new?

[DJofSD]

Originally Posted by Tom

How to program and what to program are two separate discussions.
Once you are ready to write, what do you write?
What questions do you ask?

I can see writing to do grunt work, like calculating speed and pace figs from times, class ratings from earnings, whatever, but what do you write to learn something new?

Programming is both an art and a science.

And, Tom, that is a very good insight you have about asking the right questions. I suspect you have been or are a project manager or a manager of some kind. Nose to the grindstone grunts never take a step back to consider the larger picture and to ponder such things. Very good!

[traynor]

Originally Posted by DeltaLover

Disclaimer

Let's make it clear, that here we are not having neither a Holly war nor any other kind of a fight... We are just expressing our opinions and experiences, so they might be helpful to someone.

I will have to completely disagree about the simplicity of VB development. The bulk of current VB.NET development is very complicated and has a steep learning curve. It is not about the language itself, but the gigantic and extremely ackward ecosystem that comes with. When you talk about VB.NET today, you probably refer to MVVC, Microsoft Prism Library and silverlight which is far from simple or intuitive. More than this the related commercial components (like Telerik, ComponentOne or DevExpress)are not only expensive, but also require a great deal of expertise to fit then within the rest of the MVVC and prism framework.
As a language, I would agree that VB.net is very close to C# and has been extended tremendously to support almost the same functionality as C# (or any other .net language). Still, I find it extremely ugly and verbose and I really do not enjoy writing code in it. There is no doubt, that you write useful application in VB.net, I still do not think it is neither the easier nor the most flexible language; there is a long array of other languages that you can write better and easier code and without having to pay anything to M$...

Some of the things I find restrictive about vb.net are the following:

Talking about VB.net, I find its syntax extremely verbose and awkward, take for example the Overloads (!!) keyword, by the way since I referred to overloading is it even possible to overload the assignment operator in VB.net?

One of the things I like in C# is the dynamic keyword, which I have used for some interesting cross language communication components, can you tell me how you can do the same in VB.net?

How easy it is to port VB.net code to any other operating system?

I like extension methods as they are implemented in VB.net, but can you really add a brand new property or field to an existing class? Why not? Even more than this, can you override an existing method?

Do you find the syntax of LINQ intuitive and can you write LINQ code without resharper?

I don't understand what details like porting to other operating systems or cross language communication components have to do with a handicapper writing his or her own software for her or his own use. Why do you think this type of issue would be important to a handicapper?

[DJofSD]

I used to use VB for DOS back in the day -- that will date things.

The one knock I recall seeing quiet a bit is VB, in any flavor, was never truly capable of doing true OOP.

If that is still true then I would say by all means use something else.

As far as porting apps, with the seemingly rapid expansion of cross platform development tools, that necessity will begin to lessen.

[traynor]

Originally Posted by Tom

How to program and what to program are two separate discussions.
Once you are ready to write, what do you write?
What questions do you ask?

I can see writing to do grunt work, like calculating speed and pace figs from times, class ratings from earnings, whatever, but what do you write to learn something new?

I think many experienced handicappers have questions that cannot be answered by available software. I think they may also be reluctant to publicly express those questions, on the assumption that others will scoop up the ideas and either kill the prospects by dumping (much) more money into the mutuel pools or selling the ideas as part of their software offerings. The rewards of the creator of Post-It Notes is a classic example.

DeltaLover's open-source data analysis project is an example of a well-intentioned project that may be languishing because those with ideas they want to explore are reluctant to toss them on the table for everyone else to rummage through.

The solution (for the individual handicapper with the idea(s)) that enables both exploration of the ideas and capitalizing on the output is to learn a few basic programming skills. As I have mentioned before, freely available data mining apps like WEKA, RapidMiner, and Anaconda3 can turn the ideas into useful algorithms that can then be implemented in one's own application.

However, all that assumes there are ideas and questions existing. If there are no ideas, and no questions, no answers are needed.

[DeltaLover]

Originally Posted by traynor

I don't understand what details like porting to other operating systems or cross language communication components have to do with a handicapper writing his or her own software for her or his own use. Why do you think this type of issue would be important to a handicapper?

I do not see our conversation about Programming Languages to be limited to a handicapper writing his software; i think that we should view this topic in general, without having a specific business domain in mind, discussing the pros and cons of each approach.

Platform neutrality (among the other things that I mentioning above and many others that I did not) is certainly one of the most important aspects of successful software, as they affect evolution, interoperability and ultimately the life span of a specific project. This is important to the "handicapper" (as any other developer and computer use), for reasons like: reducing or eliminating third party software cost, migrating to another OS as the platform of choice, adopting a technology that is not available (or is difficult to use) on the current platform. Any way you are going to view it, following open standards and achieving platform neutrality is preferable to been limited to specific vendors and this is exactly the direction where the whole industry is heading to. Today’s development is based on standards like HTML5, CSS3 and javascript as opposed to the good old 90's when fat clients were the norm (see VB6, Powerbuilder, VC++, Access etc)...

[DeltaLover]

Originally Posted by traynor

As I have mentioned before, freely available data mining apps like WEKA, RapidMiner, and Anaconda3 can turn the ideas into useful algorithms that can then be implemented in one's own application.

I think this is excellent advice