"Simple" Languages in FreeBSD

[Felix Friedlander]

> On 1 Jul 2016, at 07:52, Allen <bsd_atog at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I've been using FreeBSD on and off since 4.0-CURRENT, which seems like
> almost a lifetime ago now, heh. I'm currently using FreeBSD
> 10.0-RELEASE and even though I've gotten my latest order from the
> FreeBSD Mall (Which I bought 10.3-RELEASE on DVD along with a bunch of
> other stuff for myself and my Wife) I'm not ready to upgrade yet since
> I've gotten my system working how I like (Got WindowMaker set up, and
> FVWM2, and some other stuff set up) so I'm using it for now.
> 
> Anyway, in all these years that have passed using FreeBSD and a bunch
> of Linux distros, I never had time or patience enough to learn
> Programming Languages, and I'm getting more and more to the part where
> I'm thinking it's a good idea more so now than before.
> 
> I have the book "Learning Perl" that I bought a while back, and I've
> also downloaded a bunch of stuff for Perl, Python, Ruby, and others, so
> I'm just curious on basically what Languages anyone here would
> recommend.
> 
> Literally anyone who responds with an opinion, I'm interested. Being
> easy to learn for someone who isn't great with Math but does understand
> Unix is a plus but not a requirement. I was starting to teach myself
> Ruby on a Linux box I was using for a while and Ruby did seem to be
> going OK, but a lot of the FreeBSD Books I've bought recommend Perl,
> and I've also had just as many reasons from people saying to try
> Python, so basically any Language and what reasons would be great.
> 
> -Allen

Hi Allen,

Perl may have been the language of choice 10 or even 5 years ago, but unless you have a specific reason I would wholeheartedly recommend Python as a first language. It’s incredibly easy, very powerful, the standard library is amazing (you can implement a full SMTP server or web server in about 10 lines of Python) and it’s available on a huge number of platforms, including FreeBSD.

I find perl to be ugly, and ruby like a slightly worse, more complex Python, but that’s just my opinion, and if you learn any of these 3 languages you will not go too far wrong.

Of course, this is coming from the guy who decided to teach himself C++ as his first programming language, so make of that what you will.

-- 
Felix Friedlander <felixphew0 at gmail.com <mailto:felixphew0 at gmail.com>>


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