On Jan 23, 2012, at 9:46 PM, Yuri Pompeu wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
> I want to play around with some coding/programming. Just simple calculations
> from an input PDB file, B factors averages, occupancies, molecular weight, so
> forth...
> What should I use python,C++, visual basic?
> thanks
Python is the most practical. Here is a simple python program:
print "Hello World"
Feel the power.
Python can be that simple or can be arbitrarily complex, nuanced, or abstract.
You can write entire applications in python or small utilities. If you practice
good habits, you will begin building reusable libraries from day one, saving
time over the long haul.
STAY AWAY from proprietary nonsense like visual basic and from languages that
do not facilitate reusability, like perl or other 1980's era shell languages.
You will find yourself porting or abandoning your code, which is not a good use
of your time.
I also do not recommend overweight languages like java, which create "programs"
that never seem to deploy correctly and take about 5 times more code to create
than should be necessary. Here's the java "Hello World":
class HelloWorldApp {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("Hello World!"); // Display the string.
}
}
Public static void main? Don't bother.
And python can be VERY fast for calculations if you use free and popular
libraries like numpy and scipy. These librares are wrappers around optimized
fortran and C libraries that you will never have to use directly.
I recommend staying away from very low level languages like C or fortran, too.
It is good to know these languages, but not so good to use them. Your
creativity should go towards implementing cool ideas and should not be
squandered on plugging memory leaks. It's better to use high level languages
that leverage your time most effectively.
James
