OK, feel like I need to comment on this one. In terms of general
programming you could use whatever you like, perl (if as was said
above you like write-only programs) tcl, python, c++ etc.
However if you would like to do crystallographic calculations, I can
recommend that Python + CCTBX is excellent. There's an enormous amount
you can do with really surprisingly short python programs.
There's also a CCTBX mailing list where you can get lots of help with things.
Cheerio,
Graeme
On 24 January 2012 06:29, James Stroud <xtald...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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
>
