Hi there Anand, Learn Lisp. Or any language in the Lisp family - like scheme. You get umb-scheme with Red Hat. There is a famous scheme book called Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs available *free* online at aduni.org .
> I am 37. Had a history of programming in Fortran, Pascal and C in my > college days and dbase/Foxpro in my early part of career. All, Procedure > oriented programming stuff, of good old days. I have not actively > programmed anything in last 5 years or so, but now I want to. I find > that I am now an illiterate!! > In fact, all of these languages are descended from Algol 60 standard. > > Objectives: I should be able to program for my day to day business / > hobby interests. I sincerely hope that the programming language I pick > up serves me good till the end of my career (another 23 years!!) for all > that I may need. > Lisp has been around forever. Only Fortran is older. > > 1. It should not change so often, that I leave all my "domain knowledge" > and keep on learning all the new versions, that arrive every 2-3 years. > ANSI standard in 1971 (before many members of ILUG-D were *born*) ! > 2. It should support Procedure Oriented Programming, so that I do'nt > have much trouble getting started. Yes. > > 3. It should support developing Web Pages (Static/Dynamic/..) (support > networking applications as well!) > Yahoo! Store. Is that Web/dynamic enough for you ? Look at http://www.paulgraham.com . > 4. It should be able to to connect and provide an interface to the > numerous databases around: Oracle, MS SQL Server, Postgres, MySQL, you > name it ... > ODBC is available. > 5. My programs should run, irrespective of the platform : Windows World > / Unix World / Handheld World / Any other World.. > Yes. > 6. It should support Object Oriented Programming, so that I can switch > to that as soon as I can and enjoy all those advantages the World is > enjoying. > I am one of the unfortunate people who had to read Stroustroupe's book as an intro to OO. Needless to add, I did not understand either the book or OO. Then I read 4 pages on OO in a Lisp book. That was all that was required. > 7. It should support scripting: My present job required a bit of system > administration. > Frankly, for my own sysadmin needs, I use a combination of bash and Perl. Larry Wall has borrowed heavily from Lisp. In fact the influence can be seen all over the Camel book. Or just man perl. > 8. It can be used for Scientific and Engineering Applications. > There are libraries for this. > 9. It should support UNICODE, or any successor platform, so that I can > develop applications in my native language. > Yes. > 10. The compiler / development tools etc should be readily downloadable > and availability under a GPL licence will be just wonderful. > Yes. > 11. Abundant support should be readily available. > Abundant - I don't know. Quality support is readily available. > 12. I should not be living in an island. > You won't be. I promise. > My god!! I am already lost. > Good. Lisp will show you the way. Now on to a topic that is close to my heart. We all know that MIT is offering its course materials online at ocw.mit.edu. What most do not know is that a part of the Comp Sc materials are available at http://www.aduni.org as a hard disk for purchase. Included are classroom lectures (Real) , exercises, tests, exams ... Classes cover Maths, CS, DBMS theory and how to develop for the web. The license of the hard disk is - "Please make as many copies as you can and distribute" !!! Of course they teach Lisp (or rather, scheme). -- Pai ================================================ To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe in subject header. Check archives at http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd%40wpaa.org
