[LUGSB] What do you think would be a good "first programming language", and why?

[Michael Graffam]

On Thu, 11 Dec 2003, amol Shanbhag wrote:

> I will slightly drift away from programming languages
> and move towards tools which u might find handy,
> especially if you are an EE or math/pure science
> major,

If the programming tasks are mathematical/numerical in nature, a language
like Matlab (and, see GNU Octave, which is Free Software and is similar
to Matlab) or a symbolic computing system like Maxima are good choices.

In this case, if more "hardcore" programming was also desired, a language
like Lisp is probably the best. Lisp's array support (if not syntax) is
every bit as flexible and powerful as Matlab's.

> By the way, while on the topic does anyone know, if
> there exists matlab to C converter or matlab to java
> converter?

There does. Well, more precisely, there was. Long ago, in the annals of
time there existed a Matlab-compatible system called Mideva, and a
Matlab-to-C++ translator/compiler kit called Matcom. It even existed for
Linux. :)

Then, Mideva was purchased by the Mathworks and killed, while pieces of
the compiler technology were subsumed into modern versions of Matlab.

Matcom was available freely (as in beer, not freedom) for academic use,
and could compile GNU Octave code (with its slight syntactic extensions).

I have a copy of Matcom 4.0 and 4.5 for Linux. 4.5 is in binary-only
form, so you might have to fiddle with C-library bindings to make it
work. 4.0 is in "obfuscated C" code -- which is to say that it is
unreadable to humans, but GCC can compile it to produce a matcom library
(for Matlab support) and the matcom compiler.

If you're going to use it for 'academic' purposes, I'm only marginally
out of bounds when I offer it to you :)