Java in CS

[stonedzealot]

I'm looking at colleges (I'm a junior in hs) and I'm looking to major in Computer Science. Well, I'm looking at all of these classes and they use freakin JAVA in programming. I absolute hate that language! Why don't they use the more mainstream C/C++ or Pascal!? It's retarded! Now I have to wade through code in a language that IMO $u><oRs DAMN DAMN DAMN!

[Eero Ränik]

Bad luck...

[sonneveld]

Well I believe Pascal is the more retarded out of all those languages. Switches without a default (in standard pascal) and different syntaxes for incrementing and decrementing in loops?

Considering C/C++ and Java use a very similar syntax.. it shouldn't be too hard to learn to program between them.

For instance.. Java was introduced to all engineering students here first.. and then later on they do HC11 assembler and C.

At least Java has a huge library to play around with. It's mostly portable and you have a gui toolkit api which is consistant across platforms.

- Nick

[stonedzealot]

Down with the infidel!
It's not an issue with learning to program between the two languages, I can do it easily. As for the library...I do mostly OS dev so I'd have to write my own anyway. Pascal is the language I used first and the basic incrementing loops and switches are *very* minor problems.

The only thing that really angers me about Java is the general look and feel of their applications. It looks like it requires much more effort to get a decent looking GUI in Java than in Delphi (basically Visual Pascal). Maybe I've just gotten a lot of programs written by monkeys or something but that's the impression that I get.

[ark]

That's because most other languages probably actually use Windows own interface to create their GUIs, whereas Java's Windows look-and-feel is a poor simulation. I've found that most of the Java GUI apps that I've seen have horrible graphics performance (although this may be the fault of the programmer, it seems to happen a little too often for that to be the case). The other thing is those deplorable layout managers. I thought object-orientation was supposed to make things easier, not more awkward??

[sonneveld]

yep.. ok.. the Swing GUI does look awful but I was trying to make a point about the consistant gui api between systems. There aren't many api's that you can use between systems easily.

- Nick

[stonedzealot]

I have an official answer from the Director of Undergraduate Programs (in CS) of UIUC, Prof. Kamin.

Mr. Miller, we use Java primarily in the intro programming course, then switch to C++. Most of the upper-level courses use C++. We switched to Java for the intro course about 5 years ago. At the time, we were switching from Scheme, because we felt students would prefer a more realistic language. Our choice at that time was basically between C++ and Java. We felt that C++ was too complicated for a first language, but we wanted an object-oriented language. I think this was a good choice. If we were choosing now, we might go with C# instead, but I would still argue that C++ is too complex for a first language, and I think most of my colleagues in CS would agree

Excellent answer! I was very surprised.

[Mastermind]

Bad luck...

Yeah...