Which programming language is the best language to use to write a program?

Answer 1

Often the answer is the one you are the best at, unless there is something about a programming language that is superior and needed for your task at hand. If you need speedy execution of the program, you might go for C++ or C. If you intend to do heavy text parsing, you might go for PERL. If you are a web development agency that wants to bang out websites quickly and cheap, you might go for open source scripting languages (accompanied perhaps by frameworks) such as Ruby on Rails or PHP (Symfony framework is one I like).

I hate to give the cliche answer of "Well, it depends", that is why I gave you some good examples along with some strengths of certain programming languages.

Remember that every programming language was designed to solve something others weren't good at.

Answer 2

There is no one "right" langage as the answer to this question.

C and its variants are good for some things. FORTRAN and Pascal and Ada and BASIC are good for many programs. Believe it or not, there are cases where even COBOL is still the right choice. And I used to write in assembler by preference because of the efficiency involved.

You pick a language for a project USUALLY because it is the language you learned the most about or liked the most. And THAT is the "right" language to use. The one you like the most is the one you'll know the best - and therefore the one you'll use most effectively. Which is why it is best - for you.

I actually think C shouldn't be used for ANY beginner projects. It has (to my way of thinking) a serious flaw as originally designed. It is a weak-typing language. (That is, you can declare a data type but the original C didn't care that much what you did after that, leading to programming atrocities.) In the orignal C, you needed to run a secondary pre-compiler to identify mixed-mode expressions and other matters where a typecast or other mode fix is required.

Ada is at the other end of that spectrum. I actually like Ada because once I get past the first clean compile, I guarantee you my data types are all properly aligned and there are no mixed-mode expressions floating around.

Answer 3

I don't know about others, but for me, Assembly was like the glue that made all my computer knowledge come together. Before assembly, I used to wonder how all the wonderful software could work and how Operating Systems and games were developed, after learning assembly, all these things turned into simple commands that the computer executed one after the other. I think that learning assembly makes your understanding of how a computer do what it does very clear. You get to know the internal workings of a computer. Even though I only know the basics of Assembly language and am probably not good enough to develop any kind of use-able software in it, I still think that learning assembly made a great deal of difference to my programming knowledge. I think that once you learn assembly, you really understand that computers are just stupid machines that do exactly what you tell them to do. From there on, grasping anything is just simple. You then get the ability to not think about the latest software as doing magic, or an Operating System as a program that was made by geniuses.... From there on, its simple MOV, ADD, SUB, ... instructions that make all the magic inside the computer work, even Linux or Windows!!! My advice, even though you'll probably never use it, learn a bit about assembly. It won't take more than a day or two, but will probably go a long way.

Answer 4

Wow, what a wide open question. That is kind of like asking, which wine should I buy? It depends on a lot of things:

1) What do you want to do?
2) How much time do you want to invest learning the syntax?
3) What kind of portability are you looking for?

these are only three! I think a lot of the answers do address that C++ is probably your most versatile of all languages, but it is what I call a "high maintenance" language. You need to literally know a lot about the language to really get the most out of it. Java seems to be the go-to language these days for most things, but you could never use Java to write any sort of reliable firmware. C# is also wonderful, in that you need not worry about how pointers are handled and comes with lots of built in data types that make life a lot easier. But it really comes down to the three questions I mention above. Each flavor is appropriate for a certain range of things. First determine what that range of things is, and then you can decide which flavor to choose.

Answer 5

There's no programming language perfect for writing all kinds of programs. You should know about the capabilities of a programming language and how it will help you to develop your program.

C++ is a great language of course, but try using it for web programming...

Answer 6

C++

It's one of the most powerful languages, I highly recommend it!

I am currently taking a C++ class, and am amazed at all the things I am able to do now with only the first 18 weeks of learning, (though the teacher hasn't taught us anything that couldn't be read on the internet in a few days.)

www.cplusplus.com

Answer 7

There's a lot of programs in order to use for writing a program such as : Visual Basic, PHP, Fox Pro, Borland C, Borland C++, Delphi, Turbo Pascal, Assemble ...
That depends on your idea or on your writing for what !

Answer 8

I would say you can use any programming language for that. But I would suggest starting it from Visual Basic as it does not require any code to create any controls.

http://www.freetutes.com/VisualBasic

Answer 9

C++

Answer 10

Wow, I'm an outcast lol. We use Fortran 90 and IDL.