6 replies to this topic

[DarkLordoftheMonkeys]

I find them to be of equal difficulty. I actually had a hell of a time learning SQL, because it's different for each RDBMS, but I had no problem learning bash, despite all its reckless abbreviation. I was wondering what you think about this.

[Orjan]

I think that for a beginner, a more english like language, as for example Pascal or Basic might be easier to learn, but as soon as you understand the fundamentals of programming as with iterations, selection, flow control, I believe it's as easy with any language within the same programming paradigm. Then you reach a new step to climb when you try another paradigm that you aren't used to.

I would say that SQL is a very different language, as it's not really a programming language, but as the name says, a query language

[DarkLordoftheMonkeys]

Orjan said:

I would say that SQL is a very different language, as it's not really a programming language, but as the name says, a query language

I consider SQL to be a programming language because most RDBMS's allow you to write scripts and batch files in SQL. To me, any language that can create stored procedures, i.e. programs, is a programming language. It doesn't have to be Turing complete.

[Orjan]

Well, of course you can see it that way too, but still, it's very different it its fundamentals.

[WingedPanther]

Some versions of SQL are actually Turing complete. Oracle and MS SQL both satisfy this. However, SQL is based VERY heavily on set theory, which most people aren't used to using. To me, what will be easiest depends a lot on your background. For me, as a mathematician, I find more verbose languages irritating. For others, terse languages like C++ are the irritating languages.

[DarkLordoftheMonkeys]

I never had a problem with the mathematical side of SQL as I have some knowledge of set theory. I've realized that SQL is almost the only language that uses sets as a basic data structure (the columns of a table), other than Pascal and Modula 2, and probably some mathematically oriented languages like Mathematica. I personally prefer more cryptic languages as all the punctuation helps keep a program more organized. In a way I might even say they are easier to read because of that.

[ZekeDragon]

I'm biased toward Python and "sentence structure" readable programming languages. Having a 'then' after an 'if' statement isn't a sin to me, in fact if you can eliminate the need of the parenthesis, which to me is clutter, the additional 'then' is quite a bit more understandable (in Python, if statements are followed by a colon, which is actually probably the best).

I'm all for terseness, but I think that code should be verbose enough that it doesn't take you 5 minutes to figure out what a relatively simple function is supposed to do. Ideally reading program code should be as natural and fast as reading written text, even if it takes a little longer to write. You read code far more than you write it.