Programming_Languages.md

Types

• Imperative
• Functional like Haskel
• Hardware like Verilog/VHDL
• Machine Learning (Software 2.0)

Languages to Learn

• Assembly -> C -> Python
• Haskel
• Verilog & VHDL to see how things run at the same time

Statically-typed vs. Dynamically-typed Language

• In a statically-typed language, the type of a variable is determined at compile time, rather than at runtime.
• This means that the type of a variable must be specified when it is declared, and the variable can only hold values of that type.
• In contrast, a dynamically-typed language like Python does not require you to specify the type of a variable when you declare it.

Decorators

• Decorators wrap a function, modifying its behavior

Imperative Programming Language

• Code describes a step-by-step process for a program’s execution. This process is called the control flow
• Examples of imperative languages like Java, C, Pascal, Python, Ruby, Fortran, PHP

Declarative Programming Language

• Declarative programming describes what you want the program to achieve rather than how it should run.
• You define the results you want a program to accomplish without describing its control flow.
• Examples of declarative programming languages like SQL, Miranda, Prolog, Lisp, Many markup languages (e.g., HTML)

OOP vs. Non-OOP Languages

• It's more a matter of how you write than what you can express
• Some people prefer to have a special syntax support for functionality, but that comes with much more complex language like C++
• Different systems will lead to different choices like mission-critical (performance/correctness)

C vs. C++

• C++ standard is 1600+ pages while C is 700 => more difficult to prove your code from ground principles as you can do with C
• You might have to go to the C standard for some notions when using the C++ standard
• C++ is a changing language, so different versions of the compiler are not necessarily compatible. This leads to problems at build/deployment time

C++ vs. Java

• C++ and Java differ in their platform dependency, memory management, and use of classes
• C++ is platform dependent and needs to be compiled on every platform
• Java is platform-independent. Once it's compiled into bytecode it can be executed on any platform

Public vs. Private vs. Protected

• Public variables, are variables that are visible to all classes.
• Private variables, are variables that are visible only to the class to which they belong.
• Protected variables, are variables that are visible only to the class to which they belong, and any subclasses.