Learning A New Language

[James Parsons]

I have know and use C, Java, and Python, as well a knowledge in a *ton* of other languages, but I am trying to learn a new language. Despite any opposition I will get, these are the languages I'm thinking about:

Ada
Pascal
Go
Haskell

I have prepared my personal pros and cons for each.

Ada

PROS:
  Like The Language
  Gnat Programming Studio Is Nice
CONS:
  Hate The Type System
  Plenty Of Docs On The Language, But Not The GNAT Runtime
  No Ada Forum :(

Pascal

PROS:
  I Like Freepascal/Lazarus
  Easy To Learn
  Good Amount OF Documentation
CONS:
  Flat Out Boring

Go

PROS:
  Like The Philosophy
  Could Become A Great Language 
CONS:
  No IDE's 
  Weird Syntax
  No Standard GUI API

Haskell

PROS:
  Need To Learn A Functional Language Other Than Scala
  Like The Lang :)
CONS:
  Few IDE's 
  Functional Lang's Are Weird To Me

So I was wondering If I could get some feedback from the community on these languages, and which to learn.

[ResidentBiscuit]

I'd go with Go. If you want some nice practice with it, contribute to the Lime project on github. It's a work in progress of a Sublime Text clone, but it's open source obviously.

[LB]

Go for Go. Let me know enjoyable the duck typing is :)

[Mats]

Write an IDE for Go... In Go!

[LB]

Does Go even have graphical support yet? The only reason I haven't looked into it more is because I couldn't find a simple way to draw graphics into a window in Go. I'm sure you can interface with C libraries and such in Go, but that's beside the point.

[CodeGazer]

http://godoc.org/code.google.com/p/graphics-go/graphics
http://blog.golang.org/go-imagedraw-package

It's had graphics support for quite a while now.

This also might help with checking out what it supports and doesn't for now
http://golang.org/pkg/

[James Parsons]

So i'm convinced. Can I use pointers in Go to point to memory address's. How up to date is the Go-GTK package. How do you suggest I go forth to start learning the language.

p.s.
@L B, Apparently go can only interface with certain C compilers. http://golang.org/doc/faq#Do_Go_programs_link_with_Cpp_programs

@Mats, Just how easy would that be?

[Stormboy]

@ James: Yeah there are pointers in Go. Different people have different ways of learning a language. When I learn a new language, I see how the things that I know in the languages I know are done in the new language. BTW Go is kinda similar to C so it wouldn't be much trouble learning it (once you get used to its weird syntax that is).

[James Parsons]

So, would it be suitable for OS development if built into a cross compiler

[Stormboy]

C/C++ with assembly is usually recommended for OS Dev. You'll see that almost all kernels and OS are written in C/C++ + Assembly. But I don't think you'd have a problem writing an OS with Go.

[N36fSL3A]

Your best option would to avoid C++ and just use C and Assembly for OS Dev.

It's best to avoid working with advanced C++ features when you're that low.

[LB]

The issue is not "advanced C++ features" but rather the binary incompatibility between different C++ implementations.