Programming languages

Subject: Programming languages
From: Richard Mateosian <srm -at- CYBERPASS -dot- NET>
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 19:45:11 -0800

In his book "COM and DCOM -- Microsoft's Vision for Distributed Objects"
(Wiley, 1998, ISBN 0-471-19381-X) Roger Sessions sees Java as the language
of choice for developing components -- reusable and recombinable program
modules.

COM/DCOM is the wrapper that lets these components interact with
applications languages, the most important of which in this context is
Visual Basic, because it is ideal for developing user interfaces.

These elements are at the heart of Microsoft's strategy to replace
mainframe computing with three-tier applications on networks of NT servers.

So what do technical communicators need to know about these things?

I think Visual Basic is a useful language to know, but if you're going to
document software, Elna's right -- the first thing you need to know is Java.

Java is an object-oriented successor to C. It's what C++ set out to be but
didn't totally succeed at. C++ remains backward compatible with C, while
Java eliminates some of the more error-prone features of C (and hence C++),
most notably pointer arithmetic and explicit memory management.

It's not enough to learn the syntax of Java -- you need to learn the
object-oriented and networked world view that surrounds it. Object
orientation is easy and completely natural -- unless you've already learned
a procedural language like C. In that case you have some unlearning to do.

There are hundreds of books on Java. My website is down or I'd refer you to
the many reviews I've written in the last year and a half. Look for

The Java Programming Language by Ken Arnold & James Gosling
(Addison Wesley, Reading MA, 1996, 352pp, ISBN 0-201-63455-4)

Just Java, 2d ed by Peter van der Linden (Prentice Hall, Upper
Saddle River NJ, 1997, 574pp plus CD, 800-382-3419, ISBN
0-13-272303-4)

Or pick one of the many other good ones. I think there are a couple in the
Laura Lemay "Learn x in y Days" series. ...RM


Richard Mateosian <srm -at- cyberpass -dot- net>
Review Editor, IEEE Micro Berkeley, CA

(C) Copyright 1998. All rights reserved.




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