Hello All, I'm a beginning EL coder without a formal programming background. I can create basic indicators and systems but when I look at more complicated code I have alot of difficulty figureing out what the code is actually doing. I know that EL has alot of capability, I just feel a basic programming background would be very helpful in getting the most out of EL. What programming language(s) would be recommended to learn good programming habits and provide a more structured programming approach that would serve me well in my EL programming tasks/DLL utilization/creation and should I move on to another platform serve me well in the future. eg. Java, C++, C#,VBA ???????? Please elaborate on why you recommend a particular language. thanks for your input
I'm a C# programmer. But I'd say Python if you are from EasyLanguage. I picked C# because I was trying to use TT's API and they only had .NET, Java and C++ APIs at the time. I didn't know much about programming at that time and didn't know that I could use Python on their C++ API. Java was too hard for me because the coding required Exceptions for each method. And... their .NET example seemed easy to understand. By the time I could deal with all 3 languages, I've written do much shit with C#.NET
C++ is definately the most widely used and offers the most flexibility, but since you have no formal programming background it is going to be the most difficult to learn. Java and C# are basically on the same level, but of the two I'd pick Java over C# because it's more widely used. VBA would be the easiest to learn, but any real programmer would laugh at you for using it. You're not going to "learn good programming habits" by using VBA. But if you want simplicity for a non-programmer, then choose VBA.
C# is my development language of choice. I have coded in VB, C++ but by far C# is the most up to date (by MSFT) and once you know C# you can code... Java, JavaScirpt, and understand the syntax better of many back testing software packages such as AMIBroker. MTRIG.com (from my account name) is an ASP.NET site written in C#.
Learning how to program well is completely separate from the language you use. Lousy programmers will generate horrible code no matter what language used. Good programmers will produce elegant code in the ugliest of languages. IMHO, forget object-oriented languages like C++, C# and Java for the time being and focus on C to learn the core aspects of programming. Next, work through a good C tutorial. This one is fairly complete and free: http://www2.its.strath.ac.uk/courses/c/ Best of luck.
C# is "object-oriented"? I beg to differ. Would you say that C is object-oriented? No, I wouldn't. C++ and C# evolved from C. Although you can use C# to code object-oriented classes and structure, but C# is not an object-oriented language itself and it doesn't force you to code with object-oriented approaches. In my opinion, C# with .NET Foundation Classes is much easier to code than C or C++ with or without that archiac ATL library. Compared to ATL (or STL), Microsoft has a very nice .NET Foundation Classes that includes data structures for Arrays, Lists, etc. So, with C#, .NET Foundation Classes and a good tutorial, you can learn some good programming practices.
I would start with smalltalk. http://www.object-arts.com/content/navigation/home.html then, http://www.planetpdf.com/codecuts/pdfs/ooc.pdf then, Java and C#.