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Closed 10 years ago.
I am relatively new to programming and want to be able to make native C++ programs for Linux and Windows.
I am just wondering as a beginner should I first of all learn low level languages such as C and assembly in vim or should I just straight out start in an IDE with C++?
If you want to learn C++, learn C++. Learning C or assembly language first is not only a waste of time, but usually teaches relatively poor habits that you need to work at un-learning before you use C++ well.
That's not to say that knowing C or assembly language makes it impossible to use C++ well -- but each requires decidedly different mind-sets, so it creates extra work.
If your ultimate goal is to learn C++, it is not a prerequisite that you learn C first. You can, but you don't have to.
The bottom line is, do what you feel most comfortable doing.
C++ is not (really) a high-level programming language. You're still manually managing your memory and getting undefined environment-specific behavior whenever you make a minor programming mistake. Besides that, C++ is a very unfriendly language for new programmers because it is both overly complex and (in my opinion) horribly designed.
I recommend starting with an actual high-level language like Java, Python or C# in combination with a fancy IDE. Starting with C is also an option if you want to concentrate more on low-level aspects rather than general programming techniques and paradigms.
Also you don't have to learn vim if you want to start programming, a simple editor such as gedit or Notepad++ will also work perfectly fine. An IDE specifically designed for your language is probably the most comfortable, though.
EDIT: As Jerry Coffin has correctly pointed out, this advice isn't really helpful if your goal is to program C++ applications. Although I'd still recommend starting with an easier (high-level) language to obtain general programming skills before you start with C++. If C++ isn't absolutely neccessary for the thing you want to achieve, it also isn't a bad idea to reconsider whether you actually want to use that language.
If you want to learn C++, start with C++. You don't need to learn C first; it would actually be somewhat counterproductive, since you'd have to unlearn some stuff when you moved to C++.
C and C++ are different languages, with different goals and philosophies. A well-written C++ program will not look or behave much like a well-written C program.
Once you get comfortable with high-level C++ features, then you can start delving into the lower level details.
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
-Sir Issac Newton
Do not reinvent the wheel.
start as high and abstracted from the core as you can, and only revisit the core when there is no other way to advance in your road.
Your question seems to me being more about learning programming.
Language choice may be secondary to learning the programing paradigms/concepts.
So if programming is your focus, then you may first learn object oriented programming (OOP) concepts, so that you don't have to "adopt" them in a way people coming from procedural approach often do. Then, if needed, you may dig into procedural way and some C idioms/tricks and low-level approaches.
OOP can be taught in C++ as in Java etc. does not matter on that stage.
Once your mindset is "oriented", then the actual programming will be more about using existing libraries (APIs), which in fact will require more learning than the language itself.
So my advice is to learn OOP concepts first, then review your future language preferences. Have fun!!
Javascript is the first language I learned and I feel lucky that it was. With it I was able to skip past alot of the intricacies and barriers of other languages like static typing, pointers, and compiling. With javascript, you don't even have to install anything, just go here and you can begin trying things out: http://jsfiddle.net/X4PpW/ .
After I had a strong grasp of Javascript, understanding the concept of using pointers and classes in C was easy for me. Another good language to start with would be Python.
Also, what do you intend on making? Not all desktop apps have to be written in C. In fact some new frameworks out there borrow ideas from web applications or even allow embedding HTML from websites into your app.
Games: Unity3d http://unity3d.com/ (Games written in this can be ported to mobile devices or the Web but requires a plugin)
General app with UI : QT http://qt.nokia.com/products/
Related
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Closed 10 years ago.
Is there any good book for functional programming in Python or C++ ? I need to master functional programming in those languages.
By functional programming, I assume you mean referential transparency (basically, no global state or side-effects), plus things like functions as first-class objects, polymorphic types, partial function application etc.
There is no book that I know of that covers functional programming in C++. You could program without global state and side-effects in C++, and you can pass functions as arguments using function-typed pointers, but you couldn't get partial function application, nor anonymous lambda expressions.
Text Processing in Python uses a functional style, and is what turned me on to functional programming. It's also a great Python/programming book in general, and I highly recommend it.
MMhh if you want to learn functional programming you should learn a functional language first to really understand the principals then you can tree to apply them as good as you can, witch will be harder.
In python you can use functions to modify dictionarys witch is pretty functional. Make use of lambda with higher order function. You have to avoid classes and inheritance.
I cant really say much about C++. Maybe you can find some functional datastructures and then write functions on those. Look for a library that provides functions like map, reduce ...
C++0x should support closures and currying (more or less) so thing will get better.
In general:
Try to write immutible layers on librarys (be awair that that wont performe to well)
Look for librarys that are written in a functional way
Edit: I would recomend learning scheme its really small and you can pick it up fast. Read something like SICP or the Little Schemer that teach you recursiv thinking.
Only a future version of C++ supports lambdas / anonymous functions. I guess Boost.Lambda supports C++ Functional programming, but it isn't really a first-class citizen of C++ yet.
Books about functional programming typically use functional languages. Like Haskell, Miranda, Lisp, Scheme, OCaml, Javascript and so forth.
EDIT: I'll withhold my opinion on Python for now. It appears I'm mistaken about a few things.
In looking for info on functional programming in Python, I've found this web page to be very useful:
http://www.amk.ca/python/writing/functional
The references part contains a lot of crude information.
If you are looking for a book covering only functional programming in Python, I don't know about it.
C++ is more difficult. It has many of the ingredients (and it is steadily gaining more) for functional programming, but lacks many others. Actually, C++ was never designed for supporting functional programming, so it is typical that you'll be able to work with functional programming in some containers, but need to revert to imperative programming frequently.
While not a book, here is a site that can at least get you started on some things. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-prog.html
As far as really understanding functional programming I would suggest something like "The Little Schemer" to get a quick handle on scheme. You can then apply the ideas to python.
For Perl, I can recommend "Higher Order Perl".
Don't know about Python or C++ though.
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Closed 12 years ago.
A friend of mine decided to learn some lower level language (to increaze his abilities) so he is thinking C. Or maybe C++?!
He does not know either to just learn C or go full way with C++.
He asked me what are they used for and couldn't tell him (its been a while since I last used either C or C++).
So my question, trying to help my friend, is What are they best at, C and C++?.
When you need C++ and when is C enough?
P.S. I am not trying to start a war or argument. I don't want syntax explanations like C does not do templates or does not have classes to better think in OOP etc. I just want to know what are the strongest points of each as applicability, functional solutions
At a very high level, there's nothing you can do in C++ that you couldn't already do in C. The main difference between the two languages is the level of abstraction at which they work.
C is a mid-level systems programming language designed to be a thin, portable layer over the machine's underlying hardware. It's designed to be small, so that the language can easily be ported from one machine to another, but expressive, so that you can build complex systems on top of it. C excels in embedded environments, or areas where resource constraints are so extreme that you need to manually manage all of the details yourself (for example, OS kernels, embedded devices, etc.)
C++ is, in the words of its creator, "a general-purpose programming language with a bias toward systems programming that 1) Is a better C, 2) supports data abstraction, 3) supports object-oriented programming, 4) supports generic programming." It evolved as a programming language with runtime performance comparable to C but with higher-level language features more suitable for structuring large, complex systems. The language is significantly more complex, but is a lot more expressive and maps more naturally to the way that you think about programming problems. While you can get the performance of raw C, often programs in C++ will make small sacrifices in runtime efficiency for simplicity of programming.
I can't think of a single application where C would be strictly better than C++ or vice-versa. C++ programs are on the Mars rovers, internet routers, video games, etc. C programs are what power Linux and Windows. There really isn't a clear winner of one over the other. That said, I'm personally more preferential to C++. I think that it's much easier to encode a design in C++, since the language is richer and you can be more precise about what you mean.
Either language would be a great starting point. Learn C if you want to get up and coding quickly. Learn C++ if you want to invest a little more time, but want to build larger systems.
C:
Support for more weird built-in custom microcontrollers.
C++:
OOP, lots and lots of prebuilt libraries (boost).
Go for C++!
If the goal is just to learn, pick C. It's a very small language, and you can do a lot with it. There are many open-source projects that you can look at for examples of good code.
It's great for making things that need to be deployed as machine-code or language-neutral libraries.
Once you have used C a lot, you might understand why C++ was invented and how you might use it.
Even if you start out with the goal of learning C++, you need to learn a lot of C to accomplish your C++ learning.
If the goal is to learn a lower level language, C++ is considered higher level than C. Might as well go low, since that's part of the goal. If you really want to go low, learn assembly (but not Intel assembly, that's just inflicting pain without benefit). RISC or MIPS styled assemblies are a good choice, but the non-Intel slant probably reduces the hardware your friend has available.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I have tried to keep up with C++ since they introduced 1998 ANSI/ISO C++. I absorbed the new concepts and tried to understand them. I learned about exception handling, templates, and namespaces. I've read about the new cast mechanisms and worked with the STL library.
All of these concepts required a lot of energy. But now I am somewhat worried about the future of C++ when having a look at the new C++0x standard.
Things are getting more and more complicated. This language is becoming a monster.
I'm not sure that I want to keep up with the language anymore, since I don't do my day-to-day hacking in C++ anyway. I mostly use interpreted or bytecode languages.
So why should I bother to learn this difficult, yet exceptionally powerful, language? I can do 95% of my business with Python et al. With the remaining 5%, I can deal with plain old C++ or C without hassle.
What do you think?
Everyone uses a subset of C++. For almost all application programming in C++, whether server or client side, that subset is manageable. In my opinion, the only folks that need to stay on top of absolutely every nuance of the language are the library writers -- people implementing Boost, STL, Loki, etc.
But I would absolutely use the language that fits the task. If Python is more readable and more maintainable than C++ for your job, and you don't need what C++ offers, then certainly stick with Python.
Hear what Bruce Eckel { author of the two of the so-called best C++ books } commented on C++ a few weeks ago:
That said, I hardly ever use C++
anymore. When I do, it's either
examining legacy code, or to write
performance-critical sections,
typically as small as possible to be
called from other code (my preferred
approach is to quickly write an app in
Python, then profile it and if
necessary improve performance by
calling small portions of C++ using
Python's ctypes library).
Because I was on the C++ Standards
Committee, I saw these decisions being
made. They were all extremely
carefully considered, far more so than
many of the decisions made in Java.
However, as people have rightly
pointed out, the resulting language
was complicated and painful to use and
full of weird rules that I forget as
soon as I'm away from it for a little
while -- and I figured out those rules
from first principles while I wrote
books, not just by memorizing them.
Additionally, you should read this thread and Danny Kalev's predictions on C++.
However, the growing complexity of C++ will create pressure towards splitting the language into quasi-official dialects. We can already see this trend today; it will probably intensify in the future.
EDIT:
You should take a look at this discussion, too:
C++ - Anyone else feel like C++ is getting too complicated?
First, many features of C++0x are to make the language easier to use. More readable template compile errors, more consistent initialization syntax, support for threading, which would otherwise have to rely on platform-specific libraries and so on.
So if you do use C++, I feel learning the important parts of C++0x should be a manageable task. Remember that you don't need to learn all the new features to use the language. Some features are primarily added as an aid for library implementers, for example allowing the STL to be implemented more efficiently, but which shouldn't really affect the end-users usage of the language. And some are only really necessary in very rare cases. Ignore those parts of the language.
One of their stated goals with C++0x is to avoid it becoming harder to use.
But apart from that, do you need C++? If you do your coding in other languages, why bother keeping up with C++?
You're not forced to use every feature a language provides. I don't use setjmp/longjmp in C despite it being there. I also don't use every aspect of the Java collections.
If you think the new features will make your code delivery better (faster or higher quality or both), then use them. Otherwise ignore them.
It's useful to know at a high level what they all are, if only to get you through job interviews, but half the stuff they add to languages are unnecessary in my opinion.
I never even got around to using C++ templates before switching to Java, but I knew what they were for.
It's not always about learning the latest and greatest. Software (at least at your job) is about delivery of product. That can be done in COBOL or FORTRAN if you're proficient enough at it.
No one, except maybe Bjarne and Herb Sutter, know all of C++. As you've said it's an incredibly huge language. Expecting to be able to take the entire standard + the specific implementation details of your specific compiler or compilers is truthfully unrealistic.
But you don't need to know everything in order to use C++. Instead only learn the subset of C++ that is valuable to you and your projects. It doesn't hurt to keep expanding your knowledge but unless you're writing a C++ compiler, there's no reason to know the whole thing. Even if you accomplish it, all of the people you work with won't.
So why should I bother to learn this
difficult, yet exceptionally powerful,
language? I can do 95% of my business
with python et al. With the remaining
5%, I can deal with plain old C++ or C
without hassle.
Well, for the most part you answer your own question. There is no need for you to keep up with the bleeding edge of C++ at this time.
However, the language will keep marching on. In a few years, some of the concepts you consider a bleeding-edge waste of time today will be in common use. Someday you may find during your 5% of using "plain-old C++" that some example code or code you're collaborating on uses a construct you're not familiar with. At that point, you'll need to hit the net and brush up on the new "current" C++.
Is that going to be a problem? Of course not. You're a programmer. You keep abreast of the latest programming concepts in the context of your 95% language, which also changes over time. You will likely already be quite familiar with the concepts and need only familiarize yourself with its C++ syntax when the time comes that you must use them.
Personally I hope to continue keeping up with C++, even if my career moves more toward Java or another next-gen language. Why? I would like to say because it interests me the most and because I love the complexity and expressiveness of it all. More likely, though, is just because it was my first professional language; I consider it my "native tongue".
If it does not interest you, and does not concern your job or future job, don't bother. What's wrong with that? Nothing.
Good answers.
Computer makers compete for buyers, software competes for your disk space, and languages compete for users. They do this by trying to snag each other's features.
I'm wondering how long before we see Fortran come out with lambda expressions :-)
I am hard-pressed to find a single instance where C++0x has been made more complex than C++98. There are two things which really are complex:
Concepts.
the Memory Model
but the first one has been removed again (thankfully; standardizing unimplemented features has never worked out in C++, witness throw specifications, extern templates, auto_ptr, ...), and the second isn't really something that a modern programming language can escape. It's been externally induced by Intel & Co helpfully breaking your programs to make them run faster.
The rest is just fixing annoyances that every C++ programmer has been frequently hitting in the last decades.
As a side note: I find it ... amusing ... to see how languages such as C# get packed with a database query language (LINQ) and C++ is objurgated as being bloated.
You don't need to know every standard that comes out by heart. It does help to know about the big picture though. The 5% that you do code in may have you reinvent the occasional wheel. Depending on how much time, importance that 5% has (think Pareto) you need to take a call.
Also, any particular reason (like legacy code dependency) why you can't move that 5% to python?
First try attending a course on c++0x and make your firm pay for that :)
Our brains can fit amazing amounts of junk-knowledge. Instead of cursing and having programmer-wtf-moments we should first learn from program users and listen to other people's opinions/knowhows. Knowledge transfers much faster that way.
My suggestion would be to learn the new keywords of c++0x ( && FTW) but not bother trying to learn the entire lib. Use python for w/e you want, possibly C# for apps, then use C++(0x) when you need to do something powerful. and ask stackoverflow & google about the new container when prototyping.
You dont need to use a select few language,
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Closed 10 years ago.
I visited a university CS department open day today and in the labs tour we sat down to play with a couple of final-year projects from undergraduate students. One was particularly good - a sort of FPS asteroids game. I decided to take a peek in the src directory to find it was done in C++ (most of the other projects were Java 3D apps).
I haven't done any C before but I have looked through some C code before. From what I saw in the .cpp code in this game it didn't look very different.
I'm interested in learning either C or C++ but will probably learn the other later on. Is there any advantage to me learning one before the other and if so, which one?
There is no need to learn C before learning C++.
They are different languages. It is a common misconception that C++ is in some way dependent on C and not a fully specified language on its own.
Just because C++ shares a lot of the same syntax and a lot of the same semantics, does not mean you need to learn C first.
If you learn C++ you will eventually learn most of C with some differences between the languages that you will learn over time. In fact its a very hard thing to write proper C++ because intermediate C++ programmers tend to write C/C++.That is true whether or not you started with C or started with C++.
If you know C first, then that is good plus to learning C++. You will start with knowing a chunk of the language. If you do not know C first then there is no point focusing on a different language. There are plenty of good books and tutorials available that start you from knowing nothing and will cover anything you would learn from C which applies to C++ as well.
Please see further reasoning in this answer.
I love this question - it's like asking "what should I learn first, snowboarding or skiing"?
I think it depends if you want to snowboard or to ski. If you want to do both, you have to learn both.
In both sports, you slide down a hill on snow using devices that are sufficiently similar to provoke this question. However, they are also sufficiently different so that learning one does not help you much with the other. Same thing with C and C++. While they appear to be languages sufficiently similar in syntax, the mind set that you need for writing OO code vs procedural code is sufficiently different so that you pretty much have to start from the beginning, whatever language you learn second.
I learned C first, and I took a course in data structures which used C, before I learned C++. This has worked well for me. A data structures course in C gave me a solid understanding of pointers and memory management. It also made obvious the benefits of the object oriented paradigm, once I had learned what it was.
On the flip side, by learning C first, I have developed some habits that initially caused me to write bad C++ code, such as excessive use of pointers (when C++ references would do) and the preprocessor.
C++ is really a very complex language with lots of features. It is not really a superset of C, though. Rather there is a subset of C++ consisting of the basic procedural programming constructs (loops, ifs, and functions), which is very similar to C. In your case, I would start with that, and then work my way up to more advanced concepts like classes and templates.
The most important thing, IMHO, is to be exposed to different programming paradigms, like procedural, object-oriented, functional, and logical, early on, before your brain freezes into one way of looking at the world. Incidentally, I would also strongly recommend that you learn a functional programming language, like Scheme. It would really expand your horizons.
If you decide to learn both (and as other people have mentioned, there's no explicit need to learn both), learn C first. Going from C to C++ feels like a natural progression; going the other way feels like deliberately tying one hand behind your back. :-)
I think you should learn C first, because I learned C first. C gave me a good grasp of the syntax and gotchas with things like pointers, all of which flow into C++.
I think C++ makes it easy to wrap up all those gotchas (need an array that won't overflow when you use the [] operator and a dodgy index? Sure, make an array class that does bounds checking) but you need to know what they are and get bitten by them before you understand why things are done in certain ways.
When all is said and done, the way C++ is usually taught is "C++ is C with objects, here's the C stuff and here's how all this OO stuff works", so you're likely to learn basic C before any real C++ if you follow most texts anyway.
I'm going to disagree with the majority here. I think you should learn C before learning C++. It's definitely not necessary, but I think it makes learning C++ a lot easier. C is at the heart of C++. Anything you learn about C is applicable to C++, but C is a lot smaller and easier to learn.
Pick up K&R and read through that. It is short and will give you a sufficient sense of the language. Once you have the basics of pointers and function calls down, you can move on to C++ a little easier.
In the process of learning C++ you will learn most of C as well. But keep in mind a lot of C++ code is not valid C. C++ was designed to be compatible with C code, so i'd say learn C++ first. Brian wrote a great answer regarding this.
Learning C forces you to think harder about some issues such as explicit and implicit memory management or storage sizes of basic data types at the time you write your code.
Once you have reached a point where you feel comfortable around C's features and misfeatures, you will probably have less trouble learning and writing in C++.
It is entirely possible that the C++ code you have seen did not look much different from standard C, but that may well be because it was not object oriented and did not use exceptions, object-orientation, templates or other advanced features.
Like the answers to many other questions in life, it depends. It depends on what your programming interests and goals are. If you want to program desktop applications, perhaps with a GUI, then C++ (and OOP) is probably a better way to go. If you're interested in hardware programming on something other than an x86 chipset, then C is often a better choice, usually for its speed. If you want to create a new media player or write a business app, I'd choose C++. If you want to do scientific simulations of galaxy collisions or fluid dynamics, behold the power of C.
I think learning C first is a good idea.
There's a reason comp sci courses still use C.
In my opinion its to avoid all the "crowding" of the subject matter the obligation to require OOP carries.
I think that procedural programming is the most natural way to first learn programming. I think that's true because at the end of the day its what you have: lines of code executing one after the other.
Many texts today are pushing an "objects first" approach and start talking about cars and gearshifts before they introduce arrays.
No.
It's generally more useful to learn C++ because it's closer to the most modern OO-based languages, like Eiffel or C#.
If your goal is to learn C++, learn modern, standard C++ in the first place. Leave the mallocs aside.
But Steve Rowe has a point...
Having observed people, who have learned Java first, struggle with the concepts of pointers and memory management in C++, I'd say that learning C first is a good idea, in order to grasp these two concepts, isolated from the complexities of other C++ features.
My two cents:
I suggest to learn C first, because :
it is a fundamental language - a lot of languages descended from C
more platforms supports C compiler than C++,- be it embedded systems, GPU chips, etc.
according to TIOBE index C is still about 2 times more popular than C++.
i think c is a really nice programming language, it's compact and somewhat easy to learn.
but if you only want to learn c++ start with c++. but i suggest you to learn both. and if you want to do that; i think it's better to start with c. as said before: it's small and somewhat easy to learn. might be a nice step-up to a more complex programming language as c++. (since c provides you with some basics)
good luck.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I`m currently studying C++ and want to learn another language.
For work I use C# + ASP (just started learning it, actually), but I want something "less Microsoft" and powerful.
I have heard Python is a popular and powerful language, not so complicated as C++. But many people mentioned it was hard for them to get back to C++/Java from Python because they started thinking in it, get used to absence of memory management, etc.
What do you recommend?
There's no right or wrong answer, really. But I think you'll benefit more from learning Python. Given the similarities between C# and C++, you'll learn a different way of thinking from Python. The more ways you learn to think about a problem, the better it makes you as a programmer, regardless of the language.
The benefit of going from a more static language to a dynamic language is to change your programming paradigm -- it's not a matter of becoming "lazy" so much as realizing new ways of accomplishing things, which will make you better in any language.
Well, I've learnt Python after C/C++, Java and C#. Python is a great language, and its simplicity and consistency have improved the way I code. It has also helped me think more clearly about the algorithms underlying my code. I could go on about the benifits it brought me, instead I'll summarize the reason to learn it ->
Learning a new lanuage doesn't take away, it adds to your programming skill and keeps you sharp by teaching you to shift between the frames of mind that each language requires.
So go out there and learn Python. Your code will improve(TM).
P.S.
1.You'll lose C++ (or any other language) skills, if you neglect their upkeep and maintainance. Thats entirely up to you.
2.Programmer (intelligent) laziness is a virtue.
Many would argue that you would benefit from learning Python before C++.
The syntax hurdles are much, much lower;
Debugging is much more friendly
There are a plethora of libraries---batteries included, you know. It's easy to
experiment with web scraping, XML, etc. in Python. Again, the barriers to entry
in C++ are much higher.
It's still good to learn C/C++, because of its close connection to the machine. But a new programmer can learn an awful lot from exploring in Python.
I don't think that "Python makes you lazy" (nice title, anyway!).
On the contrary, in programming as in life, knowing more than one language is important; I think you'll find python amusing and sufficiently different from C++ or C# so that the languages will not get mixed in your head...
Python is complementary to C++ and easy to integrate with C++. (As evidence of this claim, the C++ gurus from Boost use Python.)
And as you said, Python gives you a way to get a perspective outside the Microsoft orbit. But even there, if you need to integrate Python with MS tools, there's IronPython.
Learning more languages can only make you a better developer, regardless of their approach. Besides, your experience with C++ (or, at least C) will come in handy for writing high-performance parts of your applications using Python's C API, which lets "raw" C and C++ code intermingle nicely with the pure Python stuff.
I still write code in Objective-C (1.0... before memory management) and Python on a daily basis. The variety is actually fun, rather than confusing; keeps things from being boring.
Flex your brain and improve your skill set. Give a functional language a whirl.
I learned C/C++, Java, Python & C# in that order.
The two I actually invariably end up using are C++ & Python; I find the niche Java & C# occupy between them to be too narrow to feel the need to use them much (at least for the stuff I do).
I also think I didn't really "get" C++ functors and boost::bind until I'd been exposed to Python.
Many languages are quite similar to others, but to move between imperitave and functional / dynamic and static / Object and Procedural languages you do need to train yourself to think within the constraints of the language you are using. Since most projects are at least a few weeks, this is generally not a problem after the first few days.
You will find it more difficult to switch away from a language+environment you enjoy in your after-hours / hobby development.
C, Macro Assembler => basically the same - difference is mainly libraries
C++, Java, C#, Delphi => basically the same paradigm - you learn quickly how to leverage the features of the specific language and adopt concepts from one syntax to another. It's basically the same way of thinking, the biggest exception is how you think of memory manangement.
Python - good language, strategically a better choice than ruby, although there are other aspects of ruby that can be argued to be superior. What make python a good choice is the presence of a formal language body which keeps python environments on different platforms very compatible to one another.
If you are interested, read this http://cmdematos.com/?p=120 on making a strategic language choice.
It is up to what exactly is the kind of applications you want to program, for example for Websites that need access to databases I would go for Ruby( and Ruby on Rails framework ) , for financial applications or applications that need a lot of parallel processing I would go for a funcional programming language like Haskell, oCaml or the new F#, these last 3 wil make you a better programer even if you don't programm a lot in them , by the way c# has been lately in the latest versions adding more and more funcional programming features. I would learn Python for a security and exploits kinds of applications.
You could learn a new programming language, like python, and use it to do all the tasks you'd normally perform in your 'core' languages; or you could take a language (like python, or perl) and use it to complement your core language.
You could learn VBScript and use it to write scripts that glue your code and others together. If you want something less Microsoft, then python, perl or bash scripting would be a good idea - not just to learn how to code in the new, but also how to do things differently from the usual 'code an app' way.
From a utility perspective, it is good to learn one of the more dynamic languages like Python (or Ruby or Perl) too. Not only do they stretch your mind, but they are superior for certain kinds of tasks. If you want to manipulate text, for example, C++ is a lot harder to use than Python. It gives you another arrow in your quiver to use when appropriate.
I learned, in order:
BASIC
Pascal
Ada
(A little bit of Haskell)
Java
Python
C++
C#
I don't feel Python inhibited my ability to learn or use C++. I am glad though that I learned pointers in Pascal before encountering reference types in Java, Python and C#, because I feel it gave me a good basis to understand the idea of the differences between "value types" and "reference types". I think for me the most important of those languages are Python, Haskell and C++. All of them complement each other, and although there are times I'm working in one and wish I had a feature from another, on the whole I think I benefit greatly from a deeper understanding of things like type systems, object orientation and metaprogramming by seeing the different ways these languages approach these things.
Try LISP instead (or afterwards, it's your call). You are at least partially right, though. using Python for a while makes you not want to go back to a statically typed and compiled language. It's just sooo much more comfortable not to have to please the compiler like ALL THE TIME ;). And yet another aspect is the readability of python code, which is awesome.
It is true. After learning python, everything else will seem like too much effort for the same amount of real work being done. You'll get used to the clean, small syntax and the freedom of GC. You will enjoy working in list comps, generators, etc. You'll start to think in python and C++ and Java will be like building a ship in a bottle one twiggy little stick at a time.
But since it's that much easier, doesn't it tempt you to try it all the more?
I think it is always good to know several programming languages. I've learned c++ at school and I've used it a lot in the past years because it is really a standard in the industry. I've learned python by my own and I am using it to make a lot of nice tools that would be too long to write in c++.
Python has just a very positive influence on my c++ skills. It gives another way to think.