programming languages and visual programming under FreeBSD

Tabor Kelly tkelly-freebsd-questions at
Mon Jan 17 18:15:56 PST 2005

koen de wijs wrote:
> Hallo, I'm just new wtih unix and FreeBSD and I have a question about 
> programming languages, I want to learn some of them but don't know where 
> to start.

C, it was the first programming language that I learned, so I may be a 
little biased. However, it is not that hard to learn, and tied closely 
enough with the hardware that you will probably learn some things about 
hardware as you go.

> I heard that C is the most powerfull language under unix and almost the 
> complete system is written under it.
> You can do everything with it. Where is a good toturial?

I don't remember what book I used to learn it. Right now I have the 
O'Reilly book _Practical C Programming_, but I don't know if it is as 
good as it could be.

If you decide that you want to learn C++ instead, I like _Using C++_ but 
my wife says _C++ Primer Plus_.

> Can you read and write directly with the printer port or does the 
> kernell block that?? I got a programm from someone that putted some 
> assmebler in his c programm to adress the printer port.
> And where can I find an overview of all the *.h files that you can use 
> under FreeBSD

As others have noted, don't do this.

<snip: stuff I don't know the answer to>

> The other languages that I know are:
> Perl, I could only find that it is especially for tasks for your system 
> and that it's based on C
> Shell scripts, for tasks for your systems and simple programms
> Python.

Good, I think you will find that knowing Perl and C is a very good 

> What are the advantages of these languages above C...

Faster development time... for example string manipulation of any sort 
in C is far more difficult than Perl. However, their are some things 
that you can do in C far more efficiently than in a higher level language.

PS- Java is a nice language if you want to learn something purely object 
oriented. However, some people object to Sun's politics.


Tabor Kelly
tkelly-freebsd-questions at

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