We Talk Coding
programming language?
I am working with a language in SE Asia that uses 4 different scripts. I would like to write a program that converts text in 1 script to another script automatically. Which programming language should I use for this project? (I use openoffice for my word processor.) The language is Mien (Yao) and is written in two latin based scripts, a Thai script and a Lao script. I am American living in Thailand and read all 4 of the Mien scripts but no computer language knowledge as yet.
Public Comments
- Are you Thai? To be honest, any language can do. Java, Visual Basic, C/C++, anything... It depends on your expertise.
- You could use either Visual Basic or Java. It all depends on how soon you can learn it.
- You could use Java -- but there's no good reason for doing so. I despise Java. Any thing else - Ok. You can use PHP if you want to. My choice would be VB or C++. It's only a lot of string replacement and tokenization. Compiled languages run faster than interpreted, so I'd get something that makes an exe file. If you were really smooth, you could write it in ASM -- but that's a lot of work. There are whackos that write WinApps in ASM -- I'm not that much of a masochist.
- Java or C. Choose Java, because it's similar to C, and easier to learn, due to Java's consistent handling of storage locations by reference, and automatic handling of memory management. As a bonus, you can run your program on any system that supports Java, and embed your program as an applet accessible from anywhere with Internet access. Should you require more efficiency, you can relatively easily translate your program in Java, to a program in C, after you learn and know C. I'm limiting my answer based on the assumption that you personally want to *learn* a programming language. You would likely expend fewer resources by simply giving your problem data to a programmer for hire. If your script conversion doesn't require capabilities like grammar recognition, any programmer with a clue can code a basic utility in minutes. Note to programmers: I base this learning approach on a graduated, learn as you need to know, rationale, that leaves open a transition path to maximum product efficiency (C or C/assembly), or to high efficiency with a graphical interface (C or C++). I acknowledge that less ubiquitous higher level languages exist that are better suited for specific types of text processing.
