Informatics

... means programming 

my starting point = learning by doing on an IBM /360  

and theoretical background, too

Diploma thesis (TU Dresden): CDL-Compiler for PRS/KRS4200
Compiler Description Language: the basic idea - using production rules of a formal grammar as a programming language. Metavariables are extended by affixes to carry parameters - and so we get sufficient expressive power to describe any algorithm.
CDL is a contribution to the compiler-compiler issue, i.e. tools for the development of  compilers (for "usual" prgramming languages).
Inventor of CDL is Cornelis H. A. Koster.

Algorithms ...

sometimes follow a real-world process. An example I like for its simplicity is the computation of the visual layout for a graph. Take small wooden blocks for the nodes, substitue the edges by springs, put all this on a tray and shake heavily.     
Exactly that is it, what the alogorithm inside this ActiveX-Control is doing.

Pogramming languages ...

most lines of code I've ever written are C++,  much less Java; in the years before of course C, Pascal, FORTH, and a lot of  assembler code: for Z80, 8080, 8086, and the /360 mainframes (see above), and - there has been PL/I, too.. 

2 languages I only played with: PROLOG, and Haskell, being faszinated by the completely different approach and the higher level of abstraction. 

Quotations

C++

and a remarkable statement: "I find Kirkegaard's almost fanatical concern for the individual and keen psychological insights much more appealing than the grandiose schemes and concern for humanity in the abstract of Hegel and Marx. Respect for groups that doesn't include respect for individuals of those groups is no respect at all. Many C++ design decisions have their roots in my dislike for forcing people to do things in some particular way."

(Bjarne Stroustrup - The Design and Evolution of C++)

COM

and an interesting allegation: "COM's design takes into account both human nature and capitalism."

(Charlie Kindel, Foreword to "Essential COM" by Don Box)

Hm, hm, but what might we say then regarding CORBA?    

C++  again

C++ is an extraordinary language. No less a computer authority than Ray Duncan has called the language "on of the most grotesque and cryptic language ever created".
Nonetheless, if C++ did not exist it would have to be created. Whereas C is a remarkable powerful system programming language, it does not have complex numbers like Fortran, or strings like Basic, or subscript bounds checking like Pascal or the objects of Small Talk. 
With C++ you don't have these things either but you have something more important ... the ability to create these and many other programming constructs that a parcticular problem domain does require. With all this power there is bound a mixture of confusion, reckless hype, sorrowful disappoiontment, exaggerated claims, total rejection, and extreme euphoria. 

(Dr. James F. Gimpel)

 "reckless hype, sorrowful disappointment, exaggerated claims, extreme euphoria" ... today, these words make me think of Java, but the quotation is much older!