Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 502 posts

Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?

#141

Post by tyingq »

shaftway wrote: post #117
geebee wrote: post #70

SQL. If I had to pick a language that I'll use my entire career that's the one. It has been overused and underused, but always relevant.

I love that I'm at a company that I haven't had to use SQL. I don't know if I could even find a relational database here. But in a classic meme sense: "It isn't you I hate SQL, it's what I have to think about when I use you." I don't want to spend my time thinking about database indexes, query plans, or other complicated bits. I just want to get my data out. Sometimes I struggle, and I'd give anything for a plain inn…

Surely there's a relational DB somewhere...perhaps indirectly via Saas? Maybe payroll, company books, timesheets, or some other software common to most businesses.

Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?

#145

Post by cmrdporcupine »

aloukissas wrote: post #15

Most of my work is in C++, which is almost 35 years old. By far the best choice of language for cross-platform, client application development, especially C++11/C++14, which bring modern language features (e.g. lambdas, futures, etc) with all the original benefits of the language.

I love that C++ is my primary language right now, after years of being stuck doing Java. I really enjoy working in C++11. With CLion it's super awesome.

Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?

#146

Post by geebee »

danso wrote: post #122
shaftway wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that I'm at a company that I haven't had to use SQL. I don't know if I could even find a relational database here. But in a classic meme sense: "It isn't you I hate SQL, it's what I have to think about when I use you." I don't want to spend my time thinking about database indexes, query plans, or other complicated bits. I just want to get my data out. Sometimes I struggle, and I'd give anything for a plain inn…

I still teach SQL, via SQLite, as a first language to students, even though in practice I do 90% of my data analysis through the command line or Pandas. But SQL is very direct and clear as a language, and the overhead of SQLite is...well, light. Making an index is just one more line of code that for many datasets, you run once and never touch again. What do you find simpler in terms of data querying and management?

I love sql myself. I'm not sure why I love it so much and other people hate it. Sometimes I think that coming up with reasons is just after the fact justification (do I really like it because it has a solid mathematical foundation in the relational calculus, or does that just sound like a good reason to say I like it)?

Pandas is an excellent contribution to data analysis, but I gotta tell you, I was absolutely delighted to learn about pandasql and realize I could write selects, group by, order by, and so forth, converting data frame to data frame through sql.

What can I say? I truly encourage people to give SQL a real chance. I'm happy to use ORMs that save me some typing on simple queries, and certainly I use a combination of pandas and sql, there are some things much better accomplished through a programming language. But I'm willing to drop to SQL pretty quickly if I sense that the programming language or library is really just forcing me to re-learn a new implementation of sql.

Re: Ask HN: What “old” programming languages will you still be using in 2017?

#147

Post by throwaway7645 »

Kiro wrote: post #128
throwaway7645 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telecom?

Amazon, Facebook, WhatsApp and a lot of companies use Erlang. It's not only used in telecom even though it was made by Ericsson. EDIT: Removed the "naive" part.

Not naive at all if you didn't know Amazon, Facebook, and WhatsApp use it? I know a lot of places are starting to use Elixir which runs on the Beam VM. I still think its a safe assumption to ask (why I put a ?).
Post reply on HN