I've had pretty much the same experience as you regarding Perl. I started with C in high school but never really got anywhere. Once I found Perl a few years later, I was finally able to do the things that I wanted to do in C. I stuck with it for several years and got quite good with it. Having this knowledge and experience made it MUCH easier to learn other languages and finally I was able grasp C/C++ (though, not as well as Perl though) and do some cool stuff. Like you, I feel that I owe...well, pretty much my whole programming career to Perl. Like you, I don't use it these days, but it's definitely the language I look upon most fondly.
What programming language has made you the happiest?
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Re: What programming language has made you the happiest?
#12I find it's less about the language you're coding in and more about the project. Find something engaging and interesting to work on and derive happiness from that.
Of course, liking the tool you're using can help, but it shouldn't be the defining factor.
Re: What programming language has made you the happiest?
#13Before I explain my answer, the reader must understand that I'm a pretty satisfied Python programmer now who wouldn't go back. But in terms of actually bringing happiness to me in one brilliant burst of energy, there's only one language in my history that achieved this: Perl. Oh sure I detest Perl, now. It provides you with too many ways to make code that fails to express the problem clearly to another programmer, an…
My experience is almost identical to yours. Taught myself BASIC from library books as a kid, then C++ as a teenager. When I started using Linux and discovered Perl, it was an amazing spike in productivity. I eventually switched to Python (and then a bunch of other languages), but Perl got me out of a C++ rut.
Nowadays I'd rather use C than C++ (typically with Lua), and have learned quite a bit from Lisp, Prolog, Forth, ML, etc. as well, but the sheer immediacy of Perl and vi was a revelation to a kid used to Borland Turbo C++ and its IDE.
Re: What programming language has made you the happiest?
#14Ruby has by far made me the happiest because I understand it the best and can get the most done in an elegant way. However, I do get bouts of language jealousy. For example, I am enamored with the way Haskell deals with looping constructs and lists but I don't understand IO well enough to get something very useful accomplished with it. That is much more my fault than the language's.
Re: What programming language has made you the happiest?
#15At the moment - Scala.
Previously - Python.
Re: What programming language has made you the happiest?
#16I know that since 'the good parts' it's almost become the ironic t-shirt of the programming world, but I really love JavaScript, here's some of my reasoning:
1. By now everyone knows of JavaScript's functional features, which I must admit are awesome, but many other languages share these. But what few languages share regarding these is they're a very common part of standard js programming. A lot of new python and even ruby programmers have never touched the functional features of the language, but even a copy & paste js 'programmer' has probably written a lambda function, used a first class function, and maybe even used a closure.
2. It's fundamentally different than most other other languages. I love Haskell and it's awesome type system, but I also love JavaScript and it's true rejection of a type system, even throwing out classed based inheritance for prototypical. It's also a world where events and asynchronous computing are completely commonplace. What's interesting about this is that it is related to number 1, in other words it is an extremely practical application of principles of functional programming. Having written my share of parallel C code, writing concurrent/parallel code is much more of a pain without basic features of a functional language. On top of this being able to easily implement things like currying is actually pretty amazing. At the same time the language is very, very simple at it's core.
3. The above 2 reasons are things I would expect from a less popular and therefore harder to distribute language. Common Lisp is definitely more interesting of a language than JavaScript, but if I want to share something I've done in Common Lisp with someone, they better also be a fan of the language. On the other hand if I make something really cool in JS I can easy share it with anyone, even people who think IE is the 'internet'. Also I'm pretty sure that more people of varying skill levels can read JavaScript than any other language. So if I want to demonstrate something, for a very general audience JavaScript is much better than C, and for demonstrating functional programming techniques it's worlds better than Lisp or ML.
Re: What programming language has made you the happiest?
#17IBM/370 Assembler with command-level CICS, probably because I used it early in my career on an app where every program had to be small and fast. Nothing since then has approached the sheer fun of all that bit-diddling.
Same for me, except it was a 360 :) That, coffee, an 8 foot manual rack along with a copy of Stern's book on Assembly kept me going until the wee hours...
Re: What programming language has made you the happiest?
#18QBASIC: I had a coding friend in elementary school and on the weekends we had QBASIC sleepovers. We stayed up til 3 or 4am making barely playable games and fake imitations of operating systems. I remember the vivid rush of excitement when something actually ran: almost unbeatable (only skydiving, burning man, camping, and some fun time spent naked have compared since).
Much more recently, learning OCaml after many years spent coding C++ was like a long drink of cool refreshing water.
Re: What programming language has made you the happiest?
#19Most of the time it seems like it's whatever language I'm not using at that moment. :)
I work daily with Python, various build script languages, C++, assembly (in various flavors and dialects), and C#, and at the end of the day it isn't the language that makes me happy but the libraries and ecosystem available. These days it's C# and .NET+XNA that makes me happiest.
Re: What programming language has made you the happiest?
#20Logo as a kid looking at that turtle draw was freaking incredibly it is the closest I've seen to magic ever since.
Now it means Smalltalk and Seaside.
The one that has made the most money is PHP