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How I decide between many programming languages

drewdevault.com

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Re: How I decide between many programming languages

#31

Post by type0 »

kenhwang wrote: post #11

Man, if one of Go's pros is "good package manager", I'd hate to see what terrible package managers he's experienced. Seems weird to call out Java package management as a con in comparison. I love Scala's type system, though, I suppose if I didn't have a very good CS degree I'd hate it. I think it strikes a good balance between powerful and usable.

Scala's type system is it strength not a con, actually it is very beginner friendly just not in the way Drew thinks, it's just more high level, By that definition he could also call Clojure a Java derivative because it runs on JVM.

Re: How I decide between many programming languages

#33

Post by actimia »

siempreb wrote: post #27

> C++ > Pros: none > Cons: ill-defined, far too big, Object Oriented Programming, loads of baggage, ecosystem that buys into its crap, enjoyed by bad programmers. This is just rubbish. Fair chance the author wrote this with the help of C++ (your OS or browser maybe?). And I enjoy C++ and it's eco system as well, compared to other languages. So that makes me a bad programmer? I'm surprised people are taking this post…

'there is widely used software written in language x' != 'language x is good'

C++ definitely has its uses (and for a long time was best-in-class for many of them) but it is largely being superseded by other options (not necessarily Rust).

Re: How I decide between many programming languages

#34

Post by antoinealb »

mehrdadn wrote: post #17
keldaris wrote: post #5

The list may be entertaining, but displays little in the way of objectivity. For instance, OOP is a major con of C++ (even though many people write C++ all day without any of it) but isn't even mentioned with regards to Java and C#? Really?

> OOP is a major con of C++ Not sure what exactly you mean by this, but many people use classes and objects all the time in C++, and see it as a pro rather than a con.

The linked article is listing OOP as a con of C++ without justification. I think that is what the GP is referring to, rather than stating their own opinion.

Re: How I decide between many programming languages

#35

Post by krapp »

arez wrote: post #8
koen_hendriks wrote: post #7

"every PHP programmer is bad at programming, the language is designed to accommodate them with convenient footguns (or faceguns) at every step, and the ecosystem is accordingly bad. No, PHP7 doesn’t fix this. Use a real programming language, jerk." This guy seems like a real open minded person who did his research and shared his opinion after making strong points. /s

yep, stopped reading after this. How can this be objective if you think that everyone is a "bad" programmer that uses this or that language, wtf. Pros for PHP could be, it's templating capabilities with HTML, easy to use DB interfaces and the entanglement with the web/HTML/web-server in general. Nowadays you don't really write these kinds of apps anymore where your backend returns whole HTML Pages but that doesn't me…

> How can this be objective if you think that everyone is a "bad" programmer that uses this or that language, wtf.

I get the feeling the author is either not trying to be objective, or is one of those people who confuses strident opinion for objective fact. "PHP is bad and everyone who uses it is bad" is a meme that some people take seriously... and one that also applied to javascript until Node.js appeared and it became valuable, interestingly enough.

I would say there are no objectively bad languages, just bad code (which can be written in any language), or languages which aren't used in an optimal way, since every one was created with a specific frame of mind and intended use case. PHP serves its purpose, and if someone doesn't want to use it, they can just not use it. Obviously PHP has pros, if it didn't, no one would use it.

Re: How I decide between many programming languages

#36

Post by mister_hn »

1ba9115454 wrote: post #20
kenhwang wrote: post #11

Man, if one of Go's pros is "good package manager", I'd hate to see what terrible package managers he's experienced. Seems weird to call out Java package management as a con in comparison. I love Scala's type system, though, I suppose if I didn't have a very good CS degree I'd hate it. I think it strikes a good balance between powerful and usable.

Java doesn't come with a package manager out of the box so most projects seem to go with Maven. If you've tried to understand a project with multiple pom.xml's then for me putting it in the con is a good call.

and Maven is super bloated due to too many downloaded dependencies. An Hello World example with Maven can download up to 50MB of plugins and useless things

Re: How I decide between many programming languages

#37

Post by mister_hn »

koen_hendriks wrote: post #7

"every PHP programmer is bad at programming, the language is designed to accommodate them with convenient footguns (or faceguns) at every step, and the ecosystem is accordingly bad. No, PHP7 doesn’t fix this. Use a real programming language, jerk." This guy seems like a real open minded person who did his research and shared his opinion after making strong points. /s

Tell it to companies such as Zalando (they started with PHP), Facebook, Magento and so on.

Re: How I decide between many programming languages

#38

Post by tom_mellior »

TurboHaskal wrote: post #23

I have tinkered with dozens of languages, yet, when I can choose a programming language and money is on the line, I always ask the following questions: - Does it have a standard and a good track record for backwards compatibility? - Is it memory safe? (Bound checking, no pointer arithmetic, etc.) - Does the runtime have automatic memory management in the form of a tracing GC? How tweakable is it? - Does it have kerne…

What answers do you come up with for these questions?

Re: How I decide between many programming languages

#39

Post by fanpuns »

I thought this list was hilarious (despite some of my preferred languages being on the never use list). I'm surprised to see so many people taking it so personally/serious.

If this list really offends you, I would suggest you haven't been programming very long, you don't know many other languages (than the ones on the shit list), or both. Maybe the list is a little hyperbolic, but didn't you pick up on the tone?

Re: How I decide between many programming languages

#40

Post by coldtea »

dotdi wrote: post #26
1ba9115454 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java doesn't come with a package manager out of the box so most projects seem to go with Maven. If you've tried to understand a project with multiple pom.xml's then for me putting it in the con is a good call.

While this is true, it's not an inherent problem of maven, it's an inherent problem of dependency management is f*cking difficult™.

Maven is inherently bad too, though
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