Programming Languages: What tool is right for which job? • Hacker News Board

Re: Programming Languages: What tool is right for which job?

#21

Post by tel » Sun, Nov 27, 2011, 6:49 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #15

bsimpson wrote: post #11

Really? Go is on there, but ActionScript is not? I realize that the future of the Flash Platform is in doubt, but Flash is still a great choice for a lot of things, like: - This language is good for beginners. - This language is well documented. - I find this language easy to prototype in.

Python and Ruby fit into all of those categories. And I'd guaranteed that in 5 years they'll be even more popular, easier to hire for and the languages will be more polished. Can ActionScript say that?

I think there are Statements about those things precisely.

Re: Programming Languages: What tool is right for which job?

#22

Post by tel » Sun, Nov 27, 2011, 6:50 PM UTC

I like the idea but feel it's an echo chamber. I haven't seen a single surprising ranking yet.

Re: Programming Languages: What tool is right for which job?

#23

Post by chromejs10 » Sun, Nov 27, 2011, 6:53 PM UTC

I think it's a good question. There are so many languages around that it is hard to choose from. I think it's beneficial to get good at a handful of languages and use them. However, there might be a time where a newer language is just so great that you have to use it. For example, in web development should you use straight Javascript? Jquery? Dart? Coffee Script?

Personally, Python, Java, and ObjC gets me everything I need and it allows me to get really good at a few languages instead of trying to keep 10 different ones in my head. Granted, if you know a few languages any new one should be fairly easy to pick up.

You don't want to start a job with some new language only to find out that it hasn't evolved enough to give you exactly what you need in your project.

I'd love to hear how people decide what language to use in their business. Do you pick Python over Java because it's simpler to write? Do you use PHP because of how well it's documented?

Like others, I'm saying this based on the title as I can't get the page to load.

Re: Programming Languages: What tool is right for which job?

#24

Post by DRMacIver » Sun, Nov 27, 2011, 7:19 PM UTC

Sorry the site's having issues. I haven't done any significant work on it in most of two years and there's rather a lot more data in it than when I actually worked on it.

So, yes, it's true, I haven't used the right tool for the job. Except that as with so many things "the right tool" is "an actively maintained codebase". Looking into why it's crashing now, but don't expect any miracles

Re: Programming Languages: What tool is right for which job?

#25

Post by DRMacIver » Sun, Nov 27, 2011, 7:42 PM UTC

DRMacIver wrote: post #24

Sorry the site's having issues. I haven't done any significant work on it in most of two years and there's rather a lot more data in it than when I actually worked on it. So, yes, it's true, I haven't used the right tool for the job. Except that as with so many things "the right tool" is "an actively maintained codebase". Looking into why it's crashing now, but don't expect any miracles

Should be running (a bit) better now, though likely still on the slow side.

Turns out a query I'd written back when there were 20k votes in the system didn't perform so well now that there are 200k votes in the system. Go figure.

Re: Programming Languages: What tool is right for which job?

#26

Post by DRMacIver » Sun, Nov 27, 2011, 7:46 PM UTC

joshbaptiste wrote: post #5

qqqqqq wrote: post #3

Is it me, or do a lot of the 'statement' links not seem to load?

Heh indeed, and in a couple a days "How I improved my site after Hacker news etc..."

Eh, site's held up to hacker news 4 or 5 times in the past. Never been a problem before.

It's been around for two years slowly bitrotting (I really should do some maintenance on it). Just gradually been getting slower and this time it hit the threshold where it was too slow to stay up. It happens.

Re: Programming Languages: What tool is right for which job?

#27

Post by 110101001010100 » Sun, Nov 27, 2011, 8:08 PM UTC

Even if you are adept in using a highly efficient and effective language for doing each job, if no one else is using the language it's utility becomes limited. That's because none of us work in vacuum. Computers run by different people in separate locations cannot talk to each other unless those people cooperate. They have to agree on some things. And further, we're all using software and systems designed and built in whole or in part by someone else.

I sometimes wonder what we could achieve if choices of language were reduced and we were all forced into "speaking the same language". Would the advantages of a common language supercede the advantages of any one language's design?

Re: Programming Languages: What tool is right for which job?

#28

Post by Eventh » Sun, Nov 27, 2011, 8:20 PM UTC

DanWaterworth wrote: post #16

adbge wrote: post #7

Something the site didn't answer, what high-level languages are suitable for writing highly-parallel network code? I need to write some code that does stuff like: given a couple million URLs, download each, extract an element, gather all extracted elements in a list.

`Highly-parallel network code` was the problem erlang was designed for. Haskell would also be a good fit.

"Erlang was designed to program fault-tolerant systems" according to Joe Armstrong [1].

[1] http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Systems-that-Never-Stop-J...

Re: Programming Languages: What tool is right for which job?

#29

Post by masenf » Sun, Nov 27, 2011, 8:23 PM UTC

DRMacIver wrote: post #25

DRMacIver wrote: post #24

Sorry the site's having issues. I haven't done any significant work on it in most of two years and there's rather a lot more data in it than when I actually worked on it. So, yes, it's true, I haven't used the right tool for the job. Except that as with so many things "the right tool" is "an actively maintained codebase". Looking into why it's crashing now, but don't expect any miracles

Should be running (a bit) better now, though likely still on the slow side. Turns out a query I'd written back when there were 20k votes in the system didn't perform so well now that there are 200k votes in the system. Go figure.

Scale is always one of the most difficult things for me to plan for. Over last summer I was working on a registration system for an ISP which worked really well in testing. Once the database exploded to over 1M rows however, that application's performance was noticeably suffering. Unfortunately now that system is live, and the schema can't be changed for a few months...oops

Re: Programming Languages: What tool is right for which job?

#30

Post by pavelludiq » Sun, Nov 27, 2011, 8:30 PM UTC

110101001010100 wrote: post #27

Even if you are adept in using a highly efficient and effective language for doing each job, if no one else is using the language it's utility becomes limited. That's because none of us work in vacuum. Computers run by different people in separate locations cannot talk to each other unless those people cooperate. They have to agree on some things. And further, we're all using software and systems designed and built i…

You wonder what would happen if we all wrote C++ on Windows? I hope you can answer that question yourself :).

But seriously, i think its great that we can all work in our favorite language, and we can get away with it. I can write a web service in common lisp, and you can use it in your Rails cat picture app, that also uses a brainf*ck script to convert the cat pictures in a suitable format. And your company can also write an iPhone version of your app in objC and a desktop version in C++ for windows and Linux. Man, protocols are awesome :)