Ask HN: I just want to have fun programming again

Trouble with CSS is still this: https://media.giphy.com/media/yYSSBtDgbbRzq/giphy.gif (Peter Griffin trying CSS)

And centering a div can still be very hard depending on the circumstances.

Find out which sort of language features you find really cool that apply to your project. For example I have this idea in my head of writing ML stuff in Haskell, since everything is lazy and you could run models off disk. That would be really fun not only because of the end goal but because writing Haskell code is a borderline psychedelic experience. Using core language features tends to give you that feeling of using divine tools as opposed to writing a textbook in a second tongue.

Other than that I'd recommend C. It's ubiquitous and can be as simple as you want it to be. With macros or source to source transformation you can have your cake and eat it too by picking how you want your code to be written then figuring out how it would compile to C.

You seem to have two very conflicting wishes here:

1) To have fun 2) To write a cross-platform web-base app with good HTML canvas inter-op ...

If you really want to deliver this cross-platform app, then it seems that's going to be more work than fun, although no doubt good tool/framework choice can help minimize the headaches.

For a fun project it seems better to avoid all of the things that you already know are going to make it not fun!

My current fun project is writing a compiler to run on an old 8-bit system (initially targeting en emulator) ... 99% useless, but fun, and I get to choose whether to implement the bits that are stupidity on behalf of the language spec, or extend the language to make it better, etc, etc - no practical considerations forcing requirements on me, since it is purely for fun.

Try a Lisp. I got seriously into Lisp because of Guile, a Scheme -- but Common Lisp is also a great place to start and the Portacle environment is an easy way to jump into that.

Lisp is the easiest, most fun language I've encountered to work in. It's like clay out of which you can sculpt a solution. Every programmer should give it a go.

For an even easier way to get started, consider building an app in Emacs Lisp. It needn't be huge, it could just be an automation for a pain point in your daily work. Emacs is easier, and more fun, to extend than just about any other editor.

I remember I had the most fun when my code sucked. I made all sorts of silent tradeoffs because I didn't know that I was trading things off.

"Look! I built a whole App that does the thing! Isn't it cool? Oh, yea, you need to use this gnarly url and - crap - yea, use chrome. Refresh it... Hold on, let me restart the Raspberry Pi... Got it! Look at that! So cool! Wait - did someone HACK this?"

The grown up version of this might be just building for one platform, and one happy path. Who cares if lots of people can't use it? If it's popular, you can turn it into a job then. But until that happens - just make the computer do something cool!