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Poll: What's Your Favorite Programming Language?

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Re: Poll: What's Your Favorite Programming Language?

#211

Post by MartinCron »

thinkdevcode wrote: post #199
MartinCron wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's tied into MS's heavy stack for web stuff (ASP.NET, etc.) For what it's worth, ASP.NET MVC is much, much less heavy than the original ASP.NET (if that's what you're referring to). This is especially the case if you use the Razor syntax for your views.

> For what it's worth, ASP.NET MVC is much, much less heavy than the original ASP.NET And thats if you even use that... I use 2 open source libraries to build web apps - Nancy & Simple.Data - and they are both f'in amazing. This is about as "light" as you can be. I have a prezi presentation on my blog about using these libraries to build web apps for a few talks I gave at code conf's. (thinkdevcode.com)

Cool. Thanks for sharing. I'll absolutely check those out.

Re: Poll: What's Your Favorite Programming Language?

#212

Post by skrebbel »

zmj wrote: post #164
hackinthebochs wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely agree with you on C#. It feels like this is what a standard, mature, widespread language should be. There are other languages that are better for specific tasks, but for the general programming language, C# really hits the sweet spot in terms of features, expressability, readability, and environment. This is the language that Java should have been--could have been. Also, I dread getting asked on my next in…

I agree in large, but there are some rough edges. -It's wordy. The var keyword was a step in the right direction, but there's still a lot of redundant type information, even compared to other statically typed languages like Go or F#. -Legacy code. A lot of things that are concise and easy in C# 3.5+ were possible but hideous in older versions. Sadly, that code must still be maintained. -Null handling. Like another co…

Legacy code is a problem in every language. Whether the language evolves, or just the common insights of how to use it best.

In fact, C# deals excellently with legacy code. While, unlike the JVM, .NET is not binary backward compatible (allowing some excellent language improvements that Java still has not managed to pull off), it is nearly (but not entirely) source code backward compatible. Sure, this allows to old code using old constructs to stay alive, but it works. That alone is pretty unique, especially if you see that nearly any other language either does not manage to move its community to the next version with breaking changes (Python 3, PHP 6) or has tons of compatibility issues every time something changes (Ruby, Scala), or simply is at a standstill (Java).

Having to deal with a DictionaryBase child class which was made before generics were added is way less of a deal than not being able to upgrade your software to the newest version of the language at all. Which is what would've happened if this was done like Scala. Or, if it was done like Java, we'd still be hacking DictionaryBase child classes.

I'd maintain that no language/platform deals with legacy code better than C#.

Re: Poll: What's Your Favorite Programming Language?

#213

Post by eropple »

meow wrote: post #207
untog wrote: post #2

I find it difficult to divorce 'favourite language' from 'favourite stack'. I use C# a lot, and I love it. But it's tied into MS's heavy stack for web stuff (ASP.NET, etc.) so recently I've switched to using node.js and CoffeeScript in my projects. It's fantastic. So right now my favourite language is JavaScript/CoffeeScript, but just because of the things I can do with it.

You should try NancyFx ( https://github.com/NancyFx/Nancy ) some time. Its a light weight web framework. Simple and beautiful.

NancyFx is pretty cool. I'm not thrilled with Mono's performance as a server app, however (and I wouldn't bother with a Windows server). I should note, though, that the GC seems a little questionable, though 2.11.0 apparently has made SGen production-ready so I need to look at that again.

Re: Poll: What's Your Favorite Programming Language?

#214

Post by MartinCron »

zmj wrote: post #164
hackinthebochs wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely agree with you on C#. It feels like this is what a standard, mature, widespread language should be. There are other languages that are better for specific tasks, but for the general programming language, C# really hits the sweet spot in terms of features, expressability, readability, and environment. This is the language that Java should have been--could have been. Also, I dread getting asked on my next in…

I agree in large, but there are some rough edges. -It's wordy. The var keyword was a step in the right direction, but there's still a lot of redundant type information, even compared to other statically typed languages like Go or F#. -Legacy code. A lot of things that are concise and easy in C# 3.5+ were possible but hideous in older versions. Sadly, that code must still be maintained. -Null handling. Like another co…

Null handling

You can do a fair amount of relatively frictionless null handling with extension methods. If that helps.

Re: Poll: What's Your Favorite Programming Language?

#215

Post by bthomas »

sassafras wrote: post #73
bthomas wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the same way, though I feel like this flies in the face of reason. Switching to a less familiar language usually implies more headaches and less productivity, but the novelty makes it more enjoyable. Another example of how programming is oddly emotional.

Nothing odd about it, IMHO. One of the things I think tech-oriented people consistently ignore is the role of emotion and the subconscious in decision making, even in what are nominally objective disciplines. Our conclusions may be based on reason, but then where do our hypotheses and inspirations come from?

Totally agree. More accurate phrasing would have been "another reminder of how..."

Book recommendation: Thinking Fast and Slow by Dan Kahneman. Great overview of how those factors affect decision making.

Re: Poll: What's Your Favorite Programming Language?

#216

Post by sreque »

veyron wrote: post #178
sreque wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've spent most of my time in the open source world, and I would have to agree that C# on .NET feels like the most mature high-level software development tool I've ever used. C#'s biggest strength isn't the language. While the language is nice, there isn't a lot you can do with it in terms of productive development that you can't at least approximate in Java, especially with a good IDE to generate your boiler plate f…

How is this C#+.NET integration on mono? Are the relevant low-level facilities translated well into linux or osx?

I like Mono, and I respect the work that they've accomplished. It is incredibly difficult to build a runtime like .NET, especially as it was never designed to be cross-platform.

That said, the Mono experience on Linux is inferior to that on Windows. MonoDevelop is nowhere near Visual Studio, so that I just develop on Windows and deploy on Linux. Unfortunately, that doesn't help the fact that both the soft and hard debuggers for Linux are nowhere near Microsoft's debuggers. It also doesn't help the fact that the runtime itself is less stable (i.e., more prone to crash) and there are APIs that only work well on Windows. I would also imagine that the Microsoft runtime exhibits much better overall performance.

My understanding is that Mono mainly excels at MonoTouch, and that is where Xamarin is making most of its money, but I am not knowledgeable in that area.

Re: Poll: What's Your Favorite Programming Language?

#219

Post by knighthacker »

lawn wrote: post #21

It's funny. Every time I use a new language, or go back to an old favourite, it becomes my favorite language for a time. Static typing? Wonderful error messages! Dynamic typing? It does what I want! Functional programming? This is the future of programming! Object-oriented programming? I can describe the world! Low level? My code is fast . High level? My code is *expressive. Is this normal or is it just me? Don't you…

Writing good Perl is definitely a blast. Make sure to read Modern Perl.

Re: Poll: What's Your Favorite Programming Language?

#220

Post by pjmlp »

edwinnathaniel wrote: post #138
simonsarris wrote: post #16

C# really feels like the most mature language that I've ever dealt with. Writing it feels clear, if something is wrong the debugger is very clear. The number of features that are there is incredible (especially post C# 2.0 when they added generics). Properties are delightful. How do you convert to a string? Convert.ToString(). How about an integer? Knowing only that one, it's what you'd expect! I also picked JavaScri…

If only C# has Maven (that supports both Mono and .NET) and a solid cross-platform libraries, I'd leave everything behind.

NuGet seems to help a bit, but granted it is not Maven.
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