Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Poll: What's Your Favorite Programming Language?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 626 posts

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

#371

Post by [deleted] »

sreque wrote: post #216
veyron wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 de…

[deleted]

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

#373

Post by zmj »

skrebbel wrote: post #212
zmj wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

Good point. Having to deal with portions of old code is better than not being able to use new features at all. I've revised my opinion.

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

#374

Post by drewrv »

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…

var foo = thing1 ?? thing2 ?? thing3 ?? bar;

This will work.

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

#375

Post by aviraldg »

skrebbel wrote: post #212
zmj wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

FYI, Python has an automated script for migrating code from Python 2.x to Python 3.x

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

#376

Post by verelo »

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…

This makes me so happy to read. Honestly i love writing in c#. I spend a lot of my life now using php, but honestly the times when i followed best practices the best (unit tests all over the place, often test first approach) was when i was coding in c#. I think the language just lends itself, and the IDE...to doing things right.

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

#377

Post by jokermatt999 »

I like Python because I'm an inexperienced and infrequent programmer. While I took a few courses on programming (VB, Java), it wasn't til I discovered Python that I would actually code in my own time. All the boilerplate crap I had to deal with for Java was wiped away, and I could just write. I'm sure if I wrote more complex things, I could find better languages, but for simply getting things done and just jumping in and writing a few lines, Python just feels right.

Does that sound about right to those of you with more experience?

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

#379

Post by underwater »

wycats wrote: post #354
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 I wasn't using Google Chrome's web developer tools I'd probably consider JavaScript to be a nightmarish corpse of a language that punishes the slightest of typos with a silent malicious grin... Only by the grace of tools is JS tame at all +100000. We can thank the Webkit Tools team (including folks from both Apple and Google) for making the web platform environment as pleasant as it is. Kudos!

Have you worked with Firebug before? Webkit tools is a carbon copy. It is smoother of course, in the same way Chrome is more polished han Firefox.

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

#380

Post by llimllib »

DaveMebs wrote: post #369
MartinCron wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I've absolutely felt your pain. Some of those things have maybe improved (I use git every day, I love my PowerShell, and Visual Studio + ReSharper is glorious once you tell some of the cruft to stay out of your way) but it's still a long way from perfect.

It's amazing how many people either dismiss PowerShell out of hand because it's different, or don't even think about it when talking about Windows commandline support. Getting .NET objects returned, rather than piping text around is awesome. So is having an IDE specifically for writing PowerShell scripts. I'm still learning PowerShell, and love bash, but as powerful as bash is, in some ways it feels very primitive in…

Powershell did not exist when I was a C# programmer. Not saying it would have made a difference either way, just that I couldn't have mentioned it.

Anyway, I don't think bash/zsh is so great, rather the tools that have grown around them for the last 20 years make them the best available option. Powershell may be nice, but it's got a long road to hoe.

Post reply on HN