Poll: What's Your Most Disliked Programming Language?

yep, forgot about .Nyet and all those C# fanboys Despite my hate for Java, I have to admit Java > .Nyet +1

Java, I was force-fed it in school. We actually had to develop web applications with it.

I wouldn't have cringed so much if I hadn't have been developing in nodejs and php prior.

Objective-C. The syntax of this language is hideous. In most cases with languages like C#/Java/Python/Ruby etc. even if you don't know them you can understand a few things by looking at the code. Every-time I look at Objective-C code it hurts my eyes. What a convoluted piece of crap.

I don't expect that the responses to this will be enlightening. In fact, I can predict right now that the winner of this poll will be the most commonly-used language which isn't widely considered to be "nice". Depending on the precise demographics of this site, that's either going to be Java, C++ or Javascript, despite the fact that there are clearly worse languages out there (Fortran, COBOL, Brainfuck...)

The reasoning is explained well in a post by Terence Tao [1] in the context of 'List of the worst movie of all time'. Briefly, assuming that there is at least some correlation between programming language quality and uptake of that language (which doesn't seem to be controversial, especially among the users of HN) then you expect that languages which are generally worse will not be used so much, and so there will be fewer people who are able to vote for them as being "the worst".

For example, I have never used Delphi (to pick an example at random). I know literally nothing about it. It could be a stinking ball of crud that irreparably crushes the soul of anyone who tries to use it, but because it's not that popular, I've never used it, and so I'd never get to vote it down for being the horrendous pile of fecal matter that it may well be (I repeat again that I know nothing about Delphi, and it might be wonderful - I'm using it to illustrate a point).

If you make some simplifying assumptions about the probability that someone has used a language given its quality, then you can demonstrate that the language which will end up topping polls like this is whichever one is "just good enough" to be popular - which in this case means Java, C++ or Javascript.

[1]: https://plus.google.com/114134834346472219368/posts/TPjSPPd1...

That because many PHP devs (including yours truly) have a hate/love-relationship with the language. I voted for PHP in both polls. :)