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Poll: What's Your Most Disliked Programming Language?

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Re: Poll: What's Your Most Disliked Programming Language?

#151

Post by read_wharf »

fleitz wrote: post #91
gamache wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refute that Fortran is axiomatically worse than Java. I've spent a few years working in each, so I got to know them decently well. Fortran is like C with great math support; that is to say, C is like Fortran with great systems facilities. In each language's domain, it is more expressive and more performant than Java. Outside its domain, you don't want a bad programmer going near it for too long, but you can absolut…

The issue is that both C (portable assembler) and Fortran (portable math library) solve some problem pretty well. What problem is it that Java solves well? That is what makes java such a shitty language to program in, for any particular problem you encounter there are much better languages to solve that problem in, C# comes to mind immediately as to what Java should be. Note: Yes I realize that Java has excellent cro…

"What problem is it that Java solves well?"

The aging Cobol cohort.

Re: Poll: What's Your Most Disliked Programming Language?

#152

Post by guard-of-terra »

peterhi wrote: post #132

After several years of Java programming I am now in the position of being able to turn down offers of work. I consider having been a Java programmer akin to having appeared in a porn movie. I was young, naive and needed the money. I am seriously considering excising Java from my cv and replacing it with something I would be more comfortable with - like Mumps :)

You say it as if appearing in a porn movie was something bad.

Re: Poll: What's Your Most Disliked Programming Language?

#153

Post by btwrto »

sp332 wrote: post #13
bdfh42 wrote: post #11

You missed the worst one in the world - Mumps (or M). Terrible language that produces (seemingly automatically) terrible software. It also rots the brains of those that are forced to use it. All of those listed have their charms - seems hard to dislike them in the main.

thedailywtf.com usually posts horrible code bases that developed gradually over time. But their collection of MUMPS horror stories has convinced me that any project in MUMPS is already doomed. http://thedailywtf.com/gsearchresults.aspx?cx=00708007008730...

Those are horror stories, recall. If you want to write bad code then you can do it in any language. These stories don't resemble what I have experienced. (I work for a healthcare software company in Wisconsin.)

In particular, a sensible coding style and sensible development practices (yes, name your variables sensibly! yes, use source control! yes, have code review and automated tools to catch common errors) can remove the bad. It also helps if your company wrote its own (quite good) IDE for the language so you don't have to use Intersystems'.

Honestly the most fun thing about M/MUMPS/Caché is that there's very little boilerplate and you can write sensible code quickly. It's like being stuck with Java and then suddenly moving to Python or Ruby. (With, yes, a few pitfalls that these languages don't have, and quite a few features missing. I still prefer modern languages for personal projects. But you quickly pick up a sense for practices to avoid.)

I can't say all companies that use Mumps are great places to work. But mine honestly is.

Re: Poll: What's Your Most Disliked Programming Language?

#154

Post by read_wharf »

There are fewer votes and comments than the "favorite" thread, probably because most of the languages you use are because you were interested in them for some reason and are predisposed to like them.

So we have more experience with languages we like.

And, C++ must be destroyed.

Re: Poll: What's Your Most Disliked Programming Language?

#155

Post by EGreg »

zaphar wrote: post #145
ticks wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think PHP's main problem on websites like these is that it's too mainstream of a language. It's like asking someone who's an avid fan of world cinema about the latest Michael Bay film. I'm not that interested in programming, so I think it's a great language. All those years back when first learning to use it, I remember going through a book and being so happy that it did practically everything itself.

Your second statements communicates to me that you like it because it's a toy language. It may be useful for just getting something small done and getting started but for someone who looks at programming as an enjoyable craft php loses it's shine. Especially once you've been exposed to other languages that highlight how much better it could be.

I actually disagree to some extent. I know, it's PHP. But it can do some pretty amazing things if you think in terms of files. If you're coming from a C background, it's actually quite nice.

For example, you can use include ( ) in so many ways, autoload classes, write getters/setters and override anything, implement views, etc. Everything "just runs", or can be compiled into fast code with HipHop (or cached with APC).

OK, to be fair, I would say that PHP with a framework that takes advantage of it can be very cool. I can't exactly share our codebase, but you can see the open source version from 2 years ago : http://phponpie.com to aprpeciate some of the "beauty" of PHP

And it can be extremely expressive and powerful. Sure, it can't do everything that Node.js can do, but for serving requests it can be awesome. It isolates every script in its own memory space, so you never have to worry about anything! The one thing I do not like about PHP is that it's married to the outdated thread-based webserver model, while the new boys on the block (NGinX, Node.js and the new Apache) all use event-based programming.

Don't downvote just because I said PHP can be cool. Look at our framework at least, before voting :)

Re: Poll: What's Your Most Disliked Programming Language?

#156

Post by shanemhansen »

lubutu wrote: post #4

The programming languages that would make me the most sad/angry/annoyed I don't use , so it's difficult to make a choice. I suppose I'll have to go with Javascript because it's the de facto 'Web language' which people use to force me to evaluate arbitrary code whenever I want to read anything on the Web. Even with a sandbox that seems a terrible idea. If we're talking about programming languages I hate but still use…

Emacs with flymake mode or pycharm both do a great job at giving you real-time feedback on issues like that.

Re: Poll: What's Your Most Disliked Programming Language?

#157

Post by xyzzyz »

zaphar wrote: post #144
xyzzyz wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by type safety? Are all dynamically typed languages type unsafe by your definition?

If the language can tell me when it executes the code that the type is wrong then I consider that type safe. Less usefully type safe than at compile time but safe nonetheless. If the language treats a string as a number in some cases without an error then that is most definitely not type safe.

What's the reason why you don't consider (Common) Lisp to be type safe then?

Re: Poll: What's Your Most Disliked Programming Language?

#158

Post by bborud »

I would have to say C++, because it burns so much talent that could have been spent on solving actual problems. I also dislike C++ because I think it is a transitional language. It came about in the vacuum between structured programming and OOP and thus ended up being neither structured programming nor OOP.

If you are a good C++ programmer you still lose, because with a programming language where 90% of your talent is not bound up in foot-shooting-avoidance, you could have been doing fucking amazing work.

Re: Poll: What's Your Most Disliked Programming Language?

#159

Post by roryokane »

zaphar wrote: post #144
xyzzyz wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by type safety? Are all dynamically typed languages type unsafe by your definition?

If the language can tell me when it executes the code that the type is wrong then I consider that type safe. Less usefully type safe than at compile time but safe nonetheless. If the language treats a string as a number in some cases without an error then that is most definitely not type safe.

The standard term for the feature that allows treating a string like a number is "weakly typed". You like "strongly typed" languages.

Re: Poll: What's Your Most Disliked Programming Language?

#160

Post by ScottBurson »

zaphar wrote: post #144
xyzzyz wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by type safety? Are all dynamically typed languages type unsafe by your definition?

If the language can tell me when it executes the code that the type is wrong then I consider that type safe. Less usefully type safe than at compile time but safe nonetheless. If the language treats a string as a number in some cases without an error then that is most definitely not type safe.

Lisp is type safe by that definition, so I'm not sure what your problem was with it.
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