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The Best Programming Language (or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Code)

blog.fourthbit.com

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Re: The Best Programming Language (or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Code)

#71

Post by camus2 »

mikegioia wrote: post #34
CmonDev wrote: post #33

Please check your facts before posting to avoid being a clueless moron: C# is not just a static language it supports dynamic typing, C# is not just an object-oriented language it's a functional language as well. The post is downright offensive to C# developers. EDIT: ok, I figured it out - it's a troll post to stir the HN community a bit. Lot's of other good languages get undeserved bashing.

For PHP he comes out of the gate saying "Don’t just assume PHP is horrible."! Apparently the ONLY redeeming quality of PHP is the vast number of developers who know PHP?

Yes PHP is horrible,but it is usefull,otherwise nobody would use it.It has excellent libraries for "traditional" user facing websites. It's clearly not meant to do anything else.

Re: The Best Programming Language (or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Code)

#73

Post by sanderjd »

skrebbel wrote: post #27
V-2 wrote: post #12

Based on the code snippet, I'm not surprised he thinks C# is "verbose" with "lots of boilerplate" and "resembles Java", because the snippet is written as if it WAS Java, or at least written 10 years ago. Compare his GetFrequencies implementation with idiomatic, LINQ version: http://pastie.org/8834650

Same for his PHP examples. He seems to have picked notably horrible examples for the languages he doesn't really like.

While it's a pretty impressive survey in its breadth, he doesn't seem to have much depth in a lot of the languages. There were mildly cringeworthy things in all the sections for languages I know well. For instance, the Ruby section seemed strangely obsessed with Rails, saying that programmers find joy in Ruby, citing the metasploit folks as an example, and then confusingly attributing that joy in part to Rails, which of course metasploit doesn't use.

Re: The Best Programming Language (or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Code)

#74

Post by skywhopper »

That's a big list. A relatively inexperienced programmer looking for advice on what language to start with would probably be overwhelmed. How to choose what language to learn next? There's a dozen languages they've never heard of on there.

Glad to see Bash on there, even if his example code was sort of misleading. Sure, you have to be able to read that stuff, but if you can rely on Bash being there, you can use better syntax.

Anyway, Bash (and other similar shells) is special because it's the glue that ties a Unix system together. No other type of language can construct the same kinds of pipelines and filters so concisely or interact with the filesystem so easily. For a certain set of problems, Bash is by far the best option. The ugliness is partially legacy, but mostly just necessary to allow the same language to work at the command prompt without overloading everyday CLI usage with a ton of pointless syntax. It's all about tradeoffs, kids.

Re: The Best Programming Language (or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Code)

#76

Post by sanderjd »

bromagosa wrote: post #3

«The first true object-oriented language. But it seems to me Smalltalk is pretty much a forgotten language.» Why do so many people kill Smalltalk so fast? I could give so many URLs to illustrate how Smalltalk has a stable and growing community, with so many open projects and people making a living out of it, teaching it in universities and using it for research, but I think these two links sum it all up: http://forum…

Well, just from my noob point of view, every time I've dug in and tried to get into Smalltalk, I've found the language to be really really nice, but I've found the ecosystem to be really really confusing. The concept of needing a development environment and a persistent image (probably not even using the right terms...) just doesn't click with me. I struggle to figure out where to put things, or how to use my editor, or how to use source control, or how to distribute my programs, and maybe some other things I'm forgetting.

I'm sure there are mind-expanding answers to all these questions, and I remain open to learning, but I wanted to give a counterpoint to the frustratingly inane "har har curly braces" sibling comment. Sounds like Pharo is nice (but that's what I heard about Squeak before...).

Re: The Best Programming Language (or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Code)

#77

Post by vapourismo »

GhotiFish wrote: post #37
stinos wrote: post #13

Some nice angles in the article, but now I feel obliged to defend C++ (and actually C# and F# too, but I'll let that to others as I'm sure it will turn up in the HN comments) since the author seems to make no real points to support his view of it as a monster. First of all, it's not because x [1] and y and a bunch of others say that "a == true", you can safely use it as a fact or a way to support your view (those log…

Well isn't that a cute dilemma. You're either an idiot, which means you won't understand it and shouldn't criticize, or you're not an idiot and your lack of understanding is an effective criticism. Reminds me of Haskell. Personally, I'm of the view that the planet is populated by humans, and you have to work with them, and C++'s arcane tome of a standard is perhaps a hostile environment for such creatures.

May I have fries with that?

Re: The Best Programming Language (or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Code)

#78

Post by 3minus1 »

sanderjd wrote: post #70
hvidgaard wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LINQ is a tool, and a great one. But just as you need to understand malloc when writing C, you need to understand the basics of LINQ to use it in production. The main problems I've come across are all failure to understand delayed evaluation. Maybe I'm not using it in a complex way, but as soon as it start to feel too complex, LINQ is not the way to go. I agree that it can be difficult to debug - that's why it should…

What are the best resources for really grokking LINQ in depth? I'm not too impressed with the level of depth in the main LINQ section on MSDN - it seems (sensibly) more focused on how to use it than on how it works.

pluralsight's video tutorials on LINQ are excellent. the free trial should give you enough time to watch them

Re: The Best Programming Language (or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Code)

#79

Post by jbeja »

andrewcooke wrote: post #61
stinos wrote: post #13

Some nice angles in the article, but now I feel obliged to defend C++ (and actually C# and F# too, but I'll let that to others as I'm sure it will turn up in the HN comments) since the author seems to make no real points to support his view of it as a monster. First of all, it's not because x [1] and y and a bunch of others say that "a == true", you can safely use it as a fact or a way to support your view (those log…

i guess maybe now is a good time to repeat this request - does anyone know of a good, recent book that describes how to write correct, modern c++ using the latest standards and staying with the subset of the language that expert users recognise as elegant and powerful?

Sams Teach Yourself CPP One Hour a Day 7th and CPP Primer 5th

Re: The Best Programming Language (or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Code)

#80

Post by nzonbi »

This was an excellent article. Agree with the author on many points. Some notable mentions:

- Scheme: One of the best languages. A shining example of the beauty of simplicity. I personally envy folks that got to learn programming with SICP. Unfortunately, I didn't crossed with the SICP as a kid, when I would probably had devoured it.

- Haskell: possibly the most advanced programming language, with the downside of having way too much syntax.

- Opinions on programming languages are biased most of the time. Significant experience with dozens of languages is required, to diminish the bias.

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