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Learning Curves for Different Programming Languages

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Re: Learning Curves for Different Programming Languages

#41

Post by cstrahan »

stared wrote: post #25

It seems that it interchanges "productive" with "writing clean code". PHP is ugly but can be productive. Haskell is beautiful, but well, I know a lot of people encharmed by it, but no-one productive (i.e. delivering products quickly; it's not the same as solving pure, mathematical problems).

Interesting. I like working in Haskell precisely because it allows me to iterate faster than in something like Ruby/Java/Clojure/. Granted, I'm not paid to write Haskell, but I think that's more ironic than anything else.

Perhaps someone from industry can confirm my feelings here.

Re: Learning Curves for Different Programming Languages

#42

Post by rubiquity »

seppo0010 wrote: post #40
rubiquity wrote: post #34

I'm not a PHP user, nor do I like PHP, but I do know plenty of PHP users that are quite productive with the language.

There's no scale on the vertical axis to compare different curves. You can only compare the productivity and the self-assessment within a language.

Good point. Darn my brain for being conditioned to drawing concrete correlations from graphs.

Re: Learning Curves for Different Programming Languages

#43

Post by gamesbrainiac »

balloot wrote: post #26

I am increasingly convinced that Haskell only exists so that people who know it can pat themselves on the back for being wonderful.

What are you talking about? Haskell has done a wonderful job at teaching people how to use Haskell.

This is a feat in and of itself.

Re: Learning Curves for Different Programming Languages

#44

Post by yawboakye »

coldtea wrote: post #27
frostmatthew wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook uses PHP This is the common rebuttal of PHP jokes - but pointing to a sole outlier is rarely a solid defense. Especially when they have created Hack[1] and HHVM[2]. So it's not entirely accurate to say they "use PHP." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_(programming_language) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HipHop_Virtual_Machine

> This is the common rebuttal of PHP jokes - but pointing to a sole outlier is rarely a solid defense. Sole outlier? Hardly. Half of the web is powered by PHP, including tons of websites with huge traffic and usage. > Especially when they have created Hack[1] and HHVM[2]. So it's not entirely accurate to say they "use PHP." Hack and HHVM do not show some inherent PHP issue that something like Ruby or Python would not…

> Half of the web is powered by PHP, including tons of websites with huge traffic and usage.

What powers the web: web servers or web sites/applications? If it's web servers then your claim that half of the web is powered by PHP is false because I'm—and I'm going to be honest here—yet to see/use a web server written in PHP.

Re: Learning Curves for Different Programming Languages

#45

Post by MaxGabriel »

stared wrote: post #25

It seems that it interchanges "productive" with "writing clean code". PHP is ugly but can be productive. Haskell is beautiful, but well, I know a lot of people encharmed by it, but no-one productive (i.e. delivering products quickly; it's not the same as solving pure, mathematical problems).

Do you know alot of Haskell programmers? Because I'm enjoying my typesafe SQL queries, typesafe intra-application linking, typesafe templating, etc. Haskell is capable of far more than "pure, mathematical problems"—indeed, typed IO is a premier feature of the language.

edit: sorry, this was pretty defensive; I shouldn't have written this comment so hastily.

Re: Learning Curves for Different Programming Languages

#46

Post by brucehauman »

For goodness sake people. You can take a comic as an attack on a particular programming language, but how is this useful? Maybe there is wisdom in this comic or not, but there is value in people reflecting and presenting a humorous point of view.

I have used all of the languages above and found the comic humorous and greatly exaggerated. But I think that there is something here. If you haven't really used the exalted languages in this comic please try them. You can only learn from the experience.

Also, if users of a particular language appear to be elitist, this does not say anything about the value of the language itself.

An open mind is going to be both happier and more capable.

Re: Learning Curves for Different Programming Languages

#47

Post by _xhok »

seppo0010 wrote: post #40
rubiquity wrote: post #34

I'm not a PHP user, nor do I like PHP, but I do know plenty of PHP users that are quite productive with the language.

There's no scale on the vertical axis to compare different curves. You can only compare the productivity and the self-assessment within a language.

But you can compare derivatives. Which is the stab at PHP.

Re: Learning Curves for Different Programming Languages

#49

Post by notacoward »

salafy wrote: post #2

What about ruby ?

I think the fact that Ruby didn't even make the list tells a lot about how far it has fallen in terms of mindshare. I have nothing against Ruby, its people or its ecosystem, but it's beginning to seem like a bit of a flash in the pan.

Re: Learning Curves for Different Programming Languages

#50

Post by cstrahan »

raverbashing wrote: post #8

Decorators are more than simple syntactic sugar in Python ;) It seems overly critical, but still funny (the Haskell one is probably the most spot on) And after all, Facebook uses PHP and MySql

> And after all, Facebook uses PHP and MySql

And Haskell: https://code.facebook.com/posts/302060973291128/open-sourcin...

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