Programming languages that every developer should know • Hacker News Board

Re: Programming languages that every developer should know

#11

Post by cmelbye » Sat, Dec 12, 2009, 1:47 PM UTC

leftnode wrote: post #4

I'm not entirely sure I agree with this list. Here's some I would add: PHP - even if you loathe its every existence, if you're a web developer, you're going to come across it, might as well know it. Perl - text processing, data scraping, all around great language. Javascript - Like others have mentioned, I think its a great language, used in front end web development, and now moving to back end. Shell scripting - Of…

I definitely agree with those additions. Even designers should know Javascript for when they're building front-end user interfaces. It's so helpful when a designer already knows Javascript and doesn't need me to whip up a script in 30 seconds for some feature that they just designed.

Re: Programming languages that every developer should know

#12

Post by smikhanov » Sat, Dec 12, 2009, 1:53 PM UTC

His C program is actually a C++ one. C does not allow declaration of variables in the for loop (i.e. 'int i;' line has to precede the for statement). Better not to take any programming advices from someone who can't tell C from C++.

Re: Programming languages that every developer should know

#13

Post by xtho » Sat, Dec 12, 2009, 1:59 PM UTC

leftnode wrote: post #4

I'm not entirely sure I agree with this list. Here's some I would add: PHP - even if you loathe its every existence, if you're a web developer, you're going to come across it, might as well know it. Perl - text processing, data scraping, all around great language. Javascript - Like others have mentioned, I think its a great language, used in front end web development, and now moving to back end. Shell scripting - Of…

I'm not so sure: http://www.google.de/trends?q=perl%2Cphp%2Cjavascript

Anyway, php is still very useful if you want to put something on the web and have no money. So is javascript although the need to write JS yourself will decrease due to automatic generation of JS etc. I also don't think you necessarily have to learn (ba)sh since you could easily write more complex scripts in any other programming language (i.e. ruby is quite good at that and it's also a very suitable perl-replacement).

Re: Programming languages that every developer should know

#14

Post by xtho » Sat, Dec 12, 2009, 2:01 PM UTC

ramchip wrote: post #6

ThinkWriteMute wrote: post #5

Why do C and C++ always get such a big fellatio in programming articles? They're ugly languages with serious problems and bubble gum fixes.

What other low-level language with a lingua franca status would you suggest?

Why should all developers use/know a system programming language? And the title of the article implies the list to be valid for "every developer".

Re: Programming languages that every developer should know

#15

Post by sailormoon » Sat, Dec 12, 2009, 2:10 PM UTC

There is, to me, no difference between Python and Ruby. It’s basically the same language.

Ha!! I agree, and I'm a Ruby developer.

Re: Programming languages that every developer should know

#16

Post by pavlov » Sat, Dec 12, 2009, 2:17 PM UTC

smikhanov wrote: post #12

His C program is actually a C++ one. C does not allow declaration of variables in the for loop (i.e. 'int i;' line has to precede the for statement). Better not to take any programming advices from someone who can't tell C from C++.

C99 allows this.

Re: Programming languages that every developer should know

#17

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 12, 2009, 2:19 PM UTC

smikhanov wrote: post #12

His C program is actually a C++ one. C does not allow declaration of variables in the for loop (i.e. 'int i;' line has to precede the for statement). Better not to take any programming advices from someone who can't tell C from C++.

[deleted]

Re: Programming languages that every developer should know

#18

Post by leftnode » Sat, Dec 12, 2009, 2:35 PM UTC

xtho wrote: post #13

leftnode wrote: post #4

I'm not entirely sure I agree with this list. Here's some I would add: PHP - even if you loathe its every existence, if you're a web developer, you're going to come across it, might as well know it. Perl - text processing, data scraping, all around great language. Javascript - Like others have mentioned, I think its a great language, used in front end web development, and now moving to back end. Shell scripting - Of…

I'm not so sure: http://www.google.de/trends?q=perl%2Cphp%2Cjavascript Anyway, php is still very useful if you want to put something on the web and have no money. So is javascript although the need to write JS yourself will decrease due to automatic generation of JS etc. I also don't think you necessarily have to learn (ba)sh since you could easily write more complex scripts in any other programming language (i.e. ru…

New PHP development may not be as popular now-a-days (according to that graph, just the other day someone posted a link saying there were gonna be 5.2 million PHP programmers in 2010), but there's certainly a ton of legacy software to support written in it.

Re: Programming languages that every developer should know

#19

Post by daemin » Sat, Dec 12, 2009, 4:57 PM UTC

leftnode wrote: post #4

I'm not entirely sure I agree with this list. Here's some I would add: PHP - even if you loathe its every existence, if you're a web developer, you're going to come across it, might as well know it. Perl - text processing, data scraping, all around great language. Javascript - Like others have mentioned, I think its a great language, used in front end web development, and now moving to back end. Shell scripting - Of…

I agree with you that a shell scripting language should be in every programmers toolkit (even DOS command prompt and batch files count). Also if a programmer is dealing with the web or web applications then JavaScript is a must. However I must disagree on the other two languages, they do not need to be added to the list.

Regarding PHP, you don't actually need to know it, as once you know C (and HTML) you can easily interpret a PHP script, and make any minor modifications if need be. I would only say to learn PHP if you intend to actively develop in it (i.e. contribute actively to the development of an existing open-source PHP application), as I've found that the existing PHP applications to be sufficiently completed for my liking.

As for Perl, you can just substitute Ruby or Python (both of which are on the list) for all of your text processing needs. Like the author I prefer Ruby, but both languages seem to have a reasonably powerful text processing library included.

Re: Programming languages that every developer should know

#20

Post by docmach » Sat, Dec 12, 2009, 5:30 PM UTC

ThinkWriteMute wrote: post #8

ramchip wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What other low-level language with a lingua franca status would you suggest?

There aren't any I would suggest. That's the problem! C is the highest used solution and most praised when it happens to be a really bad solution for humans .

C is not a bad language for humans. It's simple enough to be able to see how the machine will execute it but not low level enough that you have to manually manage everything, like assembly. It's not always the best choice, but for some things it is. It's also good to know so that you understand how how computers work instead of assuming that higher level languages are magical.