What languages fix • Hacker News Board

Re: What languages fix

#21

Post by prodigal_erik » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 2:09 AM UTC

jayzalowitz wrote: post #18

pg: php?

Perl: PHP is a kludge.

Re: What languages fix

#22

Post by seanstickle » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 2:10 AM UTC

seanstickle wrote: post #20

APL: Errors increase in proportion to the amount of code typed; therefore, decrease amount of code typed while keeping expressiveness and power unchanged. Alternatively: APL: Programming should be more like math.

K: APL (and J) is too verbose.

Re: What languages fix

#23

Post by djur » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 2:13 AM UTC

For Ruby, I would suggest "Smalltalk doesn't like Unix" instead. What attracted me to Ruby is that it was a Smalltalk-style pervasive OO language that could be used for scripting and didn't require persistent images.

Re: What languages fix

#24

Post by RafiqM » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 2:14 AM UTC

prodigal_erik wrote: post #21

jayzalowitz wrote: post #18

pg: php?

Perl: PHP is a kludge.

What? Perl is about 10 years older than PHP.

In fact it would make more sense reversed.

PHP: Perl is a kludge.

Because that's what PHP mostly replaced - Perl.

Re: What languages fix

#25

Post by pcwalton » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 2:18 AM UTC

pshc wrote: post #19

Rust: Other languages have boundary issues -- action-at-a-distance is evil.

I would put it as "Rust: C++ is unsafe, and all other attempts to make C++ safe have made it too high level." (Alternately, "concurrent programming with data races is a kludge, and all other attempts to fix data races have ruled out too much.")

Re: What languages fix

#26

Post by laureny » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 2:19 AM UTC

Interesting that the newest language that pg lists is more than ten years old. He's probably not keeping up with new language development any more?

Re: What languages fix

#27

Post by nas » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 2:21 AM UTC

webmaven wrote: post #16

I would dispute the description of Python, at least as an 'origin story'. The actual impetus was 'ABC doesn't have libraries or exceptions': http://docs.python.org/2/faq/general#why-was-python-created-... If we're going for why Python appealed to its early adopters as opposed to the actual motivations for creating it in the first place, something more like 'other languages are all hard to read' would be fair. You cou…

I'm never liked this list, mostly due to Python but I think other languages are also incorrectly characterized. Guido worked on ABC and wanted something for scripting tasks on a Unix machine. Python was mostly inspired by ABC but some of the syntax was inspired by Modula 3.

Python is certainly not a reaction to Perl, I'm not sure Guido was aware of it when Python was born (they are close to the same age, actually).

Re: What languages fix

#28

Post by intull » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 2:24 AM UTC

D: because C++ is a kludge

Re: What languages fix

#29

Post by vlucas » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 2:25 AM UTC

PHP: Perl is too hard to configure and run on the web

Re: What languages fix

#30

Post by ricree » Fri, Dec 27, 2013, 2:25 AM UTC

laureny wrote: post #26

Interesting that the newest language that pg lists is more than ten years old. He's probably not keeping up with new language development any more?

Or just not adding to the list. It's undated, but another posting from last year lists it as (2002).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4954663