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Poll: What's Your Most Disliked Programming Language?

news.ycombinator.com

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

#264

Post by nazar »

batista wrote: post #238
LesZedCB wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point. How come we are still using http? I mean, the closest we've come AFAIK to something almost useful is ajax, but that's still not very good considering it's javascript... Maybe I'm unaware of some secret google development.

There's Google's SPDY, but it doesn't fix all that we might like from HTTP, mostly performance stuff. I guess, it's the agreeing on something and then adopting it and then having it catch the market part that's making this difficult. On another field that I follow, we haven't had anything better replace MIDI for like 30 years...

Is MIDI bad? I mean, why do you think it should be replaced? I am not familiar with this area but I am honestly interested!

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

#265

Post by attractivechaos »

asjo wrote: post #255
attractivechaos wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like it. It is possible to show the other poll (on favorite languages) along side? Thank you!

Yes, here is a scatter plot: · http://koldfront.dk/misc/hn/pl/data.png I would like to make a bar chart with favorite votes pointing up from the x-axis and dislike votes pointing down, but my rudimentary R skills doesn't stretch that far yet. Here is the scatter plot on with log scales: · http://koldfront.dk/misc/hn/pl/log.png

Thanks a lot (and sorry for repeated post; there was something wrong with my browser)! I have also got my version of the plot: http://attractivechaos.github.com/votes.png

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

#266

Post by tikhonj »

attractivechaos wrote: post #147
zxy wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then there's python.

I do not know why someone has downvoted zxy. He/she has the point: python is used by many but few dislike it. Python is a third kind: the ones people like. Bjarne was looking for excuses for his bad C++.

I don't know, I know a ton of people who don't like Python. The difference is that unlike C or C++ or even Java, if you don't like the language itself there is no compelling reason to use Python, and so those people don't.

That said, when people do have to use Python, like in my compilers class right now, quite a lot are not happy with it. (Even the professor gets annoyed with it; I really don't know why we're using it.) So I think there is just much more selection bias in the land of Python than in C++ or Java.

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

#267

Post by tikhonj »

zxy wrote: post #94
16s wrote: post #79

"There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses." - Bjarne Stroustrup Source: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bjarne_Stroustrup

But then there's python.

The reason people don't complain about Python is because if you don't like the language, there is no reason to use it, so they don't. When people are forced to use it, they do complain--stupid scoping, horrible lambdas, no pattern-matching, weird desugaring, idiotic default argument semantics and so on. (These are all the things I've heard about it from other students in my compilers course.)

People use C and C++ when they need fast code close to the machine. People use Java when they need more portability but can't sacrifice performance completely. People only use Python because they like it.

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

#268

Post by tikhonj »

I'm in the minority, but the language that annoys me most is Python. Not because it's a really bad language--not at all! Rather, it is a mediocre language with weird semantics, warts and no redeeming features. That by itself is fine--there are many mediocre languages on this poll, some of which are worse than Python.

The real issue is how over-hyped Python is--everybody wants me to use it. I can avoid other unfortunate languages like PHP or even Java fairly easily, but everywhere I turn Python is basically shoved in my face.

It's also constantly heralded as a well designed language when most of it is anything but. I don't even think it's the best dynamically typed language--out of the ones I've any experience with, Scheme, Lua and even JavaScript (aside from the DOM and browser stuff) are nicer and more elegant. Python is bigger, more complicated and yet less expressive than any of these languages (especially Scheme).

It seems to share a philosophy with Java (we can't let programmers have anything they might possibly shoot themselves in the foot with!), which does not make for a language I would like to use.

As I've said, its faults are not unique. It's a sub-par language in a sub-par world. But for some reason it's elevated as the paragon of language design and used widely.

Of course, there are plenty of communities that do not like Python--it's only overrated in the HN sort of sphere. Low-level programmers like C and C++; enterprisey types like Java and C# and neither like Python. I am not interested in either community myself, however.

The one community that I am interested in, and that doesn't like Python either, is the programming language group. Comments on Lambda the Ultimate are much more critical of Python than comments on HN.

So yeah, I like Python less than even Intercal, simply because I've been forced to use the former and will never have to use the latter.

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