Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Programming Languages: What tool is right for which job?

therighttool.hammerprinciple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 60 posts

Re: Programming Languages: What tool is right for which job?

#41

Post by jerf »

kloncks wrote: post #34

How inefficient is Ruby really? This tool surprised me. Can any Ruby-ists chime in? http://therighttool.hammerprinciple.com/statements/programs-...

It tends to hang out at the bottom of the Shootout [1]. Its phenomenal cosmic powers come at a price. But note that the ratio of Ruby to Python or Perl is generally within 2x.

(The Shootout is not the One True Measure of speed... but it isn't meaningless, either.)

Generally the only thing this really means though is that you wouldn't want to do hard-core computation in pure Perl/Ruby/Python, hence things like NumPy. [1]: http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/which-programming-lan...

Re: Programming Languages: What tool is right for which job?

#42

Post by v21 »

gnaritas wrote: post #40
v21 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do write games, and Actionscript (3, not 2) is a lovely language.

Since I specifically excluded you, what's your point?

That Actionscript is still a useful language, within it's niche. And since this post is all about finding the right language for particular niches I don't see why you'd argue against it's inclusion.

Re: Programming Languages: What tool is right for which job?

#43

Post by adambard »

chromejs10 wrote: post #23

I think it's a good question. There are so many languages around that it is hard to choose from. I think it's beneficial to get good at a handful of languages and use them. However, there might be a time where a newer language is just so great that you have to use it. For example, in web development should you use straight Javascript? Jquery? Dart? Coffee Script? Personally, Python, Java, and ObjC gets me everything…

I think this tool gives too fine-grained an outlook about whether a language is "suitable" or "not."

Some languages (e.g. Matlab, Erlang) were designed for specific domains in which they excel, but most were designed to be general-purpose. So, most of those languages are really suitable for most tasks.

There are few things that, for example, one might code in Java, that I would not consider using Python for. The two are very different, of course, but for non-specialized applications, the practical reasons for using one over the other come down to other concerns; ubiquity, your own familiarity, interoperability with your existing infrastructure, etc. Me, just I'll choose the novel general-purpose language out of interest.

Then again, a few languages I've worked with (i.e. PHP, Matlab) deserve thoroughly to be crucified for their crimes against computer science and developers everywhere.

Re: Programming Languages: What tool is right for which job?

#44

Post by andrewflnr »

110101001010100 wrote: post #33
pavelludiq wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wonder what would happen if we all wrote C++ on Windows? I hope you can answer that question yourself :). But seriously, i think its great that we can all work in our favorite language, and we can get away with it. I can write a web service in common lisp, and you can use it in your Rails cat picture app, that also uses a brainf*ck script to convert the cat pictures in a suitable format. And your company can also…

It's just a thought. A "what if". I trace the existence of many languages to having no common instruction set in hardware. Different assembly languages for different hardware. This was very frustrating for people many years ago. If protocols (rules) are awesome what if we had had a protocol that asked the chip makers to use a common (extendable) instruction set for all hardware? What if there had only been one assemb…

Even if there was One True Assembly, few would want to program in it directly, and we would still have different ideas about how to generate it. There would still be functional people and OOP people and procedural people. There would be tradeoffs where different approaches would be objectively better.

I would like a One True Assembly because it would make it easier to develop new languages. :)

Re: Programming Languages: What tool is right for which job?

#45

Post by gnaritas »

v21 wrote: post #42
gnaritas wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since I specifically excluded you, what's your point?

That Actionscript is still a useful language, within it's niche. And since this post is all about finding the right language for particular niches I don't see why you'd argue against it's inclusion.

I'd already made that point by excluding games from my statement. When someone says except for X, bla bla bla, you don't respond by saying yea but I do X.

Re: Programming Languages: What tool is right for which job?

#46

Post by minikomi »

andrewflnr wrote: post #44
110101001010100 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a thought. A "what if". I trace the existence of many languages to having no common instruction set in hardware. Different assembly languages for different hardware. This was very frustrating for people many years ago. If protocols (rules) are awesome what if we had had a protocol that asked the chip makers to use a common (extendable) instruction set for all hardware? What if there had only been one assemb…

Even if there was One True Assembly, few would want to program in it directly, and we would still have different ideas about how to generate it. There would still be functional people and OOP people and procedural people. There would be tradeoffs where different approaches would be objectively better. I would like a One True Assembly because it would make it easier to develop new languages. :)

I guess this is kind of what is happening in the browser at the moment.

Re: Programming Languages: What tool is right for which job?

#48

Post by vilya »

crikli wrote: post #12

This isn't the right question to be asking. There are certainly cases where one language at another for a given task, e.g. Ruby is better for string parsing than PHP. But in many (most?) scenarios the technique used for the job matters far more than the language. Sorting is an easy example: bubble sort is a crap solution regardless of the language. Disclaimer: I can't read the actual page due to 503's and the cache i…

Actually, bubble sort has very nice access locality characteristics which mean it can be a great solution in some circumstances...

Re: Programming Languages: What tool is right for which job?

#50

Post by v21 »

gnaritas wrote: post #45
v21 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Actionscript is still a useful language, within it's niche. And since this post is all about finding the right language for particular niches I don't see why you'd argue against it's inclusion.

I'd already made that point by excluding games from my statement. When someone says except for X, bla bla bla, you don't respond by saying yea but I do X.

But you can respond by going "But it's silly to exclude X from discussion". Which is why I have been trying (and, evidently failing) to convey.
Post reply on HN