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The subjective experience of coding in different programming languages (2023)

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Re: The subjective experience of coding in different programming languages (2023)

#41

Post by Insanity »

johnisgood wrote: post #32

I am curious about people's experiences who are really good and use the following languages regularly: C, OCaml / Haskell (although Haskell feels way different to me), Common Lisp (or any Lisp), Erlang / Elixir, and Forth / Factor. To me, these languages seem to be significantly different. Edit (before I will not be able to do so): thank you for everyone's replies (in advance, too)!

I'm not sure if I would consider myself 'really good', but in a previous life I have used Haskell professionally, albeit only for small-scale applications (alongside a Scala codebase).

For what it's worth, I actually really enjoyed using Haskell. It did force me to think differently about problems and I feel that this has carried over to writing cleaner code in non-functional languages like Go/Java. I liked it so much so that I wrote a book about writing functional code in Go along with a supporting OSS library.

Would I recommend it for really large-scale applications? Maybe not, because you'd want a mature ecosystem with a lot of support, and the secondary issue is that you want to have a large candidate pool when hiring people.

Small disclaimer though, the last time I used Haskell professionally was in 2018-2019, so it's not 'recent' experience.

Re: The subjective experience of coding in different programming languages (2023)

#42

Post by genmon »

crazygringo wrote: post #40
genmon wrote: post #29

(blog author here) If you're interested in the multiplayer cursors + cursor chat, my philosophy is that every web page deserves to be a place, and pages should feel busy if lots of people are there plus you can grab the code. here's the write-up: https://interconnected.org/home/2024/09/05/cursor-party

It's very cool, but the motion is also incredibly distracting while reading. It literally makes it physically difficult to read. Might I suggest quickly fading the cursors out entirely as soon as the user starts to scroll, maybe? Then you could have the effect at the start, but be less distracting while reading. Or just a floating counter in the corner to say how many people are currently viewing it, maybe with the t…

there's a Quiet Mode toggle in the corner of the screen for that purpose

Re: The subjective experience of coding in different programming languages (2023)

#43

Post by Insanity »

jebarker wrote: post #10

For others that found the website design made it difficult to read the post: there's a "quiet mode" button at the top right.

Thank you for this! The website is insanely distracting, but at the same time kinda fun. Reminds me a bit of the chaos of the early 2000's internet I was used to :)

Re: The subjective experience of coding in different programming languages (2023)

#44

Post by mrsmrtss »

bitwize wrote: post #28
john-tells-all wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the identical reactions, and like you it doesn't make a lot of sense. Java: "stiff", awkward, verbose. Gets the job done but ugh. C#: "soft", flexible, has possibilities Although to be fair I programming in Java a long time ago, and haven't done much with C#. C# I see as a "corporate Python", vs Java I see as a language designed by committee and not for use by humans. I've heard Java is way, way better now.

Java gives me similar feelings to what people say about Go: it may be a little verbose, but you always know exactly what to write and how to write it, and looking at other people's code you get a very good sense of what it does because it follows very familiar patterns. The "brotha, eugh!" feeling comes from the enterprise frameworks, which tangle all that up in a mess of factories, DI autowiring, and inversion of co…

"Proper" generics, value types, LINQ, operator overloading, excellent native interop etc make a big enough difference to me atleast to prefer c# over java. Is being "Microsofty" a bad thing and "Oracly" or "Googly" a good thing?

Re: The subjective experience of coding in different programming languages (2023)

#45

Post by crazygringo »

genmon wrote: post #42
crazygringo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very cool, but the motion is also incredibly distracting while reading. It literally makes it physically difficult to read. Might I suggest quickly fading the cursors out entirely as soon as the user starts to scroll, maybe? Then you could have the effect at the start, but be less distracting while reading. Or just a floating counter in the corner to say how many people are currently viewing it, maybe with the t…

there's a Quiet Mode toggle in the corner of the screen for that purpose

Thanks. Honestly, given all of the random comments in bubbles and other UX I never even saw it. I realize it's obvious once you've seen it, but everything else was so distracting I genuinely didn't. And I was literally trying to just "tune everything out" and read, not assuming there was an option to disable it that I should look for.

Also, "quiet mode" doesn't suggest any clear link to the cursors. I get what you're saying with it, but I'm more likely to assume it's got something to do with the site playing sound effects I don't hear because I've got my device on silent mode.

Re: The subjective experience of coding in different programming languages (2023)

#46

Post by GuB-42 »

genmon wrote: post #29

(blog author here) If you're interested in the multiplayer cursors + cursor chat, my philosophy is that every web page deserves to be a place, and pages should feel busy if lots of people are there plus you can grab the code. here's the write-up: https://interconnected.org/home/2024/09/05/cursor-party

First time I saw this, I didn't realize these were other people cursors, I really though the point was to be an annoyance (some people actually do this!). I thought the movement was random, and that it was a way to make it harder for people to see their actual cursor.

The country flags make it much more clear. Still an annoyance, but now I get it, and I am more than amused than annoyed now.

Anyways, it doesn't work for me on Firefox 128.11.0esr, Debian 11 (yes, outdated, I know, but still in LTS), I had to use Chrome/ium for the cursors to show.

Re: The subjective experience of coding in different programming languages (2023)

#47

Post by skydhash »

JohnFen wrote: post #19
genmon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason I ask: there's a story about a physicist who was so kinaesthetic in his thinking that somebody walked into his office to find him rolling around on the floor, trying to embody rotations from the point of view of a particular system or something... I can't say that my own subjective feelings while coding are so useful! But I like to imagine that they're a meaningful contributor to my "taste" of what good/ba…

I certainly don't get as deep as that physicist, but I do think I understand. When I'm working out a difficult logical/data/programmatic problem, then I use my hands in a similar way. I'll form hand shapes that in my mind represent geometric shapes and physically use my hands to "arrange" them in various ways until something "clicks" in my head. That "click" isn't the win of finding a solution, but more like a feelin…

Essence of the problem is the right word. If we go with F. Brooks’ words, it’s like all the accidental complexity fade away and all that’s left is the idealistic view of how things should work. Then all that left is making it happens with code

Re: The subjective experience of coding in different programming languages (2023)

#48

Post by foxygen »

johnisgood wrote: post #32

I am curious about people's experiences who are really good and use the following languages regularly: C, OCaml / Haskell (although Haskell feels way different to me), Common Lisp (or any Lisp), Erlang / Elixir, and Forth / Factor. To me, these languages seem to be significantly different. Edit (before I will not be able to do so): thank you for everyone's replies (in advance, too)!

I've been working with functional programming languages for the most part of my career now. Mostly Elixir and Clojure, but some OCaml/Haskell too. I believe after FP "clicks", there is no going back. Everything else feels just so unnecessarily complex.

My favorite is still Clojure by miles ahead, besides it being a functional language, its data-oriented approach to writing programs is completely different from anything else I've ever seen. I currently work with Elixir, and there isn't a day that goes by without me thinking "gosh, this would be so much simpler to solve in Clojure".

Re: The subjective experience of coding in different programming languages (2023)

#49

Post by mjtlittle »

I fully agree with everything mentioned.

I think this synesthesia idea bumps into the concepts of comfort and understanding. In that I feel it also extends to the environment im in and the tools im using. Like if I switch to a different type of keyboard or the monitors are positioned weirdly; or especially if im not using a certain IDE or developing without a language server.

Being immersed in software development, and the different ways we do it, can be a visceral and emotional experience.

Re: The subjective experience of coding in different programming languages (2023)

#50

Post by chamomeal »

genmon wrote: post #29

(blog author here) If you're interested in the multiplayer cursors + cursor chat, my philosophy is that every web page deserves to be a place, and pages should feel busy if lots of people are there plus you can grab the code. here's the write-up: https://interconnected.org/home/2024/09/05/cursor-party

I absolutely love it
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