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Poll: What's Your Favorite Programming Language?

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431–440 of 626 posts

Re: Poll: What's Your Favorite Programming Language?

#431

I like Python because I'm an inexperienced and infrequent programmer. While I took a few courses on programming (VB, Java), it wasn't til I discovered Python that I would actually code in my own time. All the boilerplate crap I had to deal with for Java was wiped away, and I could just write . I'm sure if I wrote more complex things, I could find better languages, but for simply getting things done and just jumping i…

The real beauty of Python is the fact that it is easy for beginning programmers, yes, but it has also a lot to offer for experienced coders concerning all the advanced things they might need.

It's no accident that services like Dropbox[1] or YouTube[2], both arguably very complex systems, are relying on Python as their language of choice.

[1] http://blip.tv/pycon-us-videos-2009-2010-2011/pycon-2011-how...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lGCC4KKok

Re: Poll: What's Your Favorite Programming Language?

#432
I would love to hear from the people who voted for Rexx explain what they are doing with Rexx - I am really curious.

A few years ago when working for a bank in Germany I had to learn Rexx but only for some extremely unsophisticated stuff - so I am asking: What are you doing with Rexx and what makes it your favorite programming language?

Re: Poll: What's Your Favorite Programming Language?

#433

Looks like 'Go' is missing, 'Lisp' should probably be 'Common Lisp' since Scheme and Clojure are also 'Lisp'.

I would have voted for Go. Agree, should be on the list.

Same here, golang is my day to day language of choice now. The very large project I've just started I've selected Go! for.

Re: Poll: What's Your Favorite Programming Language?

#435
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely agree with you on C#. It feels like this is what a standard, mature, widespread language should be. There are other languages that are better for specific tasks, but for the general programming language, C# really hits the sweet spot in terms of features, expressability, readability, and environment. This is the language that Java should have been--could have been. Also, I dread getting asked on my next in…

That is easy -- non nullable objects. What I mean by that is that you can already specify that some numbers may be nullable. I would love to be able to specify that some objects cannot be null and have the type-checker verify it. Even better I would have an option type so that you never need to use null, ever.

They don't really work at the type system level, but Code Contracts (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/dd491992), though quite verbose, may be used to achieve that to a certain degree. The integration with Visual Studio is decent and the documentation is great, but they are designed to provide a whole design-by-contract framework which may be an overkill.

Re: Poll: What's Your Favorite Programming Language?

#436

C# really feels like the most mature language that I've ever dealt with. Writing it feels clear, if something is wrong the debugger is very clear. The number of features that are there is incredible (especially post C# 2.0 when they added generics). Properties are delightful. How do you convert to a string? Convert.ToString(). How about an integer? Knowing only that one, it's what you'd expect! I also picked JavaScri…

If only C# has Maven (that supports both Mono and .NET) and a solid cross-platform libraries, I'd leave everything behind.

What about Npanday(1)? Don't use it myself but the devs at work use it.

1. http://incubator.apache.org/npanday/

Re: Poll: What's Your Favorite Programming Language?

#437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like trying to take one of these as parameter or return it?

This is a statically typed language mind you. If you're passing something around as values, you're gonna need to declare what its type is (of course there's type inference, but that just turns it into a totally different language)

> If you're passing something around as values, you're gonna need to declare what its type is

I fail to see the relation this has with my issue.

Re: Poll: What's Your Favorite Programming Language?

#440

C# really feels like the most mature language that I've ever dealt with. Writing it feels clear, if something is wrong the debugger is very clear. The number of features that are there is incredible (especially post C# 2.0 when they added generics). Properties are delightful. How do you convert to a string? Convert.ToString(). How about an integer? Knowing only that one, it's what you'd expect! I also picked JavaScri…

> How do you convert to a string? Convert.ToString().

Actually, I think this is a bad example because oop is inadequate in this particular case. Converting something to something else perfectly fit the functional paradigm (take an argument, returns something, don't store anything). Why do you need a Convert object? How would you explain this to someone not familiar with C#.

I think Console.WriteLine("hello"); is a better example.

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