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Poll: What's Your Favorite Programming Language?

news.ycombinator.com

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

#61

Post by bthomas »

lawn wrote: post #21

It's funny. Every time I use a new language, or go back to an old favourite, it becomes my favorite language for a time. Static typing? Wonderful error messages! Dynamic typing? It does what I want! Functional programming? This is the future of programming! Object-oriented programming? I can describe the world! Low level? My code is fast . High level? My code is *expressive. Is this normal or is it just me? Don't you…

I'm the same way, though I feel like this flies in the face of reason. Switching to a less familiar language usually implies more headaches and less productivity, but the novelty makes it more enjoyable. Another example of how programming is oddly emotional.

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

#64

Post by MatthewPhillips »

simonsarris wrote: post #16

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…

Eh, C# is good for the environment it lives in, but it's not without it's cruft.

C#'s answer for all of its missing features seems to be a generic class. Don't have tuples? We'll give you Tuple. Don't have inline functions? We'll give you Func. It feels very tacked on (especially Func).

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

#66

Post by MartinCron »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #50
simonsarris wrote: post #16

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…

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…

whats the one thing you don't like about your favorite language

That's easy. So many hacker types dismiss you as some sort of weirdo for favoring anything that came from Microsoft.

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

#67

Post by drostie »

noduerme wrote: post #18

3 votes for Shell script and none for Tcl? I guess every kind of insanity has its limits.

It is worth the observation that we can only really upvote the languages that we have used -- others simply aren't eligible for the 'favorite' moniker; even if we've seen a little code written in them, we haven't really felt them.

So, like, JS was my second language. Ruby and Clojure have as yet proven impenetrable for me to learn, but I'm working on that. I have shell scripted and done plenty of PHP, Python, Matlab, and Java, and I learned Scheme when using SICP but I feel like I never have anything available when I'm writing in it -- I hear Haskell is much better at this. I have seen some Smalltalk and it looked very pretty, some C and I was able to trace through it but I felt nervous as hell. That's the extent of my education.

My point is, out of this, the only stuff that I know well enough to choose my favorite is PHP, Python, Java, and JS. This poll cannot give a meaningful result for the question of "what languages are good?" without also asking everyone who responds: which languages have you written more than a hundred lines of code in? which have you read more than a hundred lines of code in? Then we could ask, "given those that have used X, how much has it been loved?" and get a measure of lovability.

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

#68

Post by Roboprog »

lawn wrote: post #21

It's funny. Every time I use a new language, or go back to an old favourite, it becomes my favorite language for a time. Static typing? Wonderful error messages! Dynamic typing? It does what I want! Functional programming? This is the future of programming! Object-oriented programming? I can describe the world! Low level? My code is fast . High level? My code is *expressive. Is this normal or is it just me? Don't you…

No, I think you hit the nail head on. I almost often do quick little things in Perl out of laziness (even though Ruby would be so much prettier), but I also like Pascal/Delphi for static typing and relative speed. C is about as close to assembler as I'd care to come.

But this "Java" thing keeps paying the bills for most of the last decade. I guess it doesn't do everything wrong. (as much as I'd like closures & function pointers, tuples or even working destructors sometimes, I get by with Java)

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