9 ms·

Ask HN: What programming language has you really excited lately, and why?

61 points by sdegutis 10y ago

I realized that almost all I ever do on HN is press Cmd-F, type "lang", see 0 results, and close it. So I figured I'd just ask y'all instead.

mburst 10y ago
Happy to see Python getting first party support for concurrency.
kerryritter 10y ago
As primarily a C# and JavaScript developer, I'd say TypeScript. Best of both worlds and I feel pretty productive in it (once past the pain of setup).
- drinchev 10y ago
  Not a c# dev, but definitely typescript makes me feel more motivated to write code these days.
ttronicm 10y ago
Elixir makes me warm and fuzzy.
- beginrescueend 10y ago
  I second Elixir. Concurrency and HA are the future!
- igorgue 10y ago
  Same here, it makes me go like woo!
tal_berzniz 10y ago
JS ES2015. The syntax looks awful at first glance, but after heavily using it, there's much more power to this language now.
- ralusek 10y ago
  The syntax looks awful? It looks extremely clean. It cleaned up the JS syntax enormously...
  - tal_berzniz 10y ago
    Talking mostly about things like: // 1. [a + b] // [a + b] is an array {[a + b]: c} // [a + b] is not an array // 2. { x, y: x, y} // inconsistent object fields and there are more examples. After you get to know the syntax, it can be used for good -- but some decisions are making the language more complex. As written above, I enjoy its new features
    - Etheryte 10y ago
      Bracket notation isn't anything new to ES2015, using it in that context is though.
    - thaumant 10y ago
      var a = [3] // [3] is an array var b = {3: 4}; b[3] // [3] is not an array
- capkutay 10y ago
  This is the correct answer. Jokes aside, ES2015 hits the sweet spot for new powerful languages with big-name backers (facebook is compiled in babel). https://twitter.com/amasad/status/631251607422787584 https://twitter.com/amasad/status/631251607422787584
- WesleyJohnson 10y ago
  I'm in this camp as well. I've always enjoyed JS because I feel like I can get stuff done so much quicker. With ES6/2015, now I feel like it's far more powerful, elegant and fun to use.
- arisAlexis 10y ago
  What about ES7? Async await syntax is a game changer
rajandatta 10y ago
Picat. A new language that blends different paradigms including logic programming, constraint solving, pattern matching into a cohesive whole. Allows for very compact, elegant solutions to many problems.
- blacksqr 10y ago
  How's Picat performance-wise?
zoul 10y ago
Haskell, seeing I still have so much to learn. Elm, because there seems to be a sane web frontend language. Swift, because I can do daily work in a modern language with so many parts done right.
rajandatta 10y ago
Also like newLISP. Powerful, small, practical and thought provoking.
jjpe 10y ago
Rust: it provides extremely strong guarantees about your code at compile time so that usually it feels like a script language with C/C++-levels of performance. And the best part: no data races, and no runtime garbage collector overhead.
- ryanlm 10y ago
  Is that all? That's a pretty generic reason IMO.
  - scott_s 10y ago
    I think you are underestimating how hard it is to get those guarantees, how much some people want them, and how long we've needed them.
  - stusmall 10y ago
    To long time C developers, it's a huge deal. I'm starting my first primarily rust job on Monday and I'm extremely excited about it.
    - dikaiosune 10y ago
      Where, if you don't mind sharing?
      - stusmall 10y ago
        ThreatX
        kibwen 10y ago
        If they'd be interested in sharing more about their usage of Rust, we'd love to have them represented on our page of corporate users at https://www.rust-lang.org/friends.html https://www.rust-lang.org/friends.html .
  - rvense 10y ago
kasey_junk 10y ago
Ponylang. Just seems to fit my mental model well. Wish it was more ready for prime time.
AnimalMuppet 10y ago
None, because the existing languages were close to good enough for the problems that I try to solve. There's nothing that's opening up new frontiers in a mind-blowing kind of way, at least not from where I stand. But some languages are kind of interesting: C++11/14, because it opened up some new ways of writing efficient code safely. Haskell, because of HM types. Lisp, because of homoiconicity and macros.
partisan 10y ago
Nim because of the syntax, performance, and base library.
- nimmer 10y ago
  ...and powerful templating, low memory usage, portability.
  - ldlework 10y ago
    ...and user type-classes, compile-time AST macros, and GC-as-an-API
sumitgt 10y ago
Lately? C# triggered by: - Open sourcing of .NET - Open Sourcing of Xamarin I want to live in a world where writing mobile apps for multiple platforms with a single codebase becomes the de-facto way of doing things. C#/Xamarin seems like the only viable way to achieve that.
- kvz 10y ago
  What about react native?
  - fny 10y ago
    React Native is "learn once, write everywhere" as opposed to "write once, run everywhere."
philip1209 10y ago
Go. I may have to teach a mathematician with limited programming experience how to write parallel* algorithms, and Go seems far easier than alternatives (like C++) for a beginner. * (or concurrent)
abecedarius 10y ago
https://github.com/monte-language/monte https://github.com/monte-language/monte is reviving E, the distributed capability language.
fokinsean 10y ago
Elm because I'm new to functional programming and it hurts my head.
eeks 10y ago
Picolisp. And of course OCaml.
gshock 10y ago
F# is pretty sweet. It's concise, no ceremony, type safety, can be used with all .net libs, functional. I'm a beginner but love diving into it.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  F# is excellent and the only reason I'd stick with .NET. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't think so, and continues to dump massive amounts of resources into C# while only paying lip service to F#. (See, for instance, the full-featured C# Interactive in VS. It arrived like 10 years late, but it's a much slicker experience, apart from the language.) F# with C#-level tooling would be unstoppable. Though it's pretty fantastic as-is.
  - partisan 10y ago
    Are you developing in Windows or Linux? If Linux, what is your toolset and workflow?
    - MichaelGG 10y ago
      Develop and compile on Windows with MS tools, deploy on Linux. VS+VsVim does a nice job with F# (I tried Emacs with evil but it's not as good for F#). Deployment is as easy as copying an exe.
      - partisan 10y ago
        Thank you. I've been fooling around with VS Code and Mono, but I have been considering doing exactly as you described.
jordigh 10y ago
D (dlang). It's the C++ I always wanted. It's safe, modern, fast, and familiar. It's got classes with reference semantics, structs with value semantics, safe concurrency by default, support for functional programming, concise syntax yet with the C/Java/C++/C# flavour, speed, a compile-time complete D interpreter (thus allowing metaprogramming in the same language as the runtime language, almost lisp-like), plus all the common syntactic niceties we've come to expect from modern languages. My only complaint so far is that the reference implementation has a stupid license, but most other D users just ignore the terms of the license. I had also found a performance bug in an stdlib function, but it's since been addressed in dev.
- bedros 10y ago
  what do you mean stupid license? what are the restrictions?
  - jordigh 10y ago
    https://lobste.rs/s/uafwxi/safe_c_subset_is_vapourware/comments/mkqkbv#c_mkqkbv https://lobste.rs/s/uafwxi/safe_c_subset_is_vapourware/comme... Thankfully, there are other implementations with perfectly free licenses: gdc and lldc.
    - Shorel 10y ago
      That's written tongue in cheek, and it basically means something totally different to what you understood. The license doesn't forbid anything. At all. It simply states that it doesn't guarantee any use at all either. Therefore, you can use it to do whatever you want to do, but because there was no guarantee, you can't sue the software creator. I will paste the text here, for others to read it: "The Software is not generally available software. It has not undergone testing and may contain errors. The Software was not designed to operate after December 31, 1999. It may be incomplete and it may not function properly. No support or maintenance is provided with this Software. Do not install or distribute the Software if you are not accustomed to using or distributing experimental software. Do not use this software for life critical applications, or applications that could cause significant harm or property damage." Now my explanation: Don't use DMD it in a peacemaker. Or use it, if you thing the technology is suitable. But if you do use it in a peacemaker, and it fails, it will be your fault and not the fault of the creator of the DMD compiler. It's pretty much a standard disclaimer and all licenses have one. The equivalent disclaimer text of the GPL license (used by gdc and lots of other software) is this (the original text is in caps): THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MODIFIES AND/OR CONVEYS THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. Anyway, the best part of D is that I think the confusing text will be discussed in their forums by their great community and something will be done about it.
pwpwp 10y ago
http://lbstanza.org/ http://lbstanza.org/ because it reuses all the good stuff from Dylan.
kawera 10y ago
Elm, because it helps to unload part of the cognitive burden of frontend development. Elixir, to taste functional programming on the backend.
ori_b 10y ago
Myrddin (https://myrlang.org https://myrlang.org). Mostly because it's my pet project, and it's fun to work on it.
bcheung 10y ago
Elm. Because it is super clean and easy to read. The compile time errors are fantastic. I feel, if my app compiles then it is going to do what I want. Not so when developing with other JS frameworks. The whole paradigm feels like it is build for making web applications.
baldfat 10y ago
Racket - I love everything about it. It has Functional Programming that makes sense to me, I went through Haskell books 3 times over the years and took a few weeks to be flying with Racket.
- Johnny_Brahms 10y ago
  As a scheme guy in general, I myself am very excited by typed/racket. I have always been torn between ML-like languages and lisp-style, with the latter winning most of the time. I have gotten so used to the syntax that I prefer it to most other languages. But I miss the niceness of typing, which typed racket provides. There are some warts, like having to explicitly typecast when using two polymorphic functions, and that the curry procedure doesn't work as in racket, but other than that it is not far from what I would perceive as the perfect language. I could of course wish for some other things, like making a curried and strictly typed scheme-like language, but i'm not going to push my luck :)
shritesh 10y ago
Crystal: Syntax inspired by Ruby, static types and compiled by LLVM. The standard library is mostly similar to Ruby (I'd say it's better. For example it rack-like functionality and websockets built-in). It's getting a lot of traction in the community.
- atrudeau 10y ago
  Crystal looks interesting, but is it usable in production? Any examples of people using it?
  - shritesh 10y ago
    Sidekiq was recently ported over to crystal and the speedups and memory usage improvements are amazing. There's also an officially supported heroku-buildpack so it can be deployed easily. But there's a lot of breaking changes in the language (0.18 was released a few days ago with a few breaking changes). I would not use it for a long term project (yet). But for some personal project or prototypes, for example which you'd quickly set using Ruby/Sinatra, I'd choose Crystal/Kemal.
numlocked 10y ago
Clojure. Particularly with Paredit mode in Emacs. The experience of manipulating semantic units of code vs. editing text is a joy and I really, really miss it when I return to e.g. Python.
- lowmagnet 10y ago
  I really like parinfer for this, too. After switching to it, I've had a great time using it.
there4 10y ago
PHP: With the new 7 release, it gets a surprising speed boost, a collection of elegant new syntax, and maintains backwards compatibility with an incredible ecosystem of packages. Modern projects like Laravel and Slim continue to push best practices, and the community is one of the largest. It's an incredibly versatile language with a robust feature set.
georgewsinger 10y ago
clojure due to the release of clojure.spec a few days ago.
georgewsinger 10y ago
clojure due to the release of clojure.spec a few days ago.
cgrubb 10y ago
jq is a command line tool and also a language for expressing transformations on JSON with concise one-liners. It is useful for processing the output of mongoexport or an elasticsearch query. The basic constructs are "filter expressions". Pipes (|) can be used to direct the output of one filter expression to another, and commas (,) can be used to concatenate the output of two filter expressions.
aehtyb 10y ago
mIRCSCRIPT
perneto 10y ago
Ceylon, because after you've seen union types you wonder why they aren't implemented in every statically typed language.
iLemming 10y ago
Clojurescript. Because it's better Javascript than Javascript.
cwbrandsma 10y ago
Swift. I've been doing more and more iPhone development lately, so much nicer than ObjectiveC and half the files (I refuse to miss header files). But I was also doing a lot of Java, which has made me more excited about getting back into C#. As far as language features go, Java is C# poor cousin.
vga805 10y ago
Rust: low level performance, high level safety, functional, AMAZING community Elm: beautiful front-end development in a tough to navigate JS world Elixir: functional back-end programming on top of the BEAM VM ES 2015 & node.js: I really enjoy and appreciate a language growing in the ways JS has and I love seeing the frameworks influence and borrow from one another (ember, react, angular). While the ecosystem is sometimes annoying, it's been a joy to see the evolution and natural selection of tools and libraries (e.g. flux, alt, flummox, and eventually redux coming out on top...for now)
VoidAgent 10y ago
C++ because of it's power and because it is evolving in intelligent way
DonaldFisk 10y ago
None. That's why I've been developing my own language (http://web.onetel.com/~hibou/fmj/tutorials/TOC.html http://web.onetel.com/~hibou/fmj/tutorials/TOC.html). It isn't ready yet: there are still bugs in the IDE, and without a compiler it's slow. After fixing these problems, I also want to look at new ways to do graph processing. Then, I'll think about releasing it, if there's enough interest. Let me know what you think. Features: visual, dataflow, HM type inference while editing, homoiconic, can call Lisp and callable from Lisp.
atesti 10y ago
jai, a language for game developers without gc from Jonathan Blow
jlarocco 10y ago
I guess you were hoping for new cutting edge stuff, but I've been really enjoying Common Lisp. I've used it for a bunch of small projects the last year or so, and just have a ton of fun. In particular, it has surprisingly good bindings to graphics libraries like Qt, SDL, and OpenGL, and it's super easy to get animations and graphical apps up and running quickly. The compilers are great for such a high level language, and it's significantly faster than Python, which was my preferred language before CL. It doesn't beat the raw speed of C, but I rarely need that anyway. As an example, I just wrote a cheesy, animated FFT visualization and full screen at 2560x1440 it gets 90+ fps with no attempt to optimize on my part, except turning up the default optimization level. https://github.com/jl2/qt-fft-viz https://github.com/jl2/qt-fft-viz The REPL and code reloading makes iterating on ideas really fast, and I find I experiment more in CL because it's just easier.
- vram22 10y ago
  What CL implementation are you using, on what OS?
  - jlarocco 10y ago
    SBCL, mostly on Linux, but also a bit on OSX. Both platforms work really well, but the experience is a bit smoother on Linux. On both platforms I have a script that pulls from Git, rebuilds, and installs over the previous SBCL binary image, so I'm using the absolute bleeding edge of the compiler. One day this will bite me somehow and then I'll start using the most recent stable tag, but it's worked okay up to now. I use Emacs and Slime for development. I had used Emacs for a long time before using CL, so using Slime wasn't an issue for me at all. I know the commercial implementations have some neat IDEs, but I haven't tried them. I'm not sure there's many (or any) OSS alternatives to Slime. On both platforms I use QuickLisp to install all of the Lisp packages I use. Pure Lisp libraries always work great on both platforms. Libraries that wrap C/C++ libraries (like Qt or SDL) tend to work better on Linux, but in every case I can think of I've got them working on OSX also, with varying degrees of effort. On Debian I "apt-get install ..." the required lib* and sometimes lib*-dev packages, and then (ql:quickload ...) has always just worked. External libraries on OSX are where I've encountered the most problems. Qt was particularly tricky, and I'm not even 100% sure what I did that finally got it working. SDL has some hoops to jump through with a "cocoa helper library" that I had to build by hand, but it's pretty simple and a few minutes Googling turned up enough info to get it working. For the majority of the stuff I've needed (libpng, cairo2, mpg123, and a few others), I was able to install them with HomeBrew, and they just worked once I had my PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH setup correctly. OSX ships ancient versions of several libraries (like libpng), but installing the version in HomeBrew usually fixes the problem.
Lerc 10y ago
Rust: Which everyone seems to know about and I'm sure lots of people will be able to explain why. So I'll focus on ... Haxe: Which is known in a few circles, but If I talk to a random person about it they've never heard of it. Haxe is a garbage collected strictly typed compiled language with type inference. It compiles to a variety of platforms including C++, Javascript, Flash Bytecode, Neko VM bytecode, even PHP. More recently it has been growing support for C#, java, python and lua. It's just a nice language to use. A combination of the cool features like pattern matching case statements, and the simple tidiness of the basics. for (minion in party) { minion.jumpToTheLeft(); } Just little things like not having 'for (var minion in party)'. It clears the clutter. while still protecting you. In many respects, when compiling to JavaScript, it serves the niche that Dart and Typescript aim at. I think the fact that it is independent should not be underestimated. Google people tend to use Dart, Microsoft people use TypeScript. Haxe is not on a 'side' people use it because of what it is, not who made it. I'm rather against provenance as a reason to use a language. The best way to get a good feel for Haxe is to go to http://try.haxe.org http://try.haxe.org and look-at/run some of the examples.
- vorg 10y ago
  > for (minion in party) { > Just little things like not having 'for (var minion in party)'. It clears the clutter. Would be even less cluttered if it allowed for minion in party { minion.jumpToTheLeft() } Parens around a for clause when there's braces following are unnecessary.
  - msdos 10y ago
    It'd be less cluttered if "in" wasn't in there.
    - MichaelBurge 10y ago
      The shortest is Haskell's: forM_ party jumpToTheLeft Assuming there is a 'party :: [ Minion ]' and 'jumpToTheLeft :: Minion -> IO Minion' in scope.
bpmedley 10y ago
Modern Perl with Mojolicious makes me happy. Perl has enjoyed yearly releases and with Moose has fantastic OO; also the community is vibrant.
- senorsmile 10y ago
  Ditto.
ddispaltro 10y ago
Scala: I love the mix of FP with OO all on the JVM with access to battle-tested Java libraries. I can also use it on the frontend with https://www.scala-js.org/ https://www.scala-js.org/ and potentially as a lower level system language with http://www.scala-native.org/ http://www.scala-native.org/
- vorg 10y ago
  It's a pity Apache Groovy's ongoing governance problems stopped it achieving a similar goal. Groovy's still great, though, for writing quick'n'dirty scripts for testing Java classes and defining builds, and Grails still offers Groovy exclusively for scripting (though I wouldn't be surprised if Grails soon follows Gradle down the path of enabling Kotlin as a scripting language).
mbrodersen 10y ago
C++: Because it (and C) runs the world. Including other languages (Java/Python/Ruby/Clojure/...)
captn3m0 10y ago
Crystal, Elixir, Haskell, and PHP7.1 Crystal because it brings me the elegance of Ruby with better Type safety. The type inference in Crystal has been improving a lot since I started looking into it as well. Elixir mostly because it fits the sweet spot where I'd have used node.js for network/event heavy apps. Haskell because I'm still trying to learn it _properly_. PHP7.1 because I work in PHP every day, and I am excited about lots of upcoming changes in the next release. There have been lots of interesting RFCs (for the language) as well as PSRs (for the interop packages) raised recently and PHP isn't the same old thing any more.
rootkid 10y ago
Dart: For me it's still _the_ successor of JavaScript. However, the market didn't adopt it as well as Typescript. Thus, in work life I play safe with Typescript. Eve (Dev Blog: http://incidentalcomplexity.com http://incidentalcomplexity.com): the guys are "working on bringing programming to everyone". A lot of innovative stuff here. Not yet ready but _really_ exciting!
vram22 10y ago
DLang. Golang. FreePascal. All 3 for speed of both compiling and running. And some good language and library features too.
- vram22 10y ago
  Also Python, because VHLL, batteries included, and community.
apolymath 10y ago
C# and ASP.NET Core. No more IIS server. Instead, built in web server that can be configured via pure C# code. Visual Studio is the most powerful GUI on the planet. C# & ASP.NET is now open source. CNTK is a multi-core GPU optimized deep neural network run via C#.
taylodl 10y ago
Lately it's been Scheme because I've been using it to teach my 14 y/o daughter how to program. I had considered teaching her JS but she already knows that a little bit and I thought the concepts she'd learn while learning Scheme would really help her in the long run regardless of what language she used.
- veddox 10y ago
  Scheme is probably the most beautiful language I know, but, alas, of limited practical value :-(
jiyinyiyong 10y ago
WebAssembly. A real game changer!
LorenzoLlamas 10y ago
A few people mentioned Python. Me, too. I left PHP (mostly) and can't stand the ascendency of JavaScript for everything under the sun (it's madness right now). I recently chose Python as my "go to" language for everything after reading a compelling post on Java for everything (not a typo). But I just don't like messy C-based languages like Java. If someone would pay me big bucks one day for Java, I'd do it and program cool little machines and gadgets with it, but I love the web a lot and I am not about to continue the shoe-horning of Java and the Web (don't start with me). So, I like Python for everything. Good web stuff. Great scripting and command line. Good for the Internet of Things (if you want to go down that path). Good for writing desktop. And yes, you could do games and mobile (although I admit the shoe-horning begins to show a little here). But I'm not in that space so much, so I accept that. And its pretty and stable (like Ruby) while not being quite as pretentious as Ruby. Someone wrote WebAssembly. While not a language.... yes, yes, yes... I'm very excited about it. Because do you not SEE the reality that soon we could be writing web code on web pages with pre-compiled speedy fun stuff but written in our language of choice, including Python? Is no one talking about this? It will just take someone writing a Web Assembly Compiler (not sure if that will be the right terminology) in your language of choice. Oh. My. Goodness. Death to JavaScript. Maybe. Or at least an arm lopped off its torso.
saluki 10y ago
Laravel (PHP Framework) Great Documentation https://laravel.com/docs/5.2 https://laravel.com/docs/5.2 Local Development Tools/Box https://laravel.com/docs/5.2/valet https://laravel.com/docs/5.2/valet https://laravel.com/docs/5.2/homestead https://laravel.com/docs/5.2/homestead Easy to Spin Up servers and deploy https://forge.laravel.com/servers https://forge.laravel.com/servers Zero downtime deployment https://envoyer.io/ https://envoyer.io/ Micro/Slim version https://lumen.laravel.com/ https://lumen.laravel.com/ SaaS in a box https://spark.laravel.com/ https://spark.laravel.com/ Great Learning Videos and Community https://laracasts.com/ https://laracasts.com/
soulbadguy 10y ago
Kinda chocked that nobody mentioned JuliaLang yet

61 points by sdegutis 10y ago

I realized that almost all I ever do on HN is press Cmd-F, type "lang", see 0 results, and close it. So I figured I'd just ask y'all instead.

mburst 10y ago

Happy to see Python getting first party support for concurrency.

kerryritter 10y ago

As primarily a C# and JavaScript developer, I'd say TypeScript. Best of both worlds and I feel pretty productive in it (once past the pain of setup).

drinchev 10y ago
Not a c# dev, but definitely typescript makes me feel more motivated to write code these days.

ttronicm 10y ago

Elixir makes me warm and fuzzy.

beginrescueend 10y ago
I second Elixir. Concurrency and HA are the future!
igorgue 10y ago
Same here, it makes me go like woo!

tal_berzniz 10y ago

JS ES2015. The syntax looks awful at first glance, but after heavily using it, there's much more power to this language now.

ralusek 10y ago
The syntax looks awful? It looks extremely clean. It cleaned up the JS syntax enormously...
- tal_berzniz 10y ago
  Talking mostly about things like: // 1. [a + b] // [a + b] is an array {[a + b]: c} // [a + b] is not an array // 2. { x, y: x, y} // inconsistent object fields and there are more examples. After you get to know the syntax, it can be used for good -- but some decisions are making the language more complex. As written above, I enjoy its new features
  - Etheryte 10y ago
    Bracket notation isn't anything new to ES2015, using it in that context is though.
  - thaumant 10y ago
    var a = [3] // [3] is an array var b = {3: 4}; b[3] // [3] is not an array
capkutay 10y ago
This is the correct answer. Jokes aside, ES2015 hits the sweet spot for new powerful languages with big-name backers (facebook is compiled in babel). https://twitter.com/amasad/status/631251607422787584 https://twitter.com/amasad/status/631251607422787584
WesleyJohnson 10y ago
I'm in this camp as well. I've always enjoyed JS because I feel like I can get stuff done so much quicker. With ES6/2015, now I feel like it's far more powerful, elegant and fun to use.
arisAlexis 10y ago
What about ES7? Async await syntax is a game changer

rajandatta 10y ago

Picat. A new language that blends different paradigms including logic programming, constraint solving, pattern matching into a cohesive whole. Allows for very compact, elegant solutions to many problems.

blacksqr 10y ago
How's Picat performance-wise?

zoul 10y ago

Haskell, seeing I still have so much to learn. Elm, because there seems to be a sane web frontend language. Swift, because I can do daily work in a modern language with so many parts done right.

rajandatta 10y ago

Also like newLISP. Powerful, small, practical and thought provoking.

jjpe 10y ago

Rust: it provides extremely strong guarantees about your code at compile time so that usually it feels like a script language with C/C++-levels of performance. And the best part: no data races, and no runtime garbage collector overhead.

ryanlm 10y ago
Is that all? That's a pretty generic reason IMO.
- scott_s 10y ago
  I think you are underestimating how hard it is to get those guarantees, how much some people want them, and how long we've needed them.
- stusmall 10y ago
  To long time C developers, it's a huge deal. I'm starting my first primarily rust job on Monday and I'm extremely excited about it.
  - dikaiosune 10y ago
    Where, if you don't mind sharing?
    - stusmall 10y ago
      ThreatX
      - kibwen 10y ago
        If they'd be interested in sharing more about their usage of Rust, we'd love to have them represented on our page of corporate users at https://www.rust-lang.org/friends.html https://www.rust-lang.org/friends.html .
- rvense 10y ago

kasey_junk 10y ago

Ponylang. Just seems to fit my mental model well. Wish it was more ready for prime time.

AnimalMuppet 10y ago

None, because the existing languages were close to good enough for the problems that I try to solve. There's nothing that's opening up new frontiers in a mind-blowing kind of way, at least not from where I stand. But some languages are kind of interesting: C++11/14, because it opened up some new ways of writing efficient code safely. Haskell, because of HM types. Lisp, because of homoiconicity and macros.

partisan 10y ago

Nim because of the syntax, performance, and base library.

nimmer 10y ago
...and powerful templating, low memory usage, portability.
- ldlework 10y ago
  ...and user type-classes, compile-time AST macros, and GC-as-an-API

sumitgt 10y ago

Lately? C# triggered by: - Open sourcing of .NET - Open Sourcing of Xamarin I want to live in a world where writing mobile apps for multiple platforms with a single codebase becomes the de-facto way of doing things. C#/Xamarin seems like the only viable way to achieve that.

kvz 10y ago
What about react native?
- fny 10y ago
  React Native is "learn once, write everywhere" as opposed to "write once, run everywhere."

philip1209 10y ago

Go. I may have to teach a mathematician with limited programming experience how to write parallel* algorithms, and Go seems far easier than alternatives (like C++) for a beginner. * (or concurrent)

abecedarius 10y ago

https://github.com/monte-language/monte https://github.com/monte-language/monte is reviving E, the distributed capability language.

fokinsean 10y ago

Elm because I'm new to functional programming and it hurts my head.

eeks 10y ago

Picolisp. And of course OCaml.

gshock 10y ago

F# is pretty sweet. It's concise, no ceremony, type safety, can be used with all .net libs, functional. I'm a beginner but love diving into it.

MichaelGG 10y ago
F# is excellent and the only reason I'd stick with .NET. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't think so, and continues to dump massive amounts of resources into C# while only paying lip service to F#. (See, for instance, the full-featured C# Interactive in VS. It arrived like 10 years late, but it's a much slicker experience, apart from the language.) F# with C#-level tooling would be unstoppable. Though it's pretty fantastic as-is.
- partisan 10y ago
  Are you developing in Windows or Linux? If Linux, what is your toolset and workflow?
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    Develop and compile on Windows with MS tools, deploy on Linux. VS+VsVim does a nice job with F# (I tried Emacs with evil but it's not as good for F#). Deployment is as easy as copying an exe.
    - partisan 10y ago
      Thank you. I've been fooling around with VS Code and Mono, but I have been considering doing exactly as you described.

jordigh 10y ago

D (dlang). It's the C++ I always wanted. It's safe, modern, fast, and familiar. It's got classes with reference semantics, structs with value semantics, safe concurrency by default, support for functional programming, concise syntax yet with the C/Java/C++/C# flavour, speed, a compile-time complete D interpreter (thus allowing metaprogramming in the same language as the runtime language, almost lisp-like), plus all the common syntactic niceties we've come to expect from modern languages. My only complaint so far is that the reference implementation has a stupid license, but most other D users just ignore the terms of the license. I had also found a performance bug in an stdlib function, but it's since been addressed in dev.

bedros 10y ago
what do you mean stupid license? what are the restrictions?
- jordigh 10y ago
  https://lobste.rs/s/uafwxi/safe_c_subset_is_vapourware/comments/mkqkbv#c_mkqkbv https://lobste.rs/s/uafwxi/safe_c_subset_is_vapourware/comme... Thankfully, there are other implementations with perfectly free licenses: gdc and lldc.
  - Shorel 10y ago
    That's written tongue in cheek, and it basically means something totally different to what you understood. The license doesn't forbid anything. At all. It simply states that it doesn't guarantee any use at all either. Therefore, you can use it to do whatever you want to do, but because there was no guarantee, you can't sue the software creator. I will paste the text here, for others to read it: "The Software is not generally available software. It has not undergone testing and may contain errors. The Software was not designed to operate after December 31, 1999. It may be incomplete and it may not function properly. No support or maintenance is provided with this Software. Do not install or distribute the Software if you are not accustomed to using or distributing experimental software. Do not use this software for life critical applications, or applications that could cause significant harm or property damage." Now my explanation: Don't use DMD it in a peacemaker. Or use it, if you thing the technology is suitable. But if you do use it in a peacemaker, and it fails, it will be your fault and not the fault of the creator of the DMD compiler. It's pretty much a standard disclaimer and all licenses have one. The equivalent disclaimer text of the GPL license (used by gdc and lots of other software) is this (the original text is in caps): THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MODIFIES AND/OR CONVEYS THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. Anyway, the best part of D is that I think the confusing text will be discussed in their forums by their great community and something will be done about it.

pwpwp 10y ago

http://lbstanza.org/ http://lbstanza.org/ because it reuses all the good stuff from Dylan.

kawera 10y ago

Elm, because it helps to unload part of the cognitive burden of frontend development. Elixir, to taste functional programming on the backend.

ori_b 10y ago

Myrddin (https://myrlang.org https://myrlang.org). Mostly because it's my pet project, and it's fun to work on it.

bcheung 10y ago

Elm. Because it is super clean and easy to read. The compile time errors are fantastic. I feel, if my app compiles then it is going to do what I want. Not so when developing with other JS frameworks. The whole paradigm feels like it is build for making web applications.

baldfat 10y ago

Racket - I love everything about it. It has Functional Programming that makes sense to me, I went through Haskell books 3 times over the years and took a few weeks to be flying with Racket.

Johnny_Brahms 10y ago
As a scheme guy in general, I myself am very excited by typed/racket. I have always been torn between ML-like languages and lisp-style, with the latter winning most of the time. I have gotten so used to the syntax that I prefer it to most other languages. But I miss the niceness of typing, which typed racket provides. There are some warts, like having to explicitly typecast when using two polymorphic functions, and that the curry procedure doesn't work as in racket, but other than that it is not far from what I would perceive as the perfect language. I could of course wish for some other things, like making a curried and strictly typed scheme-like language, but i'm not going to push my luck :)

shritesh 10y ago

Crystal: Syntax inspired by Ruby, static types and compiled by LLVM. The standard library is mostly similar to Ruby (I'd say it's better. For example it rack-like functionality and websockets built-in). It's getting a lot of traction in the community.

atrudeau 10y ago
Crystal looks interesting, but is it usable in production? Any examples of people using it?
- shritesh 10y ago
  Sidekiq was recently ported over to crystal and the speedups and memory usage improvements are amazing. There's also an officially supported heroku-buildpack so it can be deployed easily. But there's a lot of breaking changes in the language (0.18 was released a few days ago with a few breaking changes). I would not use it for a long term project (yet). But for some personal project or prototypes, for example which you'd quickly set using Ruby/Sinatra, I'd choose Crystal/Kemal.

numlocked 10y ago

Clojure. Particularly with Paredit mode in Emacs. The experience of manipulating semantic units of code vs. editing text is a joy and I really, really miss it when I return to e.g. Python.

lowmagnet 10y ago
I really like parinfer for this, too. After switching to it, I've had a great time using it.

there4 10y ago

PHP: With the new 7 release, it gets a surprising speed boost, a collection of elegant new syntax, and maintains backwards compatibility with an incredible ecosystem of packages. Modern projects like Laravel and Slim continue to push best practices, and the community is one of the largest. It's an incredibly versatile language with a robust feature set.

georgewsinger 10y ago

clojure due to the release of clojure.spec a few days ago.

georgewsinger 10y ago

clojure due to the release of clojure.spec a few days ago.

cgrubb 10y ago

jq is a command line tool and also a language for expressing transformations on JSON with concise one-liners. It is useful for processing the output of mongoexport or an elasticsearch query. The basic constructs are "filter expressions". Pipes (|) can be used to direct the output of one filter expression to another, and commas (,) can be used to concatenate the output of two filter expressions.

aehtyb 10y ago

mIRCSCRIPT

perneto 10y ago

Ceylon, because after you've seen union types you wonder why they aren't implemented in every statically typed language.

iLemming 10y ago

Clojurescript. Because it's better Javascript than Javascript.

cwbrandsma 10y ago

Swift. I've been doing more and more iPhone development lately, so much nicer than ObjectiveC and half the files (I refuse to miss header files). But I was also doing a lot of Java, which has made me more excited about getting back into C#. As far as language features go, Java is C# poor cousin.

vga805 10y ago

Rust: low level performance, high level safety, functional, AMAZING community Elm: beautiful front-end development in a tough to navigate JS world Elixir: functional back-end programming on top of the BEAM VM ES 2015 & node.js: I really enjoy and appreciate a language growing in the ways JS has and I love seeing the frameworks influence and borrow from one another (ember, react, angular). While the ecosystem is sometimes annoying, it's been a joy to see the evolution and natural selection of tools and libraries (e.g. flux, alt, flummox, and eventually redux coming out on top...for now)

VoidAgent 10y ago

C++ because of it's power and because it is evolving in intelligent way

DonaldFisk 10y ago

None. That's why I've been developing my own language (http://web.onetel.com/~hibou/fmj/tutorials/TOC.html http://web.onetel.com/~hibou/fmj/tutorials/TOC.html). It isn't ready yet: there are still bugs in the IDE, and without a compiler it's slow. After fixing these problems, I also want to look at new ways to do graph processing. Then, I'll think about releasing it, if there's enough interest. Let me know what you think. Features: visual, dataflow, HM type inference while editing, homoiconic, can call Lisp and callable from Lisp.

atesti 10y ago

jai, a language for game developers without gc from Jonathan Blow

jlarocco 10y ago

I guess you were hoping for new cutting edge stuff, but I've been really enjoying Common Lisp. I've used it for a bunch of small projects the last year or so, and just have a ton of fun. In particular, it has surprisingly good bindings to graphics libraries like Qt, SDL, and OpenGL, and it's super easy to get animations and graphical apps up and running quickly. The compilers are great for such a high level language, and it's significantly faster than Python, which was my preferred language before CL. It doesn't beat the raw speed of C, but I rarely need that anyway. As an example, I just wrote a cheesy, animated FFT visualization and full screen at 2560x1440 it gets 90+ fps with no attempt to optimize on my part, except turning up the default optimization level. https://github.com/jl2/qt-fft-viz https://github.com/jl2/qt-fft-viz The REPL and code reloading makes iterating on ideas really fast, and I find I experiment more in CL because it's just easier.

vram22 10y ago
What CL implementation are you using, on what OS?
- jlarocco 10y ago
  SBCL, mostly on Linux, but also a bit on OSX. Both platforms work really well, but the experience is a bit smoother on Linux. On both platforms I have a script that pulls from Git, rebuilds, and installs over the previous SBCL binary image, so I'm using the absolute bleeding edge of the compiler. One day this will bite me somehow and then I'll start using the most recent stable tag, but it's worked okay up to now. I use Emacs and Slime for development. I had used Emacs for a long time before using CL, so using Slime wasn't an issue for me at all. I know the commercial implementations have some neat IDEs, but I haven't tried them. I'm not sure there's many (or any) OSS alternatives to Slime. On both platforms I use QuickLisp to install all of the Lisp packages I use. Pure Lisp libraries always work great on both platforms. Libraries that wrap C/C++ libraries (like Qt or SDL) tend to work better on Linux, but in every case I can think of I've got them working on OSX also, with varying degrees of effort. On Debian I "apt-get install ..." the required lib* and sometimes lib*-dev packages, and then (ql:quickload ...) has always just worked. External libraries on OSX are where I've encountered the most problems. Qt was particularly tricky, and I'm not even 100% sure what I did that finally got it working. SDL has some hoops to jump through with a "cocoa helper library" that I had to build by hand, but it's pretty simple and a few minutes Googling turned up enough info to get it working. For the majority of the stuff I've needed (libpng, cairo2, mpg123, and a few others), I was able to install them with HomeBrew, and they just worked once I had my PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH setup correctly. OSX ships ancient versions of several libraries (like libpng), but installing the version in HomeBrew usually fixes the problem.

Lerc 10y ago

Rust: Which everyone seems to know about and I'm sure lots of people will be able to explain why. So I'll focus on ... Haxe: Which is known in a few circles, but If I talk to a random person about it they've never heard of it. Haxe is a garbage collected strictly typed compiled language with type inference. It compiles to a variety of platforms including C++, Javascript, Flash Bytecode, Neko VM bytecode, even PHP. More recently it has been growing support for C#, java, python and lua. It's just a nice language to use. A combination of the cool features like pattern matching case statements, and the simple tidiness of the basics. for (minion in party) { minion.jumpToTheLeft(); } Just little things like not having 'for (var minion in party)'. It clears the clutter. while still protecting you. In many respects, when compiling to JavaScript, it serves the niche that Dart and Typescript aim at. I think the fact that it is independent should not be underestimated. Google people tend to use Dart, Microsoft people use TypeScript. Haxe is not on a 'side' people use it because of what it is, not who made it. I'm rather against provenance as a reason to use a language. The best way to get a good feel for Haxe is to go to http://try.haxe.org http://try.haxe.org and look-at/run some of the examples.

vorg 10y ago
> for (minion in party) { > Just little things like not having 'for (var minion in party)'. It clears the clutter. Would be even less cluttered if it allowed for minion in party { minion.jumpToTheLeft() } Parens around a for clause when there's braces following are unnecessary.
- msdos 10y ago
  It'd be less cluttered if "in" wasn't in there.
  - MichaelBurge 10y ago
    The shortest is Haskell's: forM_ party jumpToTheLeft Assuming there is a 'party :: [ Minion ]' and 'jumpToTheLeft :: Minion -> IO Minion' in scope.

bpmedley 10y ago

Modern Perl with Mojolicious makes me happy. Perl has enjoyed yearly releases and with Moose has fantastic OO; also the community is vibrant.

senorsmile 10y ago
Ditto.

ddispaltro 10y ago

Scala: I love the mix of FP with OO all on the JVM with access to battle-tested Java libraries. I can also use it on the frontend with https://www.scala-js.org/ https://www.scala-js.org/ and potentially as a lower level system language with http://www.scala-native.org/ http://www.scala-native.org/

vorg 10y ago
It's a pity Apache Groovy's ongoing governance problems stopped it achieving a similar goal. Groovy's still great, though, for writing quick'n'dirty scripts for testing Java classes and defining builds, and Grails still offers Groovy exclusively for scripting (though I wouldn't be surprised if Grails soon follows Gradle down the path of enabling Kotlin as a scripting language).

mbrodersen 10y ago

C++: Because it (and C) runs the world. Including other languages (Java/Python/Ruby/Clojure/...)

captn3m0 10y ago

Crystal, Elixir, Haskell, and PHP7.1 Crystal because it brings me the elegance of Ruby with better Type safety. The type inference in Crystal has been improving a lot since I started looking into it as well. Elixir mostly because it fits the sweet spot where I'd have used node.js for network/event heavy apps. Haskell because I'm still trying to learn it _properly_. PHP7.1 because I work in PHP every day, and I am excited about lots of upcoming changes in the next release. There have been lots of interesting RFCs (for the language) as well as PSRs (for the interop packages) raised recently and PHP isn't the same old thing any more.

rootkid 10y ago

Dart: For me it's still _the_ successor of JavaScript. However, the market didn't adopt it as well as Typescript. Thus, in work life I play safe with Typescript. Eve (Dev Blog: http://incidentalcomplexity.com http://incidentalcomplexity.com): the guys are "working on bringing programming to everyone". A lot of innovative stuff here. Not yet ready but _really_ exciting!

vram22 10y ago

DLang. Golang. FreePascal. All 3 for speed of both compiling and running. And some good language and library features too.

vram22 10y ago
Also Python, because VHLL, batteries included, and community.

apolymath 10y ago

C# and ASP.NET Core. No more IIS server. Instead, built in web server that can be configured via pure C# code. Visual Studio is the most powerful GUI on the planet. C# & ASP.NET is now open source. CNTK is a multi-core GPU optimized deep neural network run via C#.

taylodl 10y ago

Lately it's been Scheme because I've been using it to teach my 14 y/o daughter how to program. I had considered teaching her JS but she already knows that a little bit and I thought the concepts she'd learn while learning Scheme would really help her in the long run regardless of what language she used.

veddox 10y ago
Scheme is probably the most beautiful language I know, but, alas, of limited practical value :-(

jiyinyiyong 10y ago

WebAssembly. A real game changer!

LorenzoLlamas 10y ago

A few people mentioned Python. Me, too. I left PHP (mostly) and can't stand the ascendency of JavaScript for everything under the sun (it's madness right now). I recently chose Python as my "go to" language for everything after reading a compelling post on Java for everything (not a typo). But I just don't like messy C-based languages like Java. If someone would pay me big bucks one day for Java, I'd do it and program cool little machines and gadgets with it, but I love the web a lot and I am not about to continue the shoe-horning of Java and the Web (don't start with me). So, I like Python for everything. Good web stuff. Great scripting and command line. Good for the Internet of Things (if you want to go down that path). Good for writing desktop. And yes, you could do games and mobile (although I admit the shoe-horning begins to show a little here). But I'm not in that space so much, so I accept that. And its pretty and stable (like Ruby) while not being quite as pretentious as Ruby. Someone wrote WebAssembly. While not a language.... yes, yes, yes... I'm very excited about it. Because do you not SEE the reality that soon we could be writing web code on web pages with pre-compiled speedy fun stuff but written in our language of choice, including Python? Is no one talking about this? It will just take someone writing a Web Assembly Compiler (not sure if that will be the right terminology) in your language of choice. Oh. My. Goodness. Death to JavaScript. Maybe. Or at least an arm lopped off its torso.

saluki 10y ago

Laravel (PHP Framework) Great Documentation https://laravel.com/docs/5.2 https://laravel.com/docs/5.2 Local Development Tools/Box https://laravel.com/docs/5.2/valet https://laravel.com/docs/5.2/valet https://laravel.com/docs/5.2/homestead https://laravel.com/docs/5.2/homestead Easy to Spin Up servers and deploy https://forge.laravel.com/servers https://forge.laravel.com/servers Zero downtime deployment https://envoyer.io/ https://envoyer.io/ Micro/Slim version https://lumen.laravel.com/ https://lumen.laravel.com/ SaaS in a box https://spark.laravel.com/ https://spark.laravel.com/ Great Learning Videos and Community https://laracasts.com/ https://laracasts.com/

soulbadguy 10y ago

Kinda chocked that nobody mentioned JuliaLang yet