7 ms·

Reasons to hate any programming language

83 points by AmberShah 16y ago

RyanMcGreal 16y ago
5 Reasons to hate any programming language: 1. It doesn't just know what I want it to do. 2. It doesn't accept ambiguous syntax. 3. I still have to type stuff, even if I use an IDE. 4. It's not fast enough (for any value of "fast"). 5. It's either too verbose or else unintelligible.
- igorgue 16y ago
  I kinda like the typing, it's something we call code I think is fun.
- viraptor 16y ago
  Re. 3: It seems you haven't worked with LabView. On the other hand -- you're lucky, you haven't worked with LabView.
  - X-Istence 16y ago
    Labview, why did you have to remind me of that abomination? It is a real shame that US FIRST (FIRST Robotics) has decided for the FRC division to use LabView to have people program their cRio controllers to control their robots.
- argv_empty 16y ago
  2a. It does accept ambiguous syntax!
jluxenberg 16y ago
Didn't see anyone mention this little gem about Ruby: a = [1,2,3] x = :foo puts x a = a.map do |x| x+1 end See anything wrong here? (hint: what is the value of x?)
- prog 16y ago
  Yes, thats surprising behavior. Fortunately its fixed in 1.9. :) Spoiler alert: . . . 1.8.x produces 3 while 1.9 produces :foo
  - jluxenberg 16y ago
    Hmm, interesting. I suspect this will break many things, but I'm happy that they have changed it.
    - kemiller 16y ago
      The problem is not as pervasive as you might think, though it does happen.
  - lincolnq 16y ago
    Why was this broken in the first place? (What abomination of semantics would cause this behaviour)?
    - gnaritas 16y ago
      Closure variables not having their own scope and shadowing method level vars. They're simply implemented as method level vars, so not true closures.
      - lincolnq 16y ago
        I got that, but I don't understand why it should gain the value 3 before a single execution of the loop.
        mike 16y ago
        It's only at the end that the value of x is 3. The puts x immediately after x = :foo does print :foo
- bartl 16y ago
scott_s 16y ago
This question made me realize I don't have a favorite programming language anymore. I am most experienced in C++, but I've spent enough time with Python and Haskell to know what I'm missing.
- viraptor 16y ago
  I feel the same... but I have a clear area->language mapping now: networking - erlang; random quick tools - bash/python; utilities which should work for a longer time - haskell; anything with gui - c#; stuff that still doesn't quite fit anywhere - c/python; own experiments - ooc. However, I have clear "hated" languages: perl, ruby and java.
baguasquirrel 16y ago
It seems like the good ones about Clojure and Scala are buried beneath the pile of whining about Java and Ruby. Anyway, here's my 5 for Haskell. 1. Sometimes the type system feels backwards. What if I don't want the compiler to infer types for my variables? What if I want the opposite, where it does constraint checking on said variables? For example, instead of inferring the type of the elements of a list, it instead makes sure that they all belong to a particular typeclass. This is a subtle but huge difference that makes it difficult for me to program UIs. It can be done, but it seems to take more effort than it does in some other languages. 2. Allowing the construction of infinite values leads to some really frustrating errors sometimes. Sometimes you make mistakes of the form "let x = f x", which is valid in some situations and not others. 3. Monad should imply Applicative should imply Functor. 4. Bytestring handling bites you in the ass sometimes and you don't know it until your program crashes because you mixed things up improperly. Something is wrong here, when we are losing type information that should have prevented this. 5. Typeclasses should be automatically derived for trivial cases, like witness types, but there's a strong potential for abuse there.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Actually, I'll go further and say I hate the existence of bytestrings. I should not be required to know about bytestrings to do text processing at a reasonable speed. (I have no opinion as to whether it's reasonable to use bytestrings for interaction with the FFI.)
  - jrockway 16y ago
    What's so good about a linked list of characters? Really, I think most people complain about bytestrings because "foo" makes a "normal string". If it made a bytestring, who would care? Bytestrings do the same API that you'd expect from any traversable.
    - yummyfajitas 16y ago
      Nothing. That's my point -- strings suck, Haskell should implement strings as bytestrings or something that isn't slow.
limist 16y ago
I'm just pleased to see that the complaints/rants against python are few, and without much import (at least for me).
- orangecat 16y ago
  One that I didn't see mentioned: why do I have to import a separate module and call a weirdly named function to get a stack trace? Why isn't it just a method on Exception? Not a major issue but it just feels wrong, along the same lines as __init__ and "if __name__=='__main__'".
  - viraptor 16y ago
    At some level it makes sense probably... It's not a very common operation, so don't load it unless needed. It looks like an arbitrary choice, rather than good/bad design.
henrikschroder 16y ago
C#/.Net: 1) Collection classes. 2) Collection classes. 3) Collection classes. 4) Collection classes. 5) Collection classes.
- RodgerTheGreat 16y ago
  I'm guessing I'm not the only one who wonders why all the Remove(index) methods are void instead of returning the removed element.
narag 16y ago
These issues apply to my favorite language and also to the rest. Surely I'm cheating, but I don't believe it's against the spirit of the question. I hate the fact that we have to program using plain text. A program is not really a sequential structure. I'm old, I do know the reasons that this anachronism has perpetuated. It's been a pain in the ass to deal with proprietary formats using not quite right tools. But in 2010? Seriously? How hard is to define a simple format that can be understood by simple editors? Just an example: comments need to fit the syntax. So there's a need to delimite them, so some characters or characters combination are not allowed, or you need to use escape sequences, alternating delimiters or something. Think of code blocks that are commented out. I absolutely hate the time that I need to spend "formating" comments. It'd be trivial to create an editor that used certain special character (one that's < ASCII 32) to delimite comments, so we would not have to deal with this. In general, the editor should be syntax-aware, in a more thorough sense (the editor would perform a first step of compilation), not in the patchy "syntax highlighting" way in which a quick and dirty scan of text is used. That would also speed compilation and "intellisense". It would also eliminate syntax and the artificial differences among languages. Instead of curly braces vs, indentation vs. begin-end pairs vs. whatever, the program structure would be recognized by the editor and presented graphically. The editor should only accept legal constructions (the rest would be considered comments or incomplete senteces) instead of the distracting red understrike of Eclipse. In general, what I most hate is the fact that most languages use the very same constructs, while still are written differently and you need to learn the quirks of each of them. A while loop is the same in most languages. What's the point of learning stupid syntax for a dozen languages. I feel I'm working for the compiler. It should be the other way around. I hate languages that do now allow me to do something, just because the language "designer" decided so. I feel the languages should be construction kits, not a set of rules to constrain what I can do with them. Why can't I have garbage collections in some languages and at the same time I can't have manual memory management in others? Why can't I have a language that accepts new constructs like Lisp, but not having to be Lisp with all its constraints? So to summarize, I hate syntax. I hate a = b vs. a := b vs. b -> a vs. let a = b vs. ... Languages have become walled gardens, bigotry and us vs. them. Of course some tasks are different. But I think there's no real reason not to have all the features in the same language and define "sections" of code that use certains "modes", except the competition.
iskander 16y ago
OCaml: 5) Polymorphic comparison is an ugly hack and land you in an infinite loop when accidentally used on a circular imperative structure. Type classes (specifically, an Ord type class) would fix this problem. 4) Arbitrary gaps and inconsistencies in the standard library. Extlib and Batteries go a long way to fix this, but the language really just needs a standard library overhaul. 3) Inefficient data representation and wonky hacks to optimize a few special cases (e.g. 31/63 bit integers). 2) Absolutely terribly C interface which requires deep knowledge of the runtime data layout. 1) Too many languages in one: OCaml is the awkward synthesis of an awesome module system (functors, first class modules, etc...), a slightly confusing but cool object system, the classic ML core, and some random fancy features (such as polymorphic variants). The interaction of these parts ends up being pretty confusing. All that said, it's still my favourite language.

83 points by AmberShah 16y ago

5 Reasons to hate any programming language: 1. It doesn't just know what I want it to do. 2. It doesn't accept ambiguous syntax. 3. I still have to type stuff, even if I use an IDE. 4. It's not fast enough (for any value of "fast"). 5. It's either too verbose or else unintelligible.

igorgue 16y ago
I kinda like the typing, it's something we call code I think is fun.
viraptor 16y ago
Re. 3: It seems you haven't worked with LabView. On the other hand -- you're lucky, you haven't worked with LabView.
- X-Istence 16y ago
  Labview, why did you have to remind me of that abomination? It is a real shame that US FIRST (FIRST Robotics) has decided for the FRC division to use LabView to have people program their cRio controllers to control their robots.
argv_empty 16y ago
2a. It does accept ambiguous syntax!

jluxenberg 16y ago

Didn't see anyone mention this little gem about Ruby: a = [1,2,3] x = :foo puts x a = a.map do |x| x+1 end See anything wrong here? (hint: what is the value of x?)

prog 16y ago
Yes, thats surprising behavior. Fortunately its fixed in 1.9. :) Spoiler alert: . . . 1.8.x produces 3 while 1.9 produces :foo
- jluxenberg 16y ago
  Hmm, interesting. I suspect this will break many things, but I'm happy that they have changed it.
  - kemiller 16y ago
    The problem is not as pervasive as you might think, though it does happen.
- lincolnq 16y ago
  Why was this broken in the first place? (What abomination of semantics would cause this behaviour)?
  - gnaritas 16y ago
    Closure variables not having their own scope and shadowing method level vars. They're simply implemented as method level vars, so not true closures.
    - lincolnq 16y ago
      I got that, but I don't understand why it should gain the value 3 before a single execution of the loop.
      - mike 16y ago
        It's only at the end that the value of x is 3. The puts x immediately after x = :foo does print :foo
bartl 16y ago

scott_s 16y ago

This question made me realize I don't have a favorite programming language anymore. I am most experienced in C++, but I've spent enough time with Python and Haskell to know what I'm missing.

viraptor 16y ago
I feel the same... but I have a clear area->language mapping now: networking - erlang; random quick tools - bash/python; utilities which should work for a longer time - haskell; anything with gui - c#; stuff that still doesn't quite fit anywhere - c/python; own experiments - ooc. However, I have clear "hated" languages: perl, ruby and java.

baguasquirrel 16y ago

It seems like the good ones about Clojure and Scala are buried beneath the pile of whining about Java and Ruby. Anyway, here's my 5 for Haskell. 1. Sometimes the type system feels backwards. What if I don't want the compiler to infer types for my variables? What if I want the opposite, where it does constraint checking on said variables? For example, instead of inferring the type of the elements of a list, it instead makes sure that they all belong to a particular typeclass. This is a subtle but huge difference that makes it difficult for me to program UIs. It can be done, but it seems to take more effort than it does in some other languages. 2. Allowing the construction of infinite values leads to some really frustrating errors sometimes. Sometimes you make mistakes of the form "let x = f x", which is valid in some situations and not others. 3. Monad should imply Applicative should imply Functor. 4. Bytestring handling bites you in the ass sometimes and you don't know it until your program crashes because you mixed things up improperly. Something is wrong here, when we are losing type information that should have prevented this. 5. Typeclasses should be automatically derived for trivial cases, like witness types, but there's a strong potential for abuse there.

yummyfajitas 16y ago
Actually, I'll go further and say I hate the existence of bytestrings. I should not be required to know about bytestrings to do text processing at a reasonable speed. (I have no opinion as to whether it's reasonable to use bytestrings for interaction with the FFI.)
- jrockway 16y ago
  What's so good about a linked list of characters? Really, I think most people complain about bytestrings because "foo" makes a "normal string". If it made a bytestring, who would care? Bytestrings do the same API that you'd expect from any traversable.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    Nothing. That's my point -- strings suck, Haskell should implement strings as bytestrings or something that isn't slow.

limist 16y ago

I'm just pleased to see that the complaints/rants against python are few, and without much import (at least for me).

orangecat 16y ago
One that I didn't see mentioned: why do I have to import a separate module and call a weirdly named function to get a stack trace? Why isn't it just a method on Exception? Not a major issue but it just feels wrong, along the same lines as __init__ and "if __name__=='__main__'".
- viraptor 16y ago
  At some level it makes sense probably... It's not a very common operation, so don't load it unless needed. It looks like an arbitrary choice, rather than good/bad design.

henrikschroder 16y ago

C#/.Net: 1) Collection classes. 2) Collection classes. 3) Collection classes. 4) Collection classes. 5) Collection classes.

RodgerTheGreat 16y ago
I'm guessing I'm not the only one who wonders why all the Remove(index) methods are void instead of returning the removed element.

narag 16y ago

These issues apply to my favorite language and also to the rest. Surely I'm cheating, but I don't believe it's against the spirit of the question. I hate the fact that we have to program using plain text. A program is not really a sequential structure. I'm old, I do know the reasons that this anachronism has perpetuated. It's been a pain in the ass to deal with proprietary formats using not quite right tools. But in 2010? Seriously? How hard is to define a simple format that can be understood by simple editors? Just an example: comments need to fit the syntax. So there's a need to delimite them, so some characters or characters combination are not allowed, or you need to use escape sequences, alternating delimiters or something. Think of code blocks that are commented out. I absolutely hate the time that I need to spend "formating" comments. It'd be trivial to create an editor that used certain special character (one that's < ASCII 32) to delimite comments, so we would not have to deal with this. In general, the editor should be syntax-aware, in a more thorough sense (the editor would perform a first step of compilation), not in the patchy "syntax highlighting" way in which a quick and dirty scan of text is used. That would also speed compilation and "intellisense". It would also eliminate syntax and the artificial differences among languages. Instead of curly braces vs, indentation vs. begin-end pairs vs. whatever, the program structure would be recognized by the editor and presented graphically. The editor should only accept legal constructions (the rest would be considered comments or incomplete senteces) instead of the distracting red understrike of Eclipse. In general, what I most hate is the fact that most languages use the very same constructs, while still are written differently and you need to learn the quirks of each of them. A while loop is the same in most languages. What's the point of learning stupid syntax for a dozen languages. I feel I'm working for the compiler. It should be the other way around. I hate languages that do now allow me to do something, just because the language "designer" decided so. I feel the languages should be construction kits, not a set of rules to constrain what I can do with them. Why can't I have garbage collections in some languages and at the same time I can't have manual memory management in others? Why can't I have a language that accepts new constructs like Lisp, but not having to be Lisp with all its constraints? So to summarize, I hate syntax. I hate a = b vs. a := b vs. b -> a vs. let a = b vs. ... Languages have become walled gardens, bigotry and us vs. them. Of course some tasks are different. But I think there's no real reason not to have all the features in the same language and define "sections" of code that use certains "modes", except the competition.

iskander 16y ago

OCaml: 5) Polymorphic comparison is an ugly hack and land you in an infinite loop when accidentally used on a circular imperative structure. Type classes (specifically, an Ord type class) would fix this problem. 4) Arbitrary gaps and inconsistencies in the standard library. Extlib and Batteries go a long way to fix this, but the language really just needs a standard library overhaul. 3) Inefficient data representation and wonky hacks to optimize a few special cases (e.g. 31/63 bit integers). 2) Absolutely terribly C interface which requires deep knowledge of the runtime data layout. 1) Too many languages in one: OCaml is the awkward synthesis of an awesome module system (functors, first class modules, etc...), a slightly confusing but cool object system, the classic ML core, and some random fancy features (such as polymorphic variants). The interaction of these parts ends up being pretty confusing. All that said, it's still my favourite language.