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Programming discussions would be much better if everyone could be this critical of their favourite programming languages. There are languages everyone is happy

Programming discussions would be much better if everyone could be this critical of their favourite programming languages. There are languages everyone is happy for you to criticize online. Then there are a small few that cause people to lose their shit when you offer a critique. It's really sad - you really shouldn't be so personally invested in a tool you didn't write.

saagarjha 8y ago
Every language has its flaws, and experts know their language's ones and work around them. Unfortunately sometimes in doing so they forget that their methods of skirting around problems are workarounds and instead call people out for trying to do something "the wrong way".
6nf 8y ago
'You can divide programming languages into two groups - those that people complain about, and those that nobody uses'
- HumanDrivenDev 8y ago
  C# is widely used, but it's a bit of a sacred cow.
  - brianberns 8y ago
    I was a C# programmer for years, and got tired of it. But instead of complaining, I just switched to F#. That's one of the nice things about the .NET platform.
  - moomin 8y ago
    C#’s a weird one: it’s widely used, but still unpopular. It’s got genuinely large problems (like the anemic OS ecosystem) but when considered as a language on its own, it’s been ahead of the game in its class.
    - GordonS 8y ago
      It may be unpopular with the HN crowd, but that's more by proxy, in so far as a Microsoft stack in general is unpopular here. C# is however very popular in the enterprise world. I've been using it for work and side projects alike for many years, and personally I love it.
      - Gibbon1 8y ago
        Offhand thought just now. Java programmers seem to argue a lot back and forth about build/deployment systems. I don't see C# people do that much.
      - Const-me 8y ago
        Not just enterprise. Mainstream uses for .NET are windows desktop software (WPF & XAML are the best GUI toolkits for the platform), videogames (Unity3D is quite popular), cross platform mobile development (Xamarin). Now when .NET Core supports ARM Linux, it also works well for some embedded applications, but I don’t know whether somewhere except me does that.

saagarjha 8y ago

Every language has its flaws, and experts know their language's ones and work around them. Unfortunately sometimes in doing so they forget that their methods of skirting around problems are workarounds and instead call people out for trying to do something "the wrong way".

6nf 8y ago

'You can divide programming languages into two groups - those that people complain about, and those that nobody uses'

HumanDrivenDev 8y ago
C# is widely used, but it's a bit of a sacred cow.
- brianberns 8y ago
  I was a C# programmer for years, and got tired of it. But instead of complaining, I just switched to F#. That's one of the nice things about the .NET platform.
- moomin 8y ago
  C#’s a weird one: it’s widely used, but still unpopular. It’s got genuinely large problems (like the anemic OS ecosystem) but when considered as a language on its own, it’s been ahead of the game in its class.
  - GordonS 8y ago
    It may be unpopular with the HN crowd, but that's more by proxy, in so far as a Microsoft stack in general is unpopular here. C# is however very popular in the enterprise world. I've been using it for work and side projects alike for many years, and personally I love it.
    - Gibbon1 8y ago
      Offhand thought just now. Java programmers seem to argue a lot back and forth about build/deployment systems. I don't see C# people do that much.
    - Const-me 8y ago
      Not just enterprise. Mainstream uses for .NET are windows desktop software (WPF & XAML are the best GUI toolkits for the platform), videogames (Unity3D is quite popular), cross platform mobile development (Xamarin). Now when .NET Core supports ARM Linux, it also works well for some embedded applications, but I don’t know whether somewhere except me does that.