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Saying a language makes you "miserable" does not forcibly mean you literally want to kill yourself because of it. I can totally see myself having more or less

by kalenx 7y ago

Saying a language makes you "miserable" does not forcibly mean you literally want to kill yourself because of it. I can totally see myself having more or less fun executing the exact same programming job, depending on the language I'm asked to used. And yes, to some extent, some projects (especially the ones where you have to start from an old codebase in a deprecated and ancient language) make me "miserable". That doesn't mean I'll quit my job on the spot.

jiggawatts 7y ago
I agree. I used to be a C++ programmer. I was good at it. I could do advanced template magic. I understood multiple inheritance and used it correctly, for the right purpose. I literally had dreams in C++. Then I started using Java, and realised that I could be 5x as productive with far fewer headaches chasing down yet another linker error with some unintelligible error message. What do you mean __malloc is undefined!? How could it possibly be missing? It was there a minute ago! I'm linking the standard library already, so what exactly do you want me to do about it, Mr C++ Compiler!? Then I discovered IntelliJ IDEA, and I swear that I felt like the skies had opened up, there was a beam of light shining upon me, my spirits were lifted, and I could hear the voice of God saying: "Fear not! For now you can make changes globally and ye can rest assured that this will not break thy code!" And then along came C#, which was just-like-Java, but with another 2x boost in productivity from all the built-in stuff that Java was missing, the language niceties, and the removal of the boilerplate. It has made me so happy over the years. Nearly two decades of effortless productivity. I mean, seriously, how ridiculously awesome and simple is the "async" keyword!? It's like magic! I love it. LINQ is neat. The debugger is awesome. IntelliTrace is nifty. I could go on. At one point recently I was forced to use C++ to write just a few hundred lines of code. It was physically painful. The language is a quagmire of footguns. The code I wrote was trivial string processing code, yet despite using only std::string it still somehow managed to crash. I decided right then and there that I'm never going back to C++. Never! It's not worth it. My sanity, nay, my very soul deserves better.
- mlvljr 7y ago
  traitor

by kalenx 7y ago

jiggawatts 7y ago

I agree. I used to be a C++ programmer. I was good at it. I could do advanced template magic. I understood multiple inheritance and used it correctly, for the right purpose. I literally had dreams in C++. Then I started using Java, and realised that I could be 5x as productive with far fewer headaches chasing down yet another linker error with some unintelligible error message. What do you mean __malloc is undefined!? How could it possibly be missing? It was there a minute ago! I'm linking the standard library already, so what exactly do you want me to do about it, Mr C++ Compiler!? Then I discovered IntelliJ IDEA, and I swear that I felt like the skies had opened up, there was a beam of light shining upon me, my spirits were lifted, and I could hear the voice of God saying: "Fear not! For now you can make changes globally and ye can rest assured that this will not break thy code!" And then along came C#, which was just-like-Java, but with another 2x boost in productivity from all the built-in stuff that Java was missing, the language niceties, and the removal of the boilerplate. It has made me so happy over the years. Nearly two decades of effortless productivity. I mean, seriously, how ridiculously awesome and simple is the "async" keyword!? It's like magic! I love it. LINQ is neat. The debugger is awesome. IntelliTrace is nifty. I could go on. At one point recently I was forced to use C++ to write just a few hundred lines of code. It was physically painful. The language is a quagmire of footguns. The code I wrote was trivial string processing code, yet despite using only std::string it still somehow managed to crash. I decided right then and there that I'm never going back to C++. Never! It's not worth it. My sanity, nay, my very soul deserves better.

mlvljr 7y ago
traitor