5 ms·

Programming languages and their relationship styles

43 points by dochtman 16y ago

jmillikin 16y ago
If you're going to make a comparative list of anything (programming languages, spoken languages, cultures, phones, whatever), for crying out loud limit it to things you know about! Padding the list out with things you've only read of in youtube comments does nobody any favors. Based on the descriptions, I'd guess the author only has experience with C++, Python, Prolog, and possibly Java. That's a bit like someone who's only ever eaten frozen waffles, frozen pizza, and canned soup trying to write a comparative list of world cuisine.
- notyourwork 16y ago
  It is ashame too because the article started out nicely but I drew the same conclusion as you mid-way through.
- derleth 16y ago
  I agree. It's certainly funnier when you have people ranting and joking about things they know about.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  I thought she did a good job with Lisp, Logo, and Haskell too. The Ada one left me completely perplexed -- as someone who wrote a fair bit on Ada in the 90s. What does this mean, "However, your tendency to wear the bondage and discipline gear all the time, as opposed to when your lover asks you to bring it out, frightens people off. You need to learn to stop calling people "worm" and "slave" in front of their mothers."?
  - chc 16y ago
    I think it's a reference to Ada's reputation for being a "bondage and discipline language": http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BondageAndDisciplineLanguage http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BondageAndDisciplineLanguage
    - archangel_one 16y ago
      I don't find it works well in this metaphor though, because the stereotype of Ada is that it's straight-laced and proper and thus popular with the Department of Defence. To me that doesn't mesh at all well with this picture of it bringing out the bondage gear to play "Mistress of Pain" of an evening.
      - chc 16y ago
        I agree. I would have gone with a Catholic school headmistress or something like that. I was just explaining where the (overly literal) description came from.
  - jmillikin 16y ago
    I can't speak for LISP or Logo, but her Haskell entry was completely divorced from reality. It would have been a better fit (and somewhat appropriate) if she'd just copy-pasted the OCaml entry.
    - chc 16y ago
      It's a reference to Haskell's extremely elaborate Turing-complete type system and the many contrarian (for lack of a better word) choices made in the language design — purity, default laziness, utter rejection of OO. Most people are unlikely to have used a language like that before. Even OCaml lacks those qualities. And I don't think anyone would disagree that Haskell is extremely serious about safety ("prophylactic techniques") and carefully marking impure portions of the program by tainting them with IO. The only part of the Haskell description I didn't get is the "person you're with no longer resembles Haskell."
      - jmillikin 16y ago
        > the many contrarian (for lack of a better word) choices made in the language design — purity, default laziness, utter rejection of OO. Haskell isn't a pure language. Its only notable characteristic regarding purity is that it's possible to annotate whether some code is pure or not. Working with impure (and sometimes downright unsafe) is common, encouraged, and widespread. Especially in real-world code. Haskell doesn't utterly reject OO; if anything, its combination of typeclasses and nearly-free threads brings it closer to Smalltalk or Erlang than many pretend-OO languages (C++, Java, C#). Default laziness is one of the few truly weird parts of Haskell, and I sincerely doubt the author has done anything serious enough to worry about the evaluation model.
        kenjackson 16y ago
        Haskell isn't a pure language. Its only notable characteristic regarding purity is that it's possible to annotate whether some code is pure or not. Isn't this a requirement (the use of the type system for annotating purity), not something that is just "possible". And isn't that what people generally mean by its purity?
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    She got it right with Smalltalk as well.
- technomancy 16y ago
  Oh come on, you've got to give "Assembler just lies there" some credit.
smcl 16y ago
Weird, sometimes the text is in second person ("Your older sister is the most popular...") other times third ("Python cares deeply about you..."). Not particularly entertaining anyway.
- droz 16y ago
  Agreed. Consistency would have helped a lot.
r00fus 16y ago
> Logo: Lisp's adorable 7-year-old niece who likes to play with her toy turtle. On casual conversation, she proves to be disturbingly worldly and well-informed. You resolve not to let your kids play around Lisp's house. Thinking about using Logo in any serious way makes you feel a bit dirty. That was hilarious and disturbing at the same time.
krobertson 16y ago
Ruby's talks about popular older sister... who is that supposed to be though?
- davidchua 16y ago
  I believe it could be smalltalk?
  - technomancy 16y ago
    It's Perl. (This was written a while ago.)
- glenjamin 16y ago
  I assume Python or Perl. I recall seeing a quote from the creator along the lines of "I wanted it to be more OO than python"
kunjaan 16y ago
S/N is too low.
wh-uws 16y ago
I like this from the comments "C# Well, you're a big girl now -- all grown up and the heiress of a promising diamond mine. But you're also a politician bucking to be the first female president. You've promised to be everything all of your predecessors were and everything they could not be. You look strangely familiar like an old girlfriend who has had a facelift and who has been in the witness relocation program. The wig and wheelchair don't fool those who can smell your scent and those of us who see that little switch at the back of the wheelchair that says "/unsafe" which is a euphemism for "release the whore" or “Unleashed! Now Scks And Fcks Everybody.” Once flipped, you'll be doing all of the nasty things we secretly like, but hired you not to do. But once we know you can be that whore, that's all you'll ever be... and at the dinner-party / political fund-raiser, your diamonds will still sparkle. Wipe your mouth, honey. "

43 points by dochtman 16y ago

If you're going to make a comparative list of anything (programming languages, spoken languages, cultures, phones, whatever), for crying out loud limit it to things you know about! Padding the list out with things you've only read of in youtube comments does nobody any favors. Based on the descriptions, I'd guess the author only has experience with C++, Python, Prolog, and possibly Java. That's a bit like someone who's only ever eaten frozen waffles, frozen pizza, and canned soup trying to write a comparative list of world cuisine.

notyourwork 16y ago
It is ashame too because the article started out nicely but I drew the same conclusion as you mid-way through.
derleth 16y ago
I agree. It's certainly funnier when you have people ranting and joking about things they know about.
kenjackson 16y ago
I thought she did a good job with Lisp, Logo, and Haskell too. The Ada one left me completely perplexed -- as someone who wrote a fair bit on Ada in the 90s. What does this mean, "However, your tendency to wear the bondage and discipline gear all the time, as opposed to when your lover asks you to bring it out, frightens people off. You need to learn to stop calling people "worm" and "slave" in front of their mothers."?
- chc 16y ago
  I think it's a reference to Ada's reputation for being a "bondage and discipline language": http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BondageAndDisciplineLanguage http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BondageAndDisciplineLanguage
  - archangel_one 16y ago
    I don't find it works well in this metaphor though, because the stereotype of Ada is that it's straight-laced and proper and thus popular with the Department of Defence. To me that doesn't mesh at all well with this picture of it bringing out the bondage gear to play "Mistress of Pain" of an evening.
    - chc 16y ago
      I agree. I would have gone with a Catholic school headmistress or something like that. I was just explaining where the (overly literal) description came from.
- jmillikin 16y ago
  I can't speak for LISP or Logo, but her Haskell entry was completely divorced from reality. It would have been a better fit (and somewhat appropriate) if she'd just copy-pasted the OCaml entry.
  - chc 16y ago
    It's a reference to Haskell's extremely elaborate Turing-complete type system and the many contrarian (for lack of a better word) choices made in the language design — purity, default laziness, utter rejection of OO. Most people are unlikely to have used a language like that before. Even OCaml lacks those qualities. And I don't think anyone would disagree that Haskell is extremely serious about safety ("prophylactic techniques") and carefully marking impure portions of the program by tainting them with IO. The only part of the Haskell description I didn't get is the "person you're with no longer resembles Haskell."
    - jmillikin 16y ago
      > the many contrarian (for lack of a better word) choices made in the language design — purity, default laziness, utter rejection of OO. Haskell isn't a pure language. Its only notable characteristic regarding purity is that it's possible to annotate whether some code is pure or not. Working with impure (and sometimes downright unsafe) is common, encouraged, and widespread. Especially in real-world code. Haskell doesn't utterly reject OO; if anything, its combination of typeclasses and nearly-free threads brings it closer to Smalltalk or Erlang than many pretend-OO languages (C++, Java, C#). Default laziness is one of the few truly weird parts of Haskell, and I sincerely doubt the author has done anything serious enough to worry about the evaluation model.
      - kenjackson 16y ago
        Haskell isn't a pure language. Its only notable characteristic regarding purity is that it's possible to annotate whether some code is pure or not. Isn't this a requirement (the use of the type system for annotating purity), not something that is just "possible". And isn't that what people generally mean by its purity?
- stcredzero 16y ago
  She got it right with Smalltalk as well.
technomancy 16y ago
Oh come on, you've got to give "Assembler just lies there" some credit.

smcl 16y ago

Weird, sometimes the text is in second person ("Your older sister is the most popular...") other times third ("Python cares deeply about you..."). Not particularly entertaining anyway.

droz 16y ago
Agreed. Consistency would have helped a lot.

r00fus 16y ago

> Logo: Lisp's adorable 7-year-old niece who likes to play with her toy turtle. On casual conversation, she proves to be disturbingly worldly and well-informed. You resolve not to let your kids play around Lisp's house. Thinking about using Logo in any serious way makes you feel a bit dirty. That was hilarious and disturbing at the same time.

krobertson 16y ago

Ruby's talks about popular older sister... who is that supposed to be though?

davidchua 16y ago
I believe it could be smalltalk?
- technomancy 16y ago
  It's Perl. (This was written a while ago.)
glenjamin 16y ago
I assume Python or Perl. I recall seeing a quote from the creator along the lines of "I wanted it to be more OO than python"

kunjaan 16y ago

S/N is too low.

wh-uws 16y ago

I like this from the comments "C# Well, you're a big girl now -- all grown up and the heiress of a promising diamond mine. But you're also a politician bucking to be the first female president. You've promised to be everything all of your predecessors were and everything they could not be. You look strangely familiar like an old girlfriend who has had a facelift and who has been in the witness relocation program. The wig and wheelchair don't fool those who can smell your scent and those of us who see that little switch at the back of the wheelchair that says "/unsafe" which is a euphemism for "release the whore" or “Unleashed! Now Scks And Fcks Everybody.” Once flipped, you'll be doing all of the nasty things we secretly like, but hired you not to do. But once we know you can be that whore, that's all you'll ever be... and at the dinner-party / political fund-raiser, your diamonds will still sparkle. Wipe your mouth, honey. "