5 ms·

What programming languages should I learn and why?

10 points by mhidalgo 19y ago

mhidalgo 19y ago
I have been teaching myself how to hack. I see that the first real software engineering classes in most schools is taught in JAVA, usually a data structures class. Should I even bother.... I see the merit of learning ground level stuff , like memory management seen in C/C++ but with JAVA is it useful to learn even if majority of web development is done in LAMP ( I should say majority of web development interesting to me, I know there is alot of JAVA out there) Does anyone know of a good book/tutorial to learn data structures with languages such php/ruby/python.
- gibsonf1 19y ago
  I only know Lisp and absolutely love working with it and the results we're getting with our web application (I was not a CS major), but my partner who is a Software Architect by profession tells me that programming in Lisp takes about half the code and effort of Java with more impressive results. (See Paul Graham's essays on Lisp: http://www.paulgraham.com/lisp.html) http://www.paulgraham.com/lisp.html) If you are going to learn a language, learn the most powerful and efficient language you can find so that you can reach your goals faster. As far as I can tell, until ARC comes out, that language is Lisp. A lot of people complain about the lack of Lisp open source out there, but in fact, our application is loaded with great open source Lisp libraries. See: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=20010 http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=20010 http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=12619 http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=12619 http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aycombinator.com+lisp http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aycombinator.com+lisp http://www.cliki.net/index http://www.cliki.net/index http://common-lisp.net/ http://common-lisp.net/
  - gyro_robo 19y ago
    You only know Lisp? That's like only knowing gourmet cooking. Here, have some gruel like the rest of us lived on for years.
- rms 19y ago
  Lisp is great but Python/Ruby are a great halfway point between C and Java and the purely functional Lisp type languages. It's tough to say whether you're better off learning Ruby or Lisp first. It would probably make a good PhD project for someone to compare the teaching of programming to first-time students with Pascal, Java, Ruby, and Lisp. Anyways, www.hacketyhack.com is a great integrated IDE for learning the syntax of ruby.
  - gibsonf1 19y ago
    "purely functional Lisp type languages" I think Common Lisp actually has one of the most powerful Object Systems: CLOS
    - rms 19y ago
      Sorry, I meant languages that actually allow for functional programming, not languages that are exclusively that way.
      - BrandonM 19y ago
        Lisp is not at all exclusively functional. The best Lisp is, but you can easily write iterative code in Lisp as well. It's just that most Lisp programmers don't because they realize that the functional paradigm is usually superior in terms of creating clean, simple code that is easy to understand later.
      - euccastro 19y ago
        Just to nitpick, any language that allows functions 'allows' functional programming to some extent. More seriously, any language with higher order functions, lexical scoping, and closures can be considered appropriate for functional programming. You probably meant languages that are biased primarily towards functional programming, as opposed to others where FP is not the dominant paradigm. You have to specify that much if you are going to include the Lisps but leave Python out.
  - JamesT43 19y ago
    Thats actually going to be at www.hacketyhack.net.
- staunch 19y ago
  Your title is broad but here you say you want to do web development. Many of the people here are interested in programming for programming's sake, so a lot of the advice will be computer sciency. That's great, but if you just want to make stuff you can safely skip theory for now and get your hands dirty producing real stuff and fill in the gaps over time. The key is to learn best practices of whatever language you choose. Don't learn bad habits. Read the authoritative books and don't take short-cuts. Don't be the guy writing code people cry at having to maintain. Avoid "cargo cult" programming, where you just paste code you find into your programs without fully understanding it. I recommend never pasting at all in fact. At the very least re-type everything as you're learning and try to understand it as best you can. You can safely skip haskell, lisp, prolog, and all those languages you will never get friends to help you with, many books to read, or libraries to leverage. At least until you've got enough experience to be mostly independent of assistance. With the use of best practices it doesn't really matter if you choose: Ruby, Perl, Python, or PHP. I'd ignore Java because it has so many training wheels, and the others don't. These can all work extremely well for web development and anyone who says different is selling something. The Truth™ is that Perl5 is the best and Perl6 will make them all obsolete :-)
  - SwellJoe 19y ago
    Great to see Perl is coming back into vogue in these kinds of conversations. It's gotten a bad rap for a while, because it's so easy to write really messy and ugly code...but it's also extremely expressive, and contains more functional constructs than even Ruby or Python. Perl 5 didn't get objects right, but they aren't awful (not nearly as big and clunky as Java/PHP). Perl 6 really will be a killer. I watched Audrey Tang's recent video about it, and it was just astounding how far they plan to leap with Perl 6...I must have known it was coming, since I read the apocalypses years ago, but seeing the example code blew me away. It's still a pretty good learning language, and an unbeatable "get things done" language because of CPAN, but if pressed I would have to recommend Ruby or Python for first time programmers.
    - jamongkad 19y ago
      I was about to chime in Perl but I read down to this. I'm currently using Ruby now but my first step into hacking was Perl. So I have a soft spot for it. If Perl 6 can live up to it I will not have any qualms hacking in Perl again.
jaggederest 19y ago
lisp, haskell, prolog, forth, erlang, smalltalk, python, ruby, c, java I think lisp will be adequately enunciated, so I'll move on to the others Haskell is a lazy, strongly-typed functional language. It's syntax is very close to mathematical notation, and it enables code reuse by not allowing side effects. It'll teach you to think in actual algorithms, where most languages teach you to think about how to implement those algorithms. Prolog is a logic language. It'll teach you logic, and some of the fundamental ideas from that field. Backtracking search, unification, and other interesting ideas. Forth is a reverse-polish-notation stack language that is very 'close to the metal' and yet a higher order language than C. Forth will teach you more about the workings of a computer than anything but assembler, and it won't break your soul like assembler might. Erlang is strict strongly-typed functional language that is all about concurrency. Right now it's probably the best language to write highly concurrent applications in, and, as it turns out, most of the internet can be made highly concurrent. Smalltalk is the mother of all object oriented languages, and shares with lisp the interesting concept of a running image. In smalltalk, everything you do is in a live instance of an image, and to deploy, you simply move the instance over and run it on the server. This also one of the first languages to have an effective refactoring browser. Python is a dynamic object-oriented language that incorporates features from a lot of previous languages. It's got some interesting things and a fairly nice syntax. Take a look at TurboGears, Pylon, and Django Ruby is a dynamic object-oriented language (lisp + perl) that is (like lisp) all about metaprogramming. Ruby has also got an interesting framework that is becoming notorious, Rails, which makes OR mapping and quite a few other things brain-dead easy. If you get into the internals of rails, you'll learn a lot about metaprogramming. C is The Language. If it has to be fast, small, and close to the metal, C is the go to language (no pun intended) There are a lot of situations where you'll end up needing to rewrite in C if you hit performance problems, so knowing some C will let you squeeze about an order of magnitude of performance out of things. Plus, you can start to understand drivers for your hardware here. Java is less about the language and more about the IDEs. With the possible exception of Smalltalk, Java has the best IDEs and refactoring software. This is the kind of thing that most languages should have, but don't. Anyway, this is kind of just a menu, but if you learn three or four of these, you'll be well on your way to deciding which one suits your style.
- 19y ago
dazzawazza 19y ago
+1 for python. Why? excellent docs, excellent libraries, excellent books, flexible language thats easy to learn.
- timg 19y ago
  Agreed. But, shouldn't we be asking the poster "why"? If the "why" is because he wants to be good at programming, then I would suggest that he first does some light c, a tiny bit of assembly, and a get a basic understanding of FP languages and the insanity of advanced OO in java. In the end though, be sure you are using Python. Heck, even if you get bored along the way, throw some python in. A [Warning] though: python will spoil you. Good luck going back to a more verbose, rigid language, should you be forced to.
  - jamongkad 19y ago
    Same thing can be said for Ruby and Perl
tim_sw 19y ago
Read COncepts, Techniques, and models of computer programming. You will get a taste of all these languages/paradigms, and in addition, others like concurrent programming etc. http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Techniques-Models-Computer-Programming/dp/0262220695 http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Techniques-Models-Computer-Programming/dp/0262220695
knome 19y ago
All of them. Because we are compelled.
mynameishere 19y ago
Now, you're going to hear a lot about how wonderful LISP (etc, etc) is, but remember that almost every _real_ application is in C (Unix), C++ (games, other desktop apps), or Java (50 million goddawful enterprise backends).
- BrandonM 19y ago
  That might be true of "almost every _real_" desktop application, although on my Linux install, I have a healthy amount of Python and Perl programs. As for quickly prototyped web applications, I think that Lisp, Python, Perl, and Ruby far outnumber Java and C/C++ (with Java far outnumbering C/C++).
bootload 19y ago
'what programming languages should I learn?' I'd rephrase the question slightly and ask, 'what problems should I work on?' and 'how can the language(s) I use solve them'. This is one reason why lisp is a compelling choice. You can create your own sub-languages to solve any particular problem. But for lots of reasons lisp may not be suitable. There are lots of other languages to choose so pick the ones that suit solving different problems. There is not one "universal programming hammer" (though lisp is pretty close) but an array to choose from that may suit different types of problems. esr in his faqto (faq + howto) recommends python, c/cpp, java, perl and lisp. Each language chosen for their abilities to solve different types of problems ~ http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills1 http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills1 Tall order? Take too long? Then read on with Norvig and 'Teach yourself programming in 10 years' ~ http://www.norvig.com/21-days.html http://www.norvig.com/21-days.html
ivan 19y ago
Learn ruby and/or python and C for low levels and/or create extensions for those two.
mhidalgo 19y ago
I think this question really shows what a great community this site has developed into. Thanks for all the help!!!
eli 19y ago
as many as you possibly can. so that you'll be able to pick the right tool for the job (nobody ever asks, "which should I learn,the hammer or the screwdriver?")
- euccastro 19y ago
  Yet time is limited, and there are other things a programmer should learn besides programming languages.
ced 19y ago
While we're on the topic, PG mentions in one of his essays a few languages with a "reputation for succintness": Forth, Joy, Icon. They are all tiny blips on my radar, popping up once every year in some obscure article. Does anybody have experience with them, and are they worth learning? (Forth is already covered on this page)
- benhoyt 19y ago
  I learnt to program by writing a Forth compiler in assembler (Dad taught me). It was a superb way to learn. One of Forth's strengths is its ultra-simple syntax. If you thought Lisp had little syntax, think again. Forth is just tokens and whitespace. You can write a compiler than can compile itself in a few screenfuls of Forth (and I'm not talking about eval). Forth is obscure but beautiful. It's reflective, meaning you can write code that writes code (macros). Also like Lisp, you can easily roll your own control structures or add an OOP interface. But it does lack good libraries and a decent-sized user base.
  - jaggederest 19y ago
    I have just started poking with forth, after seeing some network card firmware source written in it. One of the most interesting things, to me, was the built-in disassembler: if you ask 'how is this word defined', and it's not defined in the current environment, it'll go disassemble the binary and show you that. Pretty insane, if you think about having to write software to interface with old / undocumented / closed source libraries.
  - benhoyt 19y ago
    Oh yes, and Forth has an elegant solution to Paul Graham's "accumulator generator" problem (though Forth isn't dynamically typed, so it only works for integers): : accgen create , does tuck +! @ ; From comp.lang.forth: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.forth/msg/f06370fed978abff?dmode=source http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.forth/msg/f06370fed978abff?dmode=source
gregwebs 19y ago
Instead of learning C or C++ you may consider D which will enable you to learn more about actual programming and less about the idiosyncrasies of C/C++.
- dfranke 19y ago
  I agree that D is a better and cleaner language than C++, but in what way is C idiosyncratic?
  - BrandonM 19y ago
    I agree with the point about C. Most of my class assignments have to be programmed in C/C++ or Java. Out of those three, I usually end up choosing C, because it is not nearly as weighed down with syntax soup as Java and C++ are. So I don't really think of C as being idiosyncratic, either. It is somewhat close to the hardware, and I can't really think of much of anything that is in there without good reason.
  - gregwebs 19y ago
    True, C does not suffer too much from idiosyncrasies, more from being poorly designed in comparison to modern programming languages.
    - dfranke 19y ago
      On the contrary, C is excellently designed for its intended purpose: as a language for writing UNIX. If that's what you're doing, C is the ideal choice. If you're using it for something else, you're misusing it.
      - euccastro 19y ago
        What do you use to optimize a bottleneck in Ruby or Python? (After you have profiled, exhausted the higher level optimizations, and all that.)
        19y ago
fraXis 19y ago
C#.
- BrandonM 19y ago
  Especially if you want to do any non-Windows programming.

10 points by mhidalgo 19y ago

I have been teaching myself how to hack. I see that the first real software engineering classes in most schools is taught in JAVA, usually a data structures class. Should I even bother.... I see the merit of learning ground level stuff , like memory management seen in C/C++ but with JAVA is it useful to learn even if majority of web development is done in LAMP ( I should say majority of web development interesting to me, I know there is alot of JAVA out there) Does anyone know of a good book/tutorial to learn data structures with languages such php/ruby/python.

gibsonf1 19y ago
I only know Lisp and absolutely love working with it and the results we're getting with our web application (I was not a CS major), but my partner who is a Software Architect by profession tells me that programming in Lisp takes about half the code and effort of Java with more impressive results. (See Paul Graham's essays on Lisp: http://www.paulgraham.com/lisp.html) http://www.paulgraham.com/lisp.html) If you are going to learn a language, learn the most powerful and efficient language you can find so that you can reach your goals faster. As far as I can tell, until ARC comes out, that language is Lisp. A lot of people complain about the lack of Lisp open source out there, but in fact, our application is loaded with great open source Lisp libraries. See: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=20010 http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=20010 http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=12619 http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=12619 http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aycombinator.com+lisp http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aycombinator.com+lisp http://www.cliki.net/index http://www.cliki.net/index http://common-lisp.net/ http://common-lisp.net/
- gyro_robo 19y ago
  You only know Lisp? That's like only knowing gourmet cooking. Here, have some gruel like the rest of us lived on for years.
rms 19y ago
Lisp is great but Python/Ruby are a great halfway point between C and Java and the purely functional Lisp type languages. It's tough to say whether you're better off learning Ruby or Lisp first. It would probably make a good PhD project for someone to compare the teaching of programming to first-time students with Pascal, Java, Ruby, and Lisp. Anyways, www.hacketyhack.com is a great integrated IDE for learning the syntax of ruby.
- gibsonf1 19y ago
  "purely functional Lisp type languages" I think Common Lisp actually has one of the most powerful Object Systems: CLOS
  - rms 19y ago
    Sorry, I meant languages that actually allow for functional programming, not languages that are exclusively that way.
    - BrandonM 19y ago
      Lisp is not at all exclusively functional. The best Lisp is, but you can easily write iterative code in Lisp as well. It's just that most Lisp programmers don't because they realize that the functional paradigm is usually superior in terms of creating clean, simple code that is easy to understand later.
    - euccastro 19y ago
      Just to nitpick, any language that allows functions 'allows' functional programming to some extent. More seriously, any language with higher order functions, lexical scoping, and closures can be considered appropriate for functional programming. You probably meant languages that are biased primarily towards functional programming, as opposed to others where FP is not the dominant paradigm. You have to specify that much if you are going to include the Lisps but leave Python out.
- JamesT43 19y ago
  Thats actually going to be at www.hacketyhack.net.
staunch 19y ago
Your title is broad but here you say you want to do web development. Many of the people here are interested in programming for programming's sake, so a lot of the advice will be computer sciency. That's great, but if you just want to make stuff you can safely skip theory for now and get your hands dirty producing real stuff and fill in the gaps over time. The key is to learn best practices of whatever language you choose. Don't learn bad habits. Read the authoritative books and don't take short-cuts. Don't be the guy writing code people cry at having to maintain. Avoid "cargo cult" programming, where you just paste code you find into your programs without fully understanding it. I recommend never pasting at all in fact. At the very least re-type everything as you're learning and try to understand it as best you can. You can safely skip haskell, lisp, prolog, and all those languages you will never get friends to help you with, many books to read, or libraries to leverage. At least until you've got enough experience to be mostly independent of assistance. With the use of best practices it doesn't really matter if you choose: Ruby, Perl, Python, or PHP. I'd ignore Java because it has so many training wheels, and the others don't. These can all work extremely well for web development and anyone who says different is selling something. The Truth™ is that Perl5 is the best and Perl6 will make them all obsolete :-)
- SwellJoe 19y ago
  Great to see Perl is coming back into vogue in these kinds of conversations. It's gotten a bad rap for a while, because it's so easy to write really messy and ugly code...but it's also extremely expressive, and contains more functional constructs than even Ruby or Python. Perl 5 didn't get objects right, but they aren't awful (not nearly as big and clunky as Java/PHP). Perl 6 really will be a killer. I watched Audrey Tang's recent video about it, and it was just astounding how far they plan to leap with Perl 6...I must have known it was coming, since I read the apocalypses years ago, but seeing the example code blew me away. It's still a pretty good learning language, and an unbeatable "get things done" language because of CPAN, but if pressed I would have to recommend Ruby or Python for first time programmers.
  - jamongkad 19y ago
    I was about to chime in Perl but I read down to this. I'm currently using Ruby now but my first step into hacking was Perl. So I have a soft spot for it. If Perl 6 can live up to it I will not have any qualms hacking in Perl again.

jaggederest 19y ago

lisp, haskell, prolog, forth, erlang, smalltalk, python, ruby, c, java I think lisp will be adequately enunciated, so I'll move on to the others Haskell is a lazy, strongly-typed functional language. It's syntax is very close to mathematical notation, and it enables code reuse by not allowing side effects. It'll teach you to think in actual algorithms, where most languages teach you to think about how to implement those algorithms. Prolog is a logic language. It'll teach you logic, and some of the fundamental ideas from that field. Backtracking search, unification, and other interesting ideas. Forth is a reverse-polish-notation stack language that is very 'close to the metal' and yet a higher order language than C. Forth will teach you more about the workings of a computer than anything but assembler, and it won't break your soul like assembler might. Erlang is strict strongly-typed functional language that is all about concurrency. Right now it's probably the best language to write highly concurrent applications in, and, as it turns out, most of the internet can be made highly concurrent. Smalltalk is the mother of all object oriented languages, and shares with lisp the interesting concept of a running image. In smalltalk, everything you do is in a live instance of an image, and to deploy, you simply move the instance over and run it on the server. This also one of the first languages to have an effective refactoring browser. Python is a dynamic object-oriented language that incorporates features from a lot of previous languages. It's got some interesting things and a fairly nice syntax. Take a look at TurboGears, Pylon, and Django Ruby is a dynamic object-oriented language (lisp + perl) that is (like lisp) all about metaprogramming. Ruby has also got an interesting framework that is becoming notorious, Rails, which makes OR mapping and quite a few other things brain-dead easy. If you get into the internals of rails, you'll learn a lot about metaprogramming. C is The Language. If it has to be fast, small, and close to the metal, C is the go to language (no pun intended) There are a lot of situations where you'll end up needing to rewrite in C if you hit performance problems, so knowing some C will let you squeeze about an order of magnitude of performance out of things. Plus, you can start to understand drivers for your hardware here. Java is less about the language and more about the IDEs. With the possible exception of Smalltalk, Java has the best IDEs and refactoring software. This is the kind of thing that most languages should have, but don't. Anyway, this is kind of just a menu, but if you learn three or four of these, you'll be well on your way to deciding which one suits your style.

19y ago

dazzawazza 19y ago

+1 for python. Why? excellent docs, excellent libraries, excellent books, flexible language thats easy to learn.

timg 19y ago
Agreed. But, shouldn't we be asking the poster "why"? If the "why" is because he wants to be good at programming, then I would suggest that he first does some light c, a tiny bit of assembly, and a get a basic understanding of FP languages and the insanity of advanced OO in java. In the end though, be sure you are using Python. Heck, even if you get bored along the way, throw some python in. A [Warning] though: python will spoil you. Good luck going back to a more verbose, rigid language, should you be forced to.
- jamongkad 19y ago
  Same thing can be said for Ruby and Perl

tim_sw 19y ago

Read COncepts, Techniques, and models of computer programming. You will get a taste of all these languages/paradigms, and in addition, others like concurrent programming etc. http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Techniques-Models-Computer-Programming/dp/0262220695 http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Techniques-Models-Computer-Programming/dp/0262220695

knome 19y ago

All of them. Because we are compelled.

mynameishere 19y ago

Now, you're going to hear a lot about how wonderful LISP (etc, etc) is, but remember that almost every _real_ application is in C (Unix), C++ (games, other desktop apps), or Java (50 million goddawful enterprise backends).

BrandonM 19y ago
That might be true of "almost every _real_" desktop application, although on my Linux install, I have a healthy amount of Python and Perl programs. As for quickly prototyped web applications, I think that Lisp, Python, Perl, and Ruby far outnumber Java and C/C++ (with Java far outnumbering C/C++).

bootload 19y ago

'what programming languages should I learn?' I'd rephrase the question slightly and ask, 'what problems should I work on?' and 'how can the language(s) I use solve them'. This is one reason why lisp is a compelling choice. You can create your own sub-languages to solve any particular problem. But for lots of reasons lisp may not be suitable. There are lots of other languages to choose so pick the ones that suit solving different problems. There is not one "universal programming hammer" (though lisp is pretty close) but an array to choose from that may suit different types of problems. esr in his faqto (faq + howto) recommends python, c/cpp, java, perl and lisp. Each language chosen for their abilities to solve different types of problems ~ http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills1 http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills1 Tall order? Take too long? Then read on with Norvig and 'Teach yourself programming in 10 years' ~ http://www.norvig.com/21-days.html http://www.norvig.com/21-days.html

ivan 19y ago

Learn ruby and/or python and C for low levels and/or create extensions for those two.

mhidalgo 19y ago

I think this question really shows what a great community this site has developed into. Thanks for all the help!!!

eli 19y ago

as many as you possibly can. so that you'll be able to pick the right tool for the job (nobody ever asks, "which should I learn,the hammer or the screwdriver?")

euccastro 19y ago
Yet time is limited, and there are other things a programmer should learn besides programming languages.

ced 19y ago

While we're on the topic, PG mentions in one of his essays a few languages with a "reputation for succintness": Forth, Joy, Icon. They are all tiny blips on my radar, popping up once every year in some obscure article. Does anybody have experience with them, and are they worth learning? (Forth is already covered on this page)

benhoyt 19y ago
I learnt to program by writing a Forth compiler in assembler (Dad taught me). It was a superb way to learn. One of Forth's strengths is its ultra-simple syntax. If you thought Lisp had little syntax, think again. Forth is just tokens and whitespace. You can write a compiler than can compile itself in a few screenfuls of Forth (and I'm not talking about eval). Forth is obscure but beautiful. It's reflective, meaning you can write code that writes code (macros). Also like Lisp, you can easily roll your own control structures or add an OOP interface. But it does lack good libraries and a decent-sized user base.
- jaggederest 19y ago
  I have just started poking with forth, after seeing some network card firmware source written in it. One of the most interesting things, to me, was the built-in disassembler: if you ask 'how is this word defined', and it's not defined in the current environment, it'll go disassemble the binary and show you that. Pretty insane, if you think about having to write software to interface with old / undocumented / closed source libraries.
- benhoyt 19y ago
  Oh yes, and Forth has an elegant solution to Paul Graham's "accumulator generator" problem (though Forth isn't dynamically typed, so it only works for integers): : accgen create , does tuck +! @ ; From comp.lang.forth: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.forth/msg/f06370fed978abff?dmode=source http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.forth/msg/f06370fed978abff?dmode=source

gregwebs 19y ago

Instead of learning C or C++ you may consider D which will enable you to learn more about actual programming and less about the idiosyncrasies of C/C++.

dfranke 19y ago
I agree that D is a better and cleaner language than C++, but in what way is C idiosyncratic?
- BrandonM 19y ago
  I agree with the point about C. Most of my class assignments have to be programmed in C/C++ or Java. Out of those three, I usually end up choosing C, because it is not nearly as weighed down with syntax soup as Java and C++ are. So I don't really think of C as being idiosyncratic, either. It is somewhat close to the hardware, and I can't really think of much of anything that is in there without good reason.
- gregwebs 19y ago
  True, C does not suffer too much from idiosyncrasies, more from being poorly designed in comparison to modern programming languages.
  - dfranke 19y ago
    On the contrary, C is excellently designed for its intended purpose: as a language for writing UNIX. If that's what you're doing, C is the ideal choice. If you're using it for something else, you're misusing it.
    - euccastro 19y ago
      What do you use to optimize a bottleneck in Ruby or Python? (After you have profiled, exhausted the higher level optimizations, and all that.)
      - 19y ago

fraXis 19y ago

C#.

BrandonM 19y ago
Especially if you want to do any non-Windows programming.