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Ask HN: What's a fun language to program in besides JavaScript?
I've been doing JS for about 10 years, I used to do perl, php, ruby but now I'm learning v-lang. The only problem is it is pre-alpha. I'm considering learning Go instead as its very similar. I want to be able to build things (apps, etc) without have to install 8 billion javascript libraries to do a "hello world".
- ironmagma 6y agoRust is great. It interops reasonably with JS as well since there's a WASM-subculture to the user base. That said, the real answer to your question depends on what kind of apps exactly you want to be able to build.
- chovybizzass 6y agoDesktop or web apps.
- ironmagma 6y agoFlutter/Dart is a good one for cross-OS desktop and mobile apps. It can technically target web although it's experimental support. I've heard good things about Swift/SwiftUI, but as far as apps go, it can only do Mac desktop and iOS. C# is a good language for Windows apps (same with F#), but it comes with Microsoft baggage. Personally, I would suggest Rust/Yew for web development as it's all fresh and experimental and fun.
- chovybizzass 6y agoi like open source languages, not corporate "open" source crap.
- ironmagma 6y agoThat sounds like a pretty fuzzy distinction. Anything that has seen significant development likely has at least one corporate sponsor. If you are referring to SwiftUI being a private extension that isn’t open source on top of something that is open source (Swift), then I agree that sucks. But is Rust corporate in your book? It was developed by Mozilla and has more than a few corporate users now. But it’s all still completely open.
- oriettaxx 6y agoRuby has been created with that in mind
- chovybizzass 6y agonot really for desktop apps. and ruby is pretty slow compared to compiled.
- oriettaxx 6y agoyes, no doubt. I read the subtitle now, and see he already know Ruby, so my suggestion was useless anyhow :( (personally I like Ruby a lot, as you can imagine :)
- yesenadam 6y agoTcl/Tk is fun! When I first learnt it, within a few days I'd written 2 GUI games. Also it's different, in the "will affect the way you think about programming" kind of way. Everything is a string. You can also change/add to the fundamentals of the language, in a way you can't in most languages—as if you could change the meaning of "if" or "while" in C, or add your own keywords. "Anything goes in Tcl...except braces in comments"
- drannex 6y agoD-Lang and Julia. Dlang if you want a compiled, next-generation C (low level language) that writes like Javascript but powerful like C, similar to Vlang but imo far better designed and has been around for 20 years. Incredibly easy to get started, and to learn! The docs are great, and the tutorial really outlines and explains how everything works. Julia if you want a nice scripting language that crunches numbers quickly and efficiently and just ease of development.