5 ms·

I’m sick of programming languages that use “fast typing” and “productiveness” as a selling point. There’s no selling point in being productive doing a counter i

by savmat 5y ago

I’m sick of programming languages that use “fast typing” and “productiveness” as a selling point. There’s no selling point in being productive doing a counter in a few seconds, production scenarios are far more complex and very often all those new programming languages fall short to their promise. Btw I don’t want to be fast or productive, I want to write code that works decently and is great for other humans myself included

methyl 5y ago
It depends. If your work is to create a new counter app every day to support some specific, single usecase, in other words you write a lot of simple apps and not a single complex one, then it’s definitely a win for productivity.
- nsonha 5y ago
  > create a new counter app every day to support some specific, single usecase sounds like the kind of thing that programming was invented to eliminate
- RussianCow 5y ago
  Who actually does this for a living? And where do I sign up? :D In all seriousness, I've never worked at a company that did anything like this. What is the use case for creating lots of small apps as opposed to maintaining a larger product?
laserpistus 5y ago
Fair enough - and so you skip the languages that doesn't fit that bill for you and pick one that you feel bring you those outcomes. No hurt feelings!
lowercased 5y ago
You could be doing stuff that works decently, is great for humans, and still be productive (maybe even fast). Or figure out how to do it faster next time. Someone else may want you to be fast and productive. Or... they'll find someone else who can provide what they want who is faster and more productive than you.
k__ 5y ago
I don't see the value in being able to "type fast". I see it in less visual clutter.
- arcanon 5y ago
  Yes. Which gives you more control over how you make the code look. DSLs.
lhorie 5y ago
That's not really a complaint about languages so much as it a complaint about marketing though, is it? I don't go learning every language to mastery level, but I try to at least keep track of whereabouts they lie in the spectrum so I can cut through marketing-speak when I see it. The way I see it, if a thing is being dogfooded in production, it's production grade. People can debate go-vs-rust or whatever till they're blue but the reality is simply that you can ship something with either and there are always going to be proponents and detractors for each side. While I haven't followed Imba that closely, I've been aware of it for years, and I have to say it's one of few projects that actually has interesting technical takes on several fronts.
turtlebits 5y ago
Considering Javascript is the only language supported on the frontend, claiming to be more productive is definitely valid. Coffeescript was a breath of fresh air compared to writing ES5.
- arcanon 5y ago
  We need a Coffeescript Renaissance!
  - phil294 5y ago
    Nothing is holding you back from using it!
    - nsonha 5y ago
      lack of types and it used to be ignorant of perf in the generated code (creating IIFE unnecessarily)
      - phil294 5y ago
        Regarding types, you're right, though JSDoc can get you very far Regarding perf (performance, I guess?) - are you speaking of the single, global one? As CS takes care of variable scoping automatically, I think it makes a lot of sense (and is deactivatable anyway)
        nsonha 5y ago
        no coffeescript desugars into functions things like switch statements, do statements and some other things (that have nothing to do with functions)
        arcanon 5y ago
        Just tried a switch statement, didnt desugar into functions. Maybe you haven’t been keeping up with the latest.
Mikeb85 5y ago
Then don't use it. Some of us do like productive (ie. expressive and batteries included) languages. PHP, Python, JavaScript and Ruby still power most websites. There's plenty of choices for enterprise languages and frameworks if you want. Productive, everything included languages/frameworks such as this are great for freelancers, designers, students, and anyone who wants to get up and running quickly. You can also still create maintainable projects with expressive languages (Google and Python, GitHub and Ruby are a couple examples). People are doing things that don't break with 'productive' languages.
omniscient_oce 5y ago
Another marketing pet peeve that I have is term "blazing" fast. I think it's so overused now on any new tool's landing page posted online that I instantly just assume that it is, in fact, of relatively average speed. Are there no other synonyms for fast these days?

by savmat 5y ago

methyl 5y ago

It depends. If your work is to create a new counter app every day to support some specific, single usecase, in other words you write a lot of simple apps and not a single complex one, then it’s definitely a win for productivity.

nsonha 5y ago
> create a new counter app every day to support some specific, single usecase sounds like the kind of thing that programming was invented to eliminate
RussianCow 5y ago
Who actually does this for a living? And where do I sign up? :D In all seriousness, I've never worked at a company that did anything like this. What is the use case for creating lots of small apps as opposed to maintaining a larger product?

laserpistus 5y ago

Fair enough - and so you skip the languages that doesn't fit that bill for you and pick one that you feel bring you those outcomes. No hurt feelings!

lowercased 5y ago

You could be doing stuff that works decently, is great for humans, and still be productive (maybe even fast). Or figure out how to do it faster next time. Someone else may want you to be fast and productive. Or... they'll find someone else who can provide what they want who is faster and more productive than you.

k__ 5y ago

I don't see the value in being able to "type fast". I see it in less visual clutter.

arcanon 5y ago
Yes. Which gives you more control over how you make the code look. DSLs.

lhorie 5y ago

That's not really a complaint about languages so much as it a complaint about marketing though, is it? I don't go learning every language to mastery level, but I try to at least keep track of whereabouts they lie in the spectrum so I can cut through marketing-speak when I see it. The way I see it, if a thing is being dogfooded in production, it's production grade. People can debate go-vs-rust or whatever till they're blue but the reality is simply that you can ship something with either and there are always going to be proponents and detractors for each side. While I haven't followed Imba that closely, I've been aware of it for years, and I have to say it's one of few projects that actually has interesting technical takes on several fronts.

turtlebits 5y ago

Considering Javascript is the only language supported on the frontend, claiming to be more productive is definitely valid. Coffeescript was a breath of fresh air compared to writing ES5.

arcanon 5y ago
We need a Coffeescript Renaissance!
- phil294 5y ago
  Nothing is holding you back from using it!
  - nsonha 5y ago
    lack of types and it used to be ignorant of perf in the generated code (creating IIFE unnecessarily)
    - phil294 5y ago
      Regarding types, you're right, though JSDoc can get you very far Regarding perf (performance, I guess?) - are you speaking of the single, global one? As CS takes care of variable scoping automatically, I think it makes a lot of sense (and is deactivatable anyway)
      - nsonha 5y ago
        no coffeescript desugars into functions things like switch statements, do statements and some other things (that have nothing to do with functions)
        arcanon 5y ago
        Just tried a switch statement, didnt desugar into functions. Maybe you haven’t been keeping up with the latest.

Mikeb85 5y ago

Then don't use it. Some of us do like productive (ie. expressive and batteries included) languages. PHP, Python, JavaScript and Ruby still power most websites. There's plenty of choices for enterprise languages and frameworks if you want. Productive, everything included languages/frameworks such as this are great for freelancers, designers, students, and anyone who wants to get up and running quickly. You can also still create maintainable projects with expressive languages (Google and Python, GitHub and Ruby are a couple examples). People are doing things that don't break with 'productive' languages.

omniscient_oce 5y ago

Another marketing pet peeve that I have is term "blazing" fast. I think it's so overused now on any new tool's landing page posted online that I instantly just assume that it is, in fact, of relatively average speed. Are there no other synonyms for fast these days?