4 ms·
You're all wrong. FORTH is the best language ever. You kids get off my lawn! (just kidding) JavaScript has warts, but if you drink enough, you can pretend i
by dingosity 4y ago
You're all wrong. FORTH is the best language ever. You kids get off my lawn!
(just kidding)
JavaScript has warts, but if you drink enough, you can pretend it's Scheme. Python isn't a language but a family of languages. Guido thought it was a good idea to change the semantics AND syntax between minor revs, so... no... having to re-code my apps every two years is a deal-killer for me. Sadly, the same applies to rust. I'm not the biggest fan of C++, but a friend pointed out some of the more recent language additions make it a much better language. And they added them without removing reverse compatibility. Or at least to a greater degree than python and rust.
Also, if you're picking a language to use based mostly on a popularity contest, you get what you deserve. Start with understanding what your needs are, then pick a language that allows you to model your computational requirements in a way that meets those needs. Maybe after that look at associated tools and libraries (I'm mostly concerned with debuggers since I usually debug things with a debugger rather than print statements). Then maybe think about popularity, you probably do want to be able to hire people, but it always seemed to me to be a premature optimization to say "oh. Java is real popular, so we're going to use Java 'cause we can hire people who claim to know it."
But there are some niche financial engineering teams I know who are very happy with using niche OCaml derivatives. They're completely okay with hiring people with Lisp or Scheme or "popular" ML derivative experience and then giving them a couple months to learn what's going on locally.
And heck, I've been on projects where we used COBOL and it was exactly the right language for that job. Was thinking about this the other day... I sort of miss Pascal and Delphi. meh. Life moves on.
- dingosity 4y agoHappy to see someone down-voting a comment that suggests you examine your requirements for a language because it dares to challenge the supremacy of python and suggests that adults are perfectly capable of choosing a language appropriate for the task, even if that language is COBOL. Stay classy, HN.
- diarrhea 4y agoI didn’t vote, but your take on Python doesn’t match my experience. Do you have more context? It seems like after the transition to version 3, the lesson was learned. That was about a decade ago now.
- dingosity 4y ago2.3 to 2.5 - changed the syntax and semantics of the language by adding class variables. 2.5 to 2.7 - changed semantics by changing class variable to package variables. Certainly you're not claiming Python hasn't made breaking changes in the syntax or semantics over the years? I mean... this still compiles with my c compiler: ??=include <stdio.h> int main( argc, argv ) int argc; char *argv[]; ??< printf( "hello %d %s\n", argc, argv[0] ); ??> Though... gcc makes you add the -trigraph option.
- gilch 4y agoClojure has had pretty remarkable stability over the years. Maybe Common Lisp even more so, since it's based on a standard that hasn't been updated.