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> The TOP 15 Dreaded Programming Languages [list that includes] Haskell, Scala, HTML, Shell, and SQL. Okay. > The TOP 15 Loved Programming Languages [list tha

> The TOP 15 Dreaded Programming Languages [list that includes] Haskell, Scala, HTML, Shell, and SQL. Okay. > The TOP 15 Loved Programming Languages [list that also contains] Haskell, Scala, HTML, Shell, and SQL. Hmm. > There is a pattern in this list. Can you see what it is? Yes… but, with all due respect to Adam, when the Venn diagram of both of those lists share 1/3rd of the languages, I really don’t think the pattern actually there is the one he expects us to see. What I see is really unreliable data. Especially given that more than half of the overlap are DSLs rather than GPLs.

adamgordonbell 3y ago
Author here. This is an error in original article. The list is actually a stack rank, so the middle overlaps. But I missed that. Consider those 5 ( Haskell, Scala, HTML, Shell, and SQL ) the murky middle, perhaps? I should have done top 8 of something back when I wrote this. I think the point still holds though. Obviously PL improvements happen, and tooling improvements happen as well. But also people hate old code bases.
- yawpitch 3y ago
  Eliminating the overlapping 5 does help your point, though I have a feeling Rust will be amongst the most dreaded once Rust is as old as VBA, Objective-C, or whatever “assembly” is… I don’t think it’s old code bases so much as it’s old languages that have accumulated a lot of cruft… the new hotness doesn’t (yet) have the cruft, but because human beings seem to inevitably want to force feature drift, it’ll inevitably gain cruft as it ages and tries to keep market share. Tangentially, thanks for the podcast; really great work.
  - adamgordonbell 3y ago
    Thanks for listening!
dkarl 3y ago
When I read it, I thought the overlap was the pattern, and based on my experience with Scala, I thought it supported his point well. I would dread inheriting a Scala codebase, but if I were writing a new codebase in scratch, by myself, in a vacuum, I would love to do it in Scala. I'm not sure how Scala ended up in the green category, though. 2011-2015 I saw lots of brand-new Scala codebases. Not many since then.
- valenterry 3y ago
  Well, that's the thing. Scala is powerful and gives freedom, so it is really hit or miss. A good Scala codebase is a pleasure to work with and is sooo much better than the best Java codebase could possibly be. But a bad Scala codebase can be horrible and be confusing to a point where you'd wish that Scala wouldn't give this freedom to developers at all. Pick your poison I guess.

adamgordonbell 3y ago

Author here. This is an error in original article. The list is actually a stack rank, so the middle overlaps. But I missed that. Consider those 5 ( Haskell, Scala, HTML, Shell, and SQL ) the murky middle, perhaps? I should have done top 8 of something back when I wrote this. I think the point still holds though. Obviously PL improvements happen, and tooling improvements happen as well. But also people hate old code bases.

yawpitch 3y ago
Eliminating the overlapping 5 does help your point, though I have a feeling Rust will be amongst the most dreaded once Rust is as old as VBA, Objective-C, or whatever “assembly” is… I don’t think it’s old code bases so much as it’s old languages that have accumulated a lot of cruft… the new hotness doesn’t (yet) have the cruft, but because human beings seem to inevitably want to force feature drift, it’ll inevitably gain cruft as it ages and tries to keep market share. Tangentially, thanks for the podcast; really great work.
- adamgordonbell 3y ago
  Thanks for listening!

dkarl 3y ago

When I read it, I thought the overlap was the pattern, and based on my experience with Scala, I thought it supported his point well. I would dread inheriting a Scala codebase, but if I were writing a new codebase in scratch, by myself, in a vacuum, I would love to do it in Scala. I'm not sure how Scala ended up in the green category, though. 2011-2015 I saw lots of brand-new Scala codebases. Not many since then.

valenterry 3y ago
Well, that's the thing. Scala is powerful and gives freedom, so it is really hit or miss. A good Scala codebase is a pleasure to work with and is sooo much better than the best Java codebase could possibly be. But a bad Scala codebase can be horrible and be confusing to a point where you'd wish that Scala wouldn't give this freedom to developers at all. Pick your poison I guess.