3 ms·

I chose Java, but hackers shouldn't have a language that is their "favorite". They should use all languages and pick that one that is best for the job. I realiz

by kirinan 15y ago

I chose Java, but hackers shouldn't have a language that is their "favorite". They should use all languages and pick that one that is best for the job. I realize this may be an unrealistic task, but I try my best to do it. While I probably the best at coding Java(Quickest, and get the most done in it), I don't always use it because its not the best language for the job.

chimeracoder 15y ago
> They should use all languages and pick that one that is best for the job. That's certainly a correct answer, but it's correct because it's almost tautological. 'The language that I like the most is the one that's best [for what I want to do]'. The issue is that, in this question, 'favorite' is a bit vague, and the task isn't specified. (This is why I have a problem choosing 'favorites'.) Despite that, in this situation, I interpret it to mean 'What [general-purpose] language has the best design?' Theoretically, a perfectly-designed language would be designed in such a way that it has an absolute advantage over all other languages for every type of task. Given that definition, it follows naturally that I would choose Lisp - it's actually not my strongest language, but even a novice Lisper can see that Lisp is both as minimal as possible and yet as powerful as possible . Since it's a shapeshifter of sorts, it can adapt itself perfectly to any setting. The drawbacks with Lisp (in my view) have nothing to do with the design of the language itself, but rather the environment. The libraries of languages like Perl and Python are much larger, by sheer fact that the community is larger. Lisp is cross-platform, but the installation (quicklisp aside) is still messier than Ruby's gem-based packaging or Python's eggs. And lastly, because most people don't learn functional programming as their first step, it's got a learning curve. But none of those are problems with the language itself - at least not the design of the language. (I'm assuming here that we're dealing with high-level languages - it wouldn't really make sense to compare x86 assembly to Python - if you're writing assembly, you probably have a very good reason, and Python isn't even on the table). So in the end, your answer to this all determines on how you interpret the question, so it's fun to see what the results are... just don't try and compare them directly - I think anybody who interpreted the question the way I did would probably choose Lisp, but it's clear from the comments that many other people interpret this a different way. (Thankfully HN is good at avoiding flamewars, but I'm sure everyone here has seen enough useless 'debate' of this same topic on other forums to understand why I mention it!)

by kirinan 15y ago

chimeracoder 15y ago

> They should use all languages and pick that one that is best for the job. That's certainly a correct answer, but it's correct because it's almost tautological. 'The language that I like the most is the one that's best [for what I want to do]'. The issue is that, in this question, 'favorite' is a bit vague, and the task isn't specified. (This is why I have a problem choosing 'favorites'.) Despite that, in this situation, I interpret it to mean 'What [general-purpose] language has the best design?' Theoretically, a perfectly-designed language would be designed in such a way that it has an absolute advantage over all other languages for every type of task. Given that definition, it follows naturally that I would choose Lisp - it's actually not my strongest language, but even a novice Lisper can see that Lisp is both as minimal as possible and yet as powerful as possible . Since it's a shapeshifter of sorts, it can adapt itself perfectly to any setting. The drawbacks with Lisp (in my view) have nothing to do with the design of the language itself, but rather the environment. The libraries of languages like Perl and Python are much larger, by sheer fact that the community is larger. Lisp is cross-platform, but the installation (quicklisp aside) is still messier than Ruby's gem-based packaging or Python's eggs. And lastly, because most people don't learn functional programming as their first step, it's got a learning curve. But none of those are problems with the language itself - at least not the design of the language. (I'm assuming here that we're dealing with high-level languages - it wouldn't really make sense to compare x86 assembly to Python - if you're writing assembly, you probably have a very good reason, and Python isn't even on the table). So in the end, your answer to this all determines on how you interpret the question, so it's fun to see what the results are... just don't try and compare them directly - I think anybody who interpreted the question the way I did would probably choose Lisp, but it's clear from the comments that many other people interpret this a different way. (Thankfully HN is good at avoiding flamewars, but I'm sure everyone here has seen enough useless 'debate' of this same topic on other forums to understand why I mention it!)