3 ms·
You missed the worst one in the world - Mumps (or M). Terrible language that produces (seemingly automatically) terrible software. It also rots the brains of t
by bdfh42 15y ago
You missed the worst one in the world - Mumps (or M).
Terrible language that produces (seemingly automatically) terrible software. It also rots the brains of those that are forced to use it.
All of those listed have their charms - seems hard to dislike them in the main.
- sp332 15y agothedailywtf.com usually posts horrible code bases that developed gradually over time. But their collection of MUMPS horror stories has convinced me that any project in MUMPS is already doomed. http://thedailywtf.com/gsearchresults.aspx?cx=007080070087309103660%3Au1mb5rvqdbu&cof=FORID%3A10&ie=UTF-8&q=mumps&sa=Search http://thedailywtf.com/gsearchresults.aspx?cx=00708007008730...
- Turing_Machine 15y agoIf only. There's a good chance that some of the important systems at your friendly neighborhood hospital are running on MUMPS.
- btwrto 15y agoThose are horror stories, recall. If you want to write bad code then you can do it in any language. These stories don't resemble what I have experienced. (I work for a healthcare software company in Wisconsin.) In particular, a sensible coding style and sensible development practices (yes, name your variables sensibly! yes, use source control! yes, have code review and automated tools to catch common errors) can remove the bad. It also helps if your company wrote its own (quite good) IDE for the language so you don't have to use Intersystems'. Honestly the most fun thing about M/MUMPS/Caché is that there's very little boilerplate and you can write sensible code quickly. It's like being stuck with Java and then suddenly moving to Python or Ruby. (With, yes, a few pitfalls that these languages don't have, and quite a few features missing. I still prefer modern languages for personal projects. But you quickly pick up a sense for practices to avoid.) I can't say all companies that use Mumps are great places to work. But mine honestly is. </soapbox>
- MrFoof 15y agoMUMPS still has a healthy user base at that. MGH is obviously a large user base (interview with a hospital in Boston and it'll eventually come up in conversation), but the fun is when you get into the dialects of it. For example, MEDITECH has their own dialect named MAGIC, and at least one of their employees has attempted to make things better. I should try to get him to post to talk about it, but he created an object-oriented version of MAGIC that supported longer identifier names and other more modern constructs, as well as an interpreter that spewed out perfectly standards-compliant MAGIC. Originally he was barred from using on existing, but eventually got approval to use it on new projects and I guess some portion of the MEDITECH developer population uses it over plain-jane MAGIC now since it's substantially easier to write and maintain. Though recently he's reached out asking about the job market. He's been there since his early 20s and now is in his mid-30s and feels as if he's dead-ended himself on the job market unless he gains familiarity with something else. I think he's finally looking to break away from MUMPS.
- samhyland 15y agoI came in here to add MAGIC as my "most disliked" language. I spent a few months writing reports in MEDITECH and their macro language is a variant of MAGIC. Documentation is a closely guarded secret but you can get a taste of what it looks like here: http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-meditech-magic-385.html http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-meditech-magic-38...
- reinhardt 15y agoHad to look this one up. It's amazing that after 15+ years of programming I keep coming across technologies that seem to live in a parallel universe.