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I'm glad Python 3.0 has come out, but that's no reason to revive the language war. Every language has it's own strengths, weaknesses, toolkits, frameworks, and

by modoc 18y ago

I'm glad Python 3.0 has come out, but that's no reason to revive the language war. Every language has it's own strengths, weaknesses, toolkits, frameworks, and developers. Let people use what they want.

SingAlong 18y ago
Every language has it's own strengths, weaknesses, toolkits, frameworks, and developers. Let people use what they want. I recently visited a webapp thru HN whose developer wrote it in Sleep. http://sleep.dashnine.org/ http://sleep.dashnine.org/ :)
sah 18y ago
Some languages have more strengths (or more weaknesses) than others. If you want to claim that every language is useful and good in its own special way, you may have to accept that COBOL is primarily good at being compatible with old systems based on COBOL, and Pascal is useful mainly for failing to teach computer programming in the 1980s.
- MrRage 18y ago
  How did Pascal fail to teach computer programming in the '80's? (While we're at it, how does a programming language teach at all?) My impression is Pascal got replaced by Java in intro to CS courses.
  - jefffoster 18y ago
    How does a programming language teach at all? Well, it doesn't alone however the concepts that are available in a programming language constrain your thought process. Java/Pascal is much more constraining than something like Oz/Scheme.
    - MrRage 18y ago
      Teaching languages are stripped down on purpose, so I don't consider that a valid criticism. Pascal was fine for teaching structured programming in its day.
- Retric 18y ago
  Apple had a lot of Pascal code that worked well. It's still used for a lot of embedded code and there is a strong argument for using a flavor of Pascal when building operating systems.
lacker 18y ago
The language war is important because deciding on a language for a project is one of the most important decisions. I can only use so many languages myself, so I rely on the ongoing language wars to produce enough discussion for me to figure out what's useful for new projects. So, keep up the language wars!
- modoc 18y ago
  I'd argue that a good idea, and smart people to execute on it matter more than the language. You can write the same web-app using Cake/PHP, Seam/J2EE, or RoR, and if it's a language/framework you know and like, it'll probably go about the same. My big issue with language wars is everyone who jumps in pretty much brings their own experience and past projects to the table. It's all anecdotal. It's like asking all your friends what kind of car you should buy. Even your hardcore gear-head friends will have non-rationally based biases. Audi and BMW makes pretty similar cars in most respects, but you almost always find die-hard Audi fans or die-hard BMW fans who will happily tell you at length why brand A is the best and brand B sucks, when the reality is brands A and B are both pretty good. My day job is, and has been for 10 years, working with the commercial ATG E-Commerce framework built on J2EE. It's typically implemented by Fortune 500 type companies. There's no equivalent personalization, B2C/B2B commerce, marketing, reporting, etc... framework with the same maturity and proven scalability available in Ruby or Perl or Python or PHP. Does that mean Java is better than Ruby? No, not at all. It means for a certain type of site for a certain type of customer I'd whole heartedly recommend a Java based solution. Because my day job is spent with Java, I tend to gravitate toward other Java based work in my spare time (I really like the Seam framework from JBoss). I learn things that are applicable back and forth all the time. For me, Java is my preferred language. It doesn't mean it's better or worse than any other language for you or for Tim or whoever. It also doesn't mean it's better or worse for project X, without knowing what project X is. I haven't seen a language war that wasn't 99% really strong polar opinion based almost exclusively on individual anecdotal experience.
  - lacker 18y ago
    I agree the idea and the people are more important. After that which language you use is still pretty high up there! You can have an intelligent language argument, and you can learn something even from an unintelligent one. One of the most telling things is, are there languages that you thought were reasonable that nobody even bothers chipping in to defend. Nobody jumps in to advocate C++ for a quick regex-heavy text file manipulation job, or quick webserver development. Nobody jumps in to advocate Python for mobile applications, or for massively parallel programming. Nobody jumps in to advocate Javascript for offline image processing. Sure, usually the two sides of a language war talk past each other. You can still learn a lot from the talking points.

by modoc 18y ago

SingAlong 18y ago

Every language has it's own strengths, weaknesses, toolkits, frameworks, and developers. Let people use what they want. I recently visited a webapp thru HN whose developer wrote it in Sleep. http://sleep.dashnine.org/ http://sleep.dashnine.org/ :)

sah 18y ago

Some languages have more strengths (or more weaknesses) than others. If you want to claim that every language is useful and good in its own special way, you may have to accept that COBOL is primarily good at being compatible with old systems based on COBOL, and Pascal is useful mainly for failing to teach computer programming in the 1980s.

MrRage 18y ago
How did Pascal fail to teach computer programming in the '80's? (While we're at it, how does a programming language teach at all?) My impression is Pascal got replaced by Java in intro to CS courses.
- jefffoster 18y ago
  How does a programming language teach at all? Well, it doesn't alone however the concepts that are available in a programming language constrain your thought process. Java/Pascal is much more constraining than something like Oz/Scheme.
  - MrRage 18y ago
    Teaching languages are stripped down on purpose, so I don't consider that a valid criticism. Pascal was fine for teaching structured programming in its day.
Retric 18y ago
Apple had a lot of Pascal code that worked well. It's still used for a lot of embedded code and there is a strong argument for using a flavor of Pascal when building operating systems.

lacker 18y ago

The language war is important because deciding on a language for a project is one of the most important decisions. I can only use so many languages myself, so I rely on the ongoing language wars to produce enough discussion for me to figure out what's useful for new projects. So, keep up the language wars!

modoc 18y ago
I'd argue that a good idea, and smart people to execute on it matter more than the language. You can write the same web-app using Cake/PHP, Seam/J2EE, or RoR, and if it's a language/framework you know and like, it'll probably go about the same. My big issue with language wars is everyone who jumps in pretty much brings their own experience and past projects to the table. It's all anecdotal. It's like asking all your friends what kind of car you should buy. Even your hardcore gear-head friends will have non-rationally based biases. Audi and BMW makes pretty similar cars in most respects, but you almost always find die-hard Audi fans or die-hard BMW fans who will happily tell you at length why brand A is the best and brand B sucks, when the reality is brands A and B are both pretty good. My day job is, and has been for 10 years, working with the commercial ATG E-Commerce framework built on J2EE. It's typically implemented by Fortune 500 type companies. There's no equivalent personalization, B2C/B2B commerce, marketing, reporting, etc... framework with the same maturity and proven scalability available in Ruby or Perl or Python or PHP. Does that mean Java is better than Ruby? No, not at all. It means for a certain type of site for a certain type of customer I'd whole heartedly recommend a Java based solution. Because my day job is spent with Java, I tend to gravitate toward other Java based work in my spare time (I really like the Seam framework from JBoss). I learn things that are applicable back and forth all the time. For me, Java is my preferred language. It doesn't mean it's better or worse than any other language for you or for Tim or whoever. It also doesn't mean it's better or worse for project X, without knowing what project X is. I haven't seen a language war that wasn't 99% really strong polar opinion based almost exclusively on individual anecdotal experience.
- lacker 18y ago
  I agree the idea and the people are more important. After that which language you use is still pretty high up there! You can have an intelligent language argument, and you can learn something even from an unintelligent one. One of the most telling things is, are there languages that you thought were reasonable that nobody even bothers chipping in to defend. Nobody jumps in to advocate C++ for a quick regex-heavy text file manipulation job, or quick webserver development. Nobody jumps in to advocate Python for mobile applications, or for massively parallel programming. Nobody jumps in to advocate Javascript for offline image processing. Sure, usually the two sides of a language war talk past each other. You can still learn a lot from the talking points.