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Gah, I'm tired of these Language Wars. Every week (day?) we see posts on the front page on why language X is the "bestest programming language eva!". There are

by mikevm 14y ago

Gah, I'm tired of these Language Wars. Every week (day?) we see posts on the front page on why language X is the "bestest programming language eva!". There are now a gazillion programming languages, and new ones popping up every once in a while -- like anal warts. I'm tired of these fucking evangelists. Seeing these posts on the front page is like getting daily visits from Jahova's Witnesses. Just use whatever makes you productive and your product do whatever it's supposed to do, and most importantly, shut the fuck up. </rant>

klibertp 14y ago
Languages, editors and IDEs, comments in the code, static and dynamic typing and a few others - these are the topics that attract lots of people with strong opinions. That was the case thirty, twenty and ten years ago and probably will be in the future. In my experience just when one generation of developers grows up and abandons those topics in favor of actually making things the next generation is more than ready to carry on the holy wars. The best we can do is to ignore them altogether. I know it's sometimes hard, but it's definitely more productive that way :)
PommeDeTerre 14y ago
There's no "war". It's pretty clear that C and C++ are the most important and dominant programming languages around, regardless of what some people may think and say. Almost every truly important software system is either implemented directly in one or both of them, or heavily depends on other software implemented in one or both of them. In practice, you don't get implementations of languages like Java, Ruby, Python, Perl and Go without C and C++. Even if you're using something like JRuby, you'll still likely end up depending on a JVM written in C and/or C++. And all of this isn't even considering that your software, regardless of the language it's written in, will likely be dealing with an OS written in C and/or C++, and possibly communicating with a database or some other server software written in C and/or C++. These days, C and C++ are nearly inescapable when implementing real-world software.
- betterunix 14y ago
  "In practice, you don't get implementations of languages like...Python,...without C and C++." Unless someone takes the time to free Python from C, by doing something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PyPy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PyPy Really, the reason you see interpreters being written in C/C++ has less to do with any technical quality of C or C++ and more to do with something else you mentioned: "your software, regardless of the language it's written in, will likely be dealing with an OS written in C and/or C++," Bingo. Sometimes software needs to do low-level things, even if the software itself is high-level, and that means the software is probably going to be making system calls. An interpreter for Python is going to have to make some system calls, and it is much easier to do that if the interpreter is written in the same language as the OS's API; most OSes have C APIs, and thus writing a Python interpreter in C makes sense. "These days, C and C++ are nearly inescapable when implementing real-world software." I doubt it, considering how much real-world software is being written in Java, C#, Ruby, Javascript, etc. Not all software needs to do things that involve directly deal with the OS. The fact that these systems are often implemented in C does not make C inescapable; it just means that nobody has bothered to free themselves from C yet. There is no technical feature of C that makes it inescapable as a language, it is just what we have to deal with until we put in the effort needed to rid ourselves of it.
kelvin0 14y ago
You mean Jehovah's Witnesses? I would really love to see them if they came to your door and you tried convincing them that 'LanguageX' is the best and they should repent for their bugs or face the wrath of the great architect ...

by mikevm 14y ago

klibertp 14y ago

Languages, editors and IDEs, comments in the code, static and dynamic typing and a few others - these are the topics that attract lots of people with strong opinions. That was the case thirty, twenty and ten years ago and probably will be in the future. In my experience just when one generation of developers grows up and abandons those topics in favor of actually making things the next generation is more than ready to carry on the holy wars. The best we can do is to ignore them altogether. I know it's sometimes hard, but it's definitely more productive that way :)

PommeDeTerre 14y ago

There's no "war". It's pretty clear that C and C++ are the most important and dominant programming languages around, regardless of what some people may think and say. Almost every truly important software system is either implemented directly in one or both of them, or heavily depends on other software implemented in one or both of them. In practice, you don't get implementations of languages like Java, Ruby, Python, Perl and Go without C and C++. Even if you're using something like JRuby, you'll still likely end up depending on a JVM written in C and/or C++. And all of this isn't even considering that your software, regardless of the language it's written in, will likely be dealing with an OS written in C and/or C++, and possibly communicating with a database or some other server software written in C and/or C++. These days, C and C++ are nearly inescapable when implementing real-world software.

betterunix 14y ago
"In practice, you don't get implementations of languages like...Python,...without C and C++." Unless someone takes the time to free Python from C, by doing something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PyPy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PyPy Really, the reason you see interpreters being written in C/C++ has less to do with any technical quality of C or C++ and more to do with something else you mentioned: "your software, regardless of the language it's written in, will likely be dealing with an OS written in C and/or C++," Bingo. Sometimes software needs to do low-level things, even if the software itself is high-level, and that means the software is probably going to be making system calls. An interpreter for Python is going to have to make some system calls, and it is much easier to do that if the interpreter is written in the same language as the OS's API; most OSes have C APIs, and thus writing a Python interpreter in C makes sense. "These days, C and C++ are nearly inescapable when implementing real-world software." I doubt it, considering how much real-world software is being written in Java, C#, Ruby, Javascript, etc. Not all software needs to do things that involve directly deal with the OS. The fact that these systems are often implemented in C does not make C inescapable; it just means that nobody has bothered to free themselves from C yet. There is no technical feature of C that makes it inescapable as a language, it is just what we have to deal with until we put in the effort needed to rid ourselves of it.

kelvin0 14y ago

You mean Jehovah's Witnesses? I would really love to see them if they came to your door and you tried convincing them that 'LanguageX' is the best and they should repent for their bugs or face the wrath of the great architect ...