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To me, this list is great except for one small thing. - C - Prolog - Erlang - Smalltalk - Javascript - Hakell / ML /OCaml - LISP/Sc

To me, this list is great except for one small thing. - C - Prolog - Erlang - Smalltalk - Javascript - Hakell / ML /OCaml - LISP/Scheme/Clojure Javascript?! Over Ruby or Python or Lua? What is it with people liking Javascript. I really don't get it. What can I do that is so beautiful or mindbending that I can't do in python? From my experience there is only two reasons to learn Javascript: to be able to build web applications, or to write document store queries (MongoDB or Riak, although in Riak you can also use Erlang). Otherwise I just don't see what the big deal is.

yvdriess 14y ago
The core Javascript design is a mix of Scheme and Self, which is interesting in its own right. Most people will recommend: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596517748.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596517748.do
- justincormack 14y ago
  So is Lua, just done more consistently...
pekk 14y ago
Javascript is a very different language from Python. It is in some ways more flexible and less prescriptive. You point out one of the non-overlapping use cases. Javascript performance has seen really intensive efforts. Javascript has grown a rather nice async ecosystem that Python just doesn't have. It's also exciting for people from the standpoint that everything feels newer and more up for grabs. Python is a rather old language. Any language is Turing complete so the big deal is a matter of style and tools and libraries and ultimately it's who you are working with and what you want to do.
- xradionut 14y ago
  "Javascript has grown a rather nice async ecosystem that Python just doesn't have. It's also exciting for people from the standpoint that everything feels newer and more up for grabs. Python is a rather old language." Python old? Not to be snarky, but I've got programs for the PDP-11 that dated Python's great-grandmother. Excitement in a language doesn't cut it, I respect productivity, environment and progress. For automation, data munging and analysis, Python is my secret weapon in a shop of MS SQL Server DBA's and C# ditto heads. Would have be nice if MS would have adapted IronPython instead of creating PowerShell... Yes, there are oodles of crappy Turning complete programming languages, but there's definative advantages to a much smaller sub-set of decent langauges and environments.
  - pekk 14y ago
    Python is, objectively, decades old. For some people that would make it less exciting. Excitement produces buzz and popularity and encourages development effort which creates real and useful code. I vastly, vastly prefer Python. But we are NOT helping Python AT ALL if we bring it up to trash Javascript every time it's mentioned, without making any argument more specific than "I used a PDP-11".
    - xradionut 14y ago
      I'm not seeing a decrease in Python development and investment. In the past decade I've seen a lot of effort invested in interesting and productive third party utilities and libraries. New languages still have to build those tools and such to get to a steady-state and attract more than language explorers and hipsters. I wasn't trashing Javascript, which is obvious if you trace through the message thread. I haven't delved much into modern Javascript, since most of my work involves data and cli/desktop/network applications instead of web applications and services, so I don't have a valid observation worth sharing.
- dagw 14y ago
  Python is a rather old language. A massive 3 years older Javascript.
  - pekk 14y ago
    Python hit its stride a long time ago. The Javascript ecosystem has only quite recently reached sufficient performance, usability and adoption to be a serious general purpose language and it's red hot as a job skill. Python is not dead, but it's not exactly blowing up at this point.
    - xradionut 14y ago
      Depends on what domain you work in. If I used nodejs or web services, then I would be enamored of Javascript. But I do an data analysis and ETL, a domain that Python and friends excel at, I not concerned as what's "hot" and "in" at the coffeshop.
- jerf 14y ago
  "Javascript has grown a rather nice async ecosystem that Python just doesn't have." Python has Twisted, and it also has a radically better async ecosystem in gevent. Javascript's async story is far worse than Python's.
  - dagw 14y ago
    Javascript's async story is far worse than Python's. Yes and no. Python may have an great async core with Twisted and gevents, but it doesn't have an great async ecosystem. Most tools and libraries aren't written with async in mind and you end up having to roll your own in many places where Node either gives it to you out of the box or with well supported third-party libraries. After having written quite a bit of Twisted code I have to say I find writing async code in Node a lot quicker and easier, despite being a much more experienced python programmer.
    - jerf 14y ago
      Then try gevent. The monkeypatching they do means that most pure Python network code just works with it. For instance, I used the XML-RPC library that ships with the core with no further modifications beyond what gevent does. It's less good than using a language with first-class support for continuation-style programming, but it's better than using a language that makes you be the compiler and chop up and manage the event handlers yourself.
kapuhy 14y ago
Javascript has some unique concepts, while Ruby or Pyton are just mix of features also present in Smalltalk or LISP. So learning Ruby has no added value if you already know those.
- xradionut 14y ago
  Python also borrowed some good stuff from Icon. Not that many folks here have actually used Icon, but it was fun to compile and play with back in the day.
  - taybin 14y ago
    Icon was my secret weapon in college. I think python only took generators. I'd love to see a language take its backtracking feature.
- davidw 14y ago
  > learning Ruby has no added value if you already know those. Maybe learning it just as a learning exercise is not so valuable, but Ruby is fantastically useful at getting shit done in the real world with a language that's pretty good. For instance, try and do this in standard Erlang: stdout_str, stderr_str, status = Open3.capture3(command) You can't. I've been complaining about it since 2004, others have sent patches, and you still can't easily handle stderr and stdout as separate streams with open_port.
koide 14y ago
Javascript has true closures, Python doesn't (or didn't?)
- __alexs 14y ago
  Python has closures, it just doesn't have a very convenient anonymous function syntax. I can't say I miss function () { .. } very often though.
  - koide 14y ago
    AFAIU Python's closure have been incomplete for a long time. I think they've become true, complete closures after the addition of the nonlocal keyword on 3.0 Please correct me if I'm mistaken. This all comes from a cursory research on the subject.
    - klibertp 14y ago
      In short, in your opinion, Python has no "complete" closures because you cannot bind a new value to the name from enclosing lexical scope from within a nested scope. I disagree.
      - effn 14y ago
        This is not possible in Haskell either. You never hear people claiming Haskell doesn't support closures.
        klibertp 14y ago
        Which is why I disagree with claims that Python doesn't support them either. It does, of course; we could argue if Python supports "complete" closures, but we won't, because we know better than to use meaningless terms in discussion, right?
        koide 14y ago
        In any case it's not been the case in a while, so I stand corrected. Although being able to write on the closed over variable is a neat feature to have, I would argue that feature does make a difference. Whether you call that complete or read-write or however you want to.
rauljara 14y ago
> What is it with people liking Javascript. I really don't get it. What can I do that is so beautiful or mindbending that I can't do in python? That's kind of a silly question to ask. For one, features are duplicated across masses of languages. If you ask, 'what is the one specific thing I can do in this language that I couldn't do in some other language?', the answer is almost certainly nothing. Languages only really start standing out from one another when you start talking about combinations of features. Javascript's combination of prototyping, closures, and first class functions isn't like any of the other languages on the list even before you get to html DOM manipulation or nosql. But the more important point I'd like to make is, that if a whole bunch of smart people say they really like something, and you can't see why, that should be a sign to look harder. Which is not to say, if a whole bunch of smart people like something you have to like it, too. But there's a reason smart people recommend it. And even if you eventually end up disagreeing with the reason, that doesn't mean it isn't there.
brudgers 14y ago
I know it's wrong, but I've used pliers on bicycle wheel nuts. They were at hand and the Park wrench wasn't. But what the hell, the tire was flat and it was a long walk home.I am a kludgaholic. And not seeing it as a problem. The author was using Fortran on punch cards and considered himself lucky [Enter: three more Yorkshiremen ...]
- gordonguthrie 14y ago
  I started on Punch cards... Back in '86 we had a Bulgarian over at Bristol and he told us that in Bulgaria you only got one compile so if you wanted to change your programme you had to edit the object deck (ie assembler in punch cards).
  - brudgers 14y ago
    I remember a Saturday making punch cards. I was probably five. He must have had an assignment due. He was back in grad school and still working full time. He's got stories about manually editing paper tape.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
klibertp 14y ago
Argh. How could you read this post and still miss the point so badly? It is not about languages, it is about ideas. And the fact that you need years to master each of these languages because of ideas they are built upon, not because of such trivial things as syntax. I strongly suspect that Joe would be equally comfortable with this list was C substituted with Go, Smalltalk substituted with Io or JavaScript substituted with Lua. To paraphrase: "what is it with people liking or not liking JavaScript"? I know what is it with these people: they are noobs (sorry in advance, this is not intended as offensive). I have been programming for just twenty years now and I just recently, a few years ago, understood all this, so I'm not exactly surprised by your post, but still, I thought that email so well written as Joe's here would repel this kind of "Javascript is bad, use WhatEver(tm)" talk. It seems I was overly optimistic with this one.
- brendten 14y ago
  If I could upvote you twice I would.
- SeanDav 14y ago
  I was going to post something similar in reply - but your comment is just so much better and more polite than I would have posted!
- davidw 14y ago
  > trivial things as syntax. Syntax is not trivial. You stare at something 10 ours a day, you want it to be a good user interface.
calinet6 14y ago
What is it with people liking a specific language in general? Didn't you read the whole post? "Today there is an unhealthy concentration on language and efficiency and NOT on how things fit together and protocols - teach protocols and not languages." Exactly. Forget the language. Use it if it works for what you need to do. Learn to program correctly, learn how things fit together, how you can use languages together and for the right purpose; learn the fundamentals, learn algorithms, and you'll build quality software in whatever language you choose.
- pekk 14y ago
  > What is it with people liking a specific language What is it with shaming people for preferring a specific language where it is applicable? For some reason I can like a brand of electric drill, and I can believe in using a nailgun, but I am not allowed to like a specific language without someone coming along to scold me. If you don't ever develop opinions about tools and how to use them, are you really engaged or are you just floating along? Liking something is a good sign of engagement, being able to compare it to others in an informed way is even better. The problem is if you put other things down without knowing about them.
  - calinet6 14y ago
    What is it with people missing the point so many times in a row? Hence why I said "learn how you can use languages together and for the right purpose"—but I don't believe it should be the primary focus. When you buy a drill, the main purpose is to make holes in things. When you buy a nailgun, the main purpose is to stick things together. One might do it better, one might do it faster, and yes, it's useful to know those things. But you're still building a house, not an opinion about a drill or a nailgun. Ever notice how professionals treat their tools, versus amateurs? Photographers are a great example. Amateur photographers are all about cameras and lenses and tools. They buy gear like there was no tomorrow, and they do very little actual photography. Some of them make it past this phase and change their focus to what photography is really about (light, subject, timing) but most don't. Professional photographers buy cameras for one purpose: because they get the shot. They buy lenses for one purpose: because they get the shot. And they buy everything else they need for one purpose: because it gets the shot. Their focus is the photograph and everything else follows. Of course there is some thought of what lens is right for what job, and what camera works best for what needs, and durability and portability especially; but mostly they use what works because they know it well and it gets the shot. And some pros use the most ridiculous gear that you'd never expect because it works so well for their particular goals. There was an article a while back about a Iraq war journalist who used only Olympus 6MP zoom cameras made 5-6 years ago because they were workhorses, extremely portable, and held up to desert conditions. Non-pros probably thought he was crazy and dumb, but he got the shots. He shipped. You have seen his photos in the news, guaranteed. Talking about that gear out of context, it would make zero sense. But for the situation, it was perfect, because he focused on the task and not the gear. I'm not scolding anyone, I'm not criticizing a choice of language; I'm saying, focus on the right part of your task. The tool is important, but the task is more important. That's exactly what the original article was saying, too, if you'll kindly go back and take note.
dragonwriter 14y ago
JavaScript is the best-to-learn (both most currently used and arguably best developed) member of the Self-style prototype-based OO languages. Thus, for a breadth-oriented education in programming concepts that helps you understand the available tools, where you've already learned Smalltalk and C, it has a lot more distinct to offer than Ruby or Python. This is independent of whether it is a better language that Ruby or Python or Lua for general industrial use (which, in practice, tends to end up being an issue more driven by the availability, accessibility, and level of support for libraries for currently-important tasks rather than intrinsic features of the language itself.)
njharman 14y ago
As others said you missed the point. But, you also (based on this one comment) have little awareness or imagination. > What can I do that is so beautiful or mindbending that I can't do in python? The most (and plainly) obvious is; write programs that run on the widest deployed platform/distribution network by several orders of magnitude. That is mindbending and beautiful. Go use Javascript for several years to figure out the rest.
- lttlrck 14y ago
  Nail, meet hammer.

yvdriess 14y ago

The core Javascript design is a mix of Scheme and Self, which is interesting in its own right. Most people will recommend: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596517748.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596517748.do

justincormack 14y ago
So is Lua, just done more consistently...

pekk 14y ago

Javascript is a very different language from Python. It is in some ways more flexible and less prescriptive. You point out one of the non-overlapping use cases. Javascript performance has seen really intensive efforts. Javascript has grown a rather nice async ecosystem that Python just doesn't have. It's also exciting for people from the standpoint that everything feels newer and more up for grabs. Python is a rather old language. Any language is Turing complete so the big deal is a matter of style and tools and libraries and ultimately it's who you are working with and what you want to do.

xradionut 14y ago
"Javascript has grown a rather nice async ecosystem that Python just doesn't have. It's also exciting for people from the standpoint that everything feels newer and more up for grabs. Python is a rather old language." Python old? Not to be snarky, but I've got programs for the PDP-11 that dated Python's great-grandmother. Excitement in a language doesn't cut it, I respect productivity, environment and progress. For automation, data munging and analysis, Python is my secret weapon in a shop of MS SQL Server DBA's and C# ditto heads. Would have be nice if MS would have adapted IronPython instead of creating PowerShell... Yes, there are oodles of crappy Turning complete programming languages, but there's definative advantages to a much smaller sub-set of decent langauges and environments.
- pekk 14y ago
  Python is, objectively, decades old. For some people that would make it less exciting. Excitement produces buzz and popularity and encourages development effort which creates real and useful code. I vastly, vastly prefer Python. But we are NOT helping Python AT ALL if we bring it up to trash Javascript every time it's mentioned, without making any argument more specific than "I used a PDP-11".
  - xradionut 14y ago
    I'm not seeing a decrease in Python development and investment. In the past decade I've seen a lot of effort invested in interesting and productive third party utilities and libraries. New languages still have to build those tools and such to get to a steady-state and attract more than language explorers and hipsters. I wasn't trashing Javascript, which is obvious if you trace through the message thread. I haven't delved much into modern Javascript, since most of my work involves data and cli/desktop/network applications instead of web applications and services, so I don't have a valid observation worth sharing.
dagw 14y ago
Python is a rather old language. A massive 3 years older Javascript.
- pekk 14y ago
  Python hit its stride a long time ago. The Javascript ecosystem has only quite recently reached sufficient performance, usability and adoption to be a serious general purpose language and it's red hot as a job skill. Python is not dead, but it's not exactly blowing up at this point.
  - xradionut 14y ago
    Depends on what domain you work in. If I used nodejs or web services, then I would be enamored of Javascript. But I do an data analysis and ETL, a domain that Python and friends excel at, I not concerned as what's "hot" and "in" at the coffeshop.
jerf 14y ago
"Javascript has grown a rather nice async ecosystem that Python just doesn't have." Python has Twisted, and it also has a radically better async ecosystem in gevent. Javascript's async story is far worse than Python's.
- dagw 14y ago
  Javascript's async story is far worse than Python's. Yes and no. Python may have an great async core with Twisted and gevents, but it doesn't have an great async ecosystem. Most tools and libraries aren't written with async in mind and you end up having to roll your own in many places where Node either gives it to you out of the box or with well supported third-party libraries. After having written quite a bit of Twisted code I have to say I find writing async code in Node a lot quicker and easier, despite being a much more experienced python programmer.
  - jerf 14y ago
    Then try gevent. The monkeypatching they do means that most pure Python network code just works with it. For instance, I used the XML-RPC library that ships with the core with no further modifications beyond what gevent does. It's less good than using a language with first-class support for continuation-style programming, but it's better than using a language that makes you be the compiler and chop up and manage the event handlers yourself.

kapuhy 14y ago

Javascript has some unique concepts, while Ruby or Pyton are just mix of features also present in Smalltalk or LISP. So learning Ruby has no added value if you already know those.

xradionut 14y ago
Python also borrowed some good stuff from Icon. Not that many folks here have actually used Icon, but it was fun to compile and play with back in the day.
- taybin 14y ago
  Icon was my secret weapon in college. I think python only took generators. I'd love to see a language take its backtracking feature.
davidw 14y ago
> learning Ruby has no added value if you already know those. Maybe learning it just as a learning exercise is not so valuable, but Ruby is fantastically useful at getting shit done in the real world with a language that's pretty good. For instance, try and do this in standard Erlang: stdout_str, stderr_str, status = Open3.capture3(command) You can't. I've been complaining about it since 2004, others have sent patches, and you still can't easily handle stderr and stdout as separate streams with open_port.

koide 14y ago

Javascript has true closures, Python doesn't (or didn't?)

__alexs 14y ago
Python has closures, it just doesn't have a very convenient anonymous function syntax. I can't say I miss function () { .. } very often though.
- koide 14y ago
  AFAIU Python's closure have been incomplete for a long time. I think they've become true, complete closures after the addition of the nonlocal keyword on 3.0 Please correct me if I'm mistaken. This all comes from a cursory research on the subject.
  - klibertp 14y ago
    In short, in your opinion, Python has no "complete" closures because you cannot bind a new value to the name from enclosing lexical scope from within a nested scope. I disagree.
    - effn 14y ago
      This is not possible in Haskell either. You never hear people claiming Haskell doesn't support closures.
      - klibertp 14y ago
        Which is why I disagree with claims that Python doesn't support them either. It does, of course; we could argue if Python supports "complete" closures, but we won't, because we know better than to use meaningless terms in discussion, right?
        koide 14y ago
        In any case it's not been the case in a while, so I stand corrected. Although being able to write on the closed over variable is a neat feature to have, I would argue that feature does make a difference. Whether you call that complete or read-write or however you want to.

rauljara 14y ago

> What is it with people liking Javascript. I really don't get it. What can I do that is so beautiful or mindbending that I can't do in python? That's kind of a silly question to ask. For one, features are duplicated across masses of languages. If you ask, 'what is the one specific thing I can do in this language that I couldn't do in some other language?', the answer is almost certainly nothing. Languages only really start standing out from one another when you start talking about combinations of features. Javascript's combination of prototyping, closures, and first class functions isn't like any of the other languages on the list even before you get to html DOM manipulation or nosql. But the more important point I'd like to make is, that if a whole bunch of smart people say they really like something, and you can't see why, that should be a sign to look harder. Which is not to say, if a whole bunch of smart people like something you have to like it, too. But there's a reason smart people recommend it. And even if you eventually end up disagreeing with the reason, that doesn't mean it isn't there.

brudgers 14y ago

I know it's wrong, but I've used pliers on bicycle wheel nuts. They were at hand and the Park wrench wasn't. But what the hell, the tire was flat and it was a long walk home.I am a kludgaholic. And not seeing it as a problem. The author was using Fortran on punch cards and considered himself lucky [Enter: three more Yorkshiremen ...]

gordonguthrie 14y ago
I started on Punch cards... Back in '86 we had a Bulgarian over at Bristol and he told us that in Bulgaria you only got one compile so if you wanted to change your programme you had to edit the object deck (ie assembler in punch cards).
- brudgers 14y ago
  I remember a Saturday making punch cards. I was probably five. He must have had an assignment due. He was back in grad school and still working full time. He's got stories about manually editing paper tape.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

klibertp 14y ago

Argh. How could you read this post and still miss the point so badly? It is not about languages, it is about ideas. And the fact that you need years to master each of these languages because of ideas they are built upon, not because of such trivial things as syntax. I strongly suspect that Joe would be equally comfortable with this list was C substituted with Go, Smalltalk substituted with Io or JavaScript substituted with Lua. To paraphrase: "what is it with people liking or not liking JavaScript"? I know what is it with these people: they are noobs (sorry in advance, this is not intended as offensive). I have been programming for just twenty years now and I just recently, a few years ago, understood all this, so I'm not exactly surprised by your post, but still, I thought that email so well written as Joe's here would repel this kind of "Javascript is bad, use WhatEver(tm)" talk. It seems I was overly optimistic with this one.

brendten 14y ago
If I could upvote you twice I would.
SeanDav 14y ago
I was going to post something similar in reply - but your comment is just so much better and more polite than I would have posted!
davidw 14y ago
> trivial things as syntax. Syntax is not trivial. You stare at something 10 ours a day, you want it to be a good user interface.

calinet6 14y ago

What is it with people liking a specific language in general? Didn't you read the whole post? "Today there is an unhealthy concentration on language and efficiency and NOT on how things fit together and protocols - teach protocols and not languages." Exactly. Forget the language. Use it if it works for what you need to do. Learn to program correctly, learn how things fit together, how you can use languages together and for the right purpose; learn the fundamentals, learn algorithms, and you'll build quality software in whatever language you choose.

pekk 14y ago
> What is it with people liking a specific language What is it with shaming people for preferring a specific language where it is applicable? For some reason I can like a brand of electric drill, and I can believe in using a nailgun, but I am not allowed to like a specific language without someone coming along to scold me. If you don't ever develop opinions about tools and how to use them, are you really engaged or are you just floating along? Liking something is a good sign of engagement, being able to compare it to others in an informed way is even better. The problem is if you put other things down without knowing about them.
- calinet6 14y ago
  What is it with people missing the point so many times in a row? Hence why I said "learn how you can use languages together and for the right purpose"—but I don't believe it should be the primary focus. When you buy a drill, the main purpose is to make holes in things. When you buy a nailgun, the main purpose is to stick things together. One might do it better, one might do it faster, and yes, it's useful to know those things. But you're still building a house, not an opinion about a drill or a nailgun. Ever notice how professionals treat their tools, versus amateurs? Photographers are a great example. Amateur photographers are all about cameras and lenses and tools. They buy gear like there was no tomorrow, and they do very little actual photography. Some of them make it past this phase and change their focus to what photography is really about (light, subject, timing) but most don't. Professional photographers buy cameras for one purpose: because they get the shot. They buy lenses for one purpose: because they get the shot. And they buy everything else they need for one purpose: because it gets the shot. Their focus is the photograph and everything else follows. Of course there is some thought of what lens is right for what job, and what camera works best for what needs, and durability and portability especially; but mostly they use what works because they know it well and it gets the shot. And some pros use the most ridiculous gear that you'd never expect because it works so well for their particular goals. There was an article a while back about a Iraq war journalist who used only Olympus 6MP zoom cameras made 5-6 years ago because they were workhorses, extremely portable, and held up to desert conditions. Non-pros probably thought he was crazy and dumb, but he got the shots. He shipped. You have seen his photos in the news, guaranteed. Talking about that gear out of context, it would make zero sense. But for the situation, it was perfect, because he focused on the task and not the gear. I'm not scolding anyone, I'm not criticizing a choice of language; I'm saying, focus on the right part of your task. The tool is important, but the task is more important. That's exactly what the original article was saying, too, if you'll kindly go back and take note.

dragonwriter 14y ago

JavaScript is the best-to-learn (both most currently used and arguably best developed) member of the Self-style prototype-based OO languages. Thus, for a breadth-oriented education in programming concepts that helps you understand the available tools, where you've already learned Smalltalk and C, it has a lot more distinct to offer than Ruby or Python. This is independent of whether it is a better language that Ruby or Python or Lua for general industrial use (which, in practice, tends to end up being an issue more driven by the availability, accessibility, and level of support for libraries for currently-important tasks rather than intrinsic features of the language itself.)

njharman 14y ago

As others said you missed the point. But, you also (based on this one comment) have little awareness or imagination. > What can I do that is so beautiful or mindbending that I can't do in python? The most (and plainly) obvious is; write programs that run on the widest deployed platform/distribution network by several orders of magnitude. That is mindbending and beautiful. Go use Javascript for several years to figure out the rest.

lttlrck 14y ago
Nail, meet hammer.