The stupid flame wars about why one language is better than another and why wasn’t a particular language listed.
Eugenia – the list you put up I believe is more than encompassing. If someone is programming in something not listed, it must be for a VERY specialized app.
>PHP/ASP…. COME ON — No need to be pairing those together.
Sorry, but there is a reason. PHP and ASP are pretty much doing the same thing, created for the same purposes. Under the same logic, Lisp/Prolog and Scheme are ALSO paired in the poll, and VB/Basic are also paired. PHP/ASP are very similar languages, and in fact, I wouldn’t normally put them in the poll at all, as they are mostly web languages created for very specific usage.
I could even pair up Java and C# to be honest. But seen that they are very big on their own, a pair up wouldn’t make sense between them. But definately pair PHP and ASP, especially because I didn’t even wanna list them in the poll in the first place, because they are very specific. I decided to list them in the poll, at the last minute, literally. If I wouldn’t pair them up, I wouldn’t include them at all.
There are lots of good programming languages, each with their own strengths.
But if I were to choose just one, my vote goes to Perl, because imho, that’s the one language you can the most different things with. Of course there are things perl isn’t suitable for, but that’s true for every language. Perl tends to adapt very well to the task at hand, whatever that task may be.
PHP is slow!!! especially on Windows. If you have to run on a Windows platform DO NOT even think about PHP. ISAPI mode is complete unstable … fastCGI helps but is still slow. No caching or acceleration is available anymore for Windows.
ASP.NET is your best choice for a windows platform. Even better – you can simply put one statement at the top of all your .aspx pages and they will be Cache as HTML on the webser and you can designate the amount of time. Don’t get me wrong, I hate microsoft products but asp.net on windows beats everything else out there for windows … hand down.
Makes me sound grumpy but I kind of hate all those languages equally. I’ve yet to find my perfect language. Delphi/Object Pascal was one I worked with for many years, and is pretty damn good. But it had its warts as well, mostly old and unused syntax from the early days.
Java is probably my second favourite, because it’s clean. I also love JavaScript, it has a high DWIMness to it, I don’t really have to think about coding in JavaScript, it just flows.
I have to do a lot of work in C at the moment, for various reasons. It pisses me off totally. I’m surprised it got so many votes.
PHP & ASP should not be paired together the languages are very differnet even tho there both intended for same audience the language’s are not same. Sometimes you just gotta leave an option off a poll.
Sorry, but I don’t agree. As I said, I wouldn’t even consider including these web languages to this poll. But because I know a lot of people are using them, I just gave them a single spot to the poll. If people don’t like their pairing, that’s their problem. As I said, I didn’t even wanna include them here.
The *language* – I hate the halfassed GUI apps that are made in java. Actually, I don’t like any major apps made in java. They feel wrong and slightly off.
But the language is elegant and beautiful. I love it.
PHP works pretty darned well as a shell scripting language too. I’m currently using it to run a regex on all of my MP3s (5,000+) on Windows, to parse out the artist name, year, album, and track name. It takes upwards of 5 seconds to run the whole thing.
PHP is slow!!! especially on Windows. If you have to run on a Windows platform DO NOT even think about PHP. ISAPI mode is complete unstable … fastCGI helps but is still slow. No caching or acceleration is available anymore for Windows.
ASP.NET is your best choice for a windows platform. Even better – you can simply put one statement at the top of all your .aspx pages and they will be Cache as HTML on the webser and you can designate the amount of time. Don’t get me wrong, I hate microsoft products but asp.net on windows beats everything else out there for windows … hand down.
Who said that I use PHP on Windows, anyway? Perhaps, should I letuce on you about not use ASP on *nix platform?
If you’re going to include PHP, you might as well toss in JavaScript, SQL, REXX, etc. I’ve always considered PHP to be a really dynamic platform – but hardly a “programming language”. Don’t get me wrong, I use it myself and I know I’ll get hissed and boo’d for this – but PHP is like a jack of all trades that can’t seem to figure out what it wants to be when it grows up.
I have php on a quad Pentium III 1GHz. I always thought PHP was good until I realized that the webserver would choke and die on 4, yes 4, concurrent users. This is on a Windows 2003 Server connecting to SQL Server 2000 database (database is on another machine). So all of you who claim that PHP is great, I beg to differ. 4 concurrent users is NOTHING. Especially when you have 4GB of RAM and when a person hits refresh really fast in their web browser … it brings down the server.
We use PHP on OSNews. We used it both on a dual celeron machine, on a single celeron machine and an athlonXP, all running Red Hat Linux versions. We never had problems with it under Unix/Linux. The problems you encountered are possibly because of buggy ports for Windows. Also, don’t forget that Win2k3 is not 100% backwards compatible with stuff. If the PHP porters haven’t SPECIFICALLY tested with Win2k3 and adjust their port to the new Server OS from MS, it is of no wonder you had problems. I suggest you file a bug report.
OS and Database independance long before Java was ever thought of. It’s the fastest RAD tool ever. Nothing comes close, and I’ve used them all so I know. Be prepared for a STEEP learning curve though!
I have php on a quad Pentium III 1GHz. I always thought PHP was good until I realized that the webserver would choke and die on 4, yes 4, concurrent users. This is on a Windows 2003 Server connecting to SQL Server 2000 database (database is on another machine). So all of you who claim that PHP is great, I beg to differ. 4 concurrent users is NOTHING. Especially when you have 4GB of RAM and when a person hits refresh really fast in their web browser … it brings down the server.
I find that’s hard to believe, you must have done something wrong. If you are talking about PHP on Windows, then you shouldn’t use PHP and use ASP(.NET) instead. ASP(.NET) rocks when it’s on Windows and PHP rocks when it’s on *nix.
Perl: it’s the most useful to me, doing everything from system admin chores to GUI applications (Tk may be butt-ugly, but it works and it’s portable). The CPAN makes most projects plug-and-play.
Ruby: it’s just downright cool, and is a lot like I think Perl would be now if Larry had set out to design an OO language. I’ll probably end up using Ruby instead of Perl for the GUI applications I write for in-house use.
Java: just because I need money.
C: it was the first language I actually studied (as opposed to “learned enough to get by”) and because it’s pervasive.
While PHP was designed for the Web, as of late it’s a very different beast. All in All PHP is more of a functional equivalent to Perl (and no Mr. Perl User… I’m not trying to say PHP is better than your language)… what I’m trying to say is PHP has grown so much that it’s now used as much for scripting on the server side as it is for scripting for web backend. Furthermore, it’s got things like GTK-PHP to extend it’s uses even further. Maybe I’m biased because I’ve been using it for a long time and what not, but I wouldn’t think NOT to put PHP in such a poll, aside from the fact when you look at the words, it’s not a programming language, it’s a scripting language. But in that sense neither is Perl or Python. Also, VB/Basic make a perfect pairing, because VB has complete support for all of Basic’s functionality. When it comes down to it, everything you did with Basic you can do with VB in the same manner, of course VB has it’s own ways of doing things too. Pairing ASP and PHP together on the grounds that they are both primarily used for web backends is horrible, by that system of thought you could pair every single language up there that is used for system programming, application programming. I’m sorry, but it’s just not right.
yeah I though I might have gone over board. if you will believe me I ment it sa a rehtorical question not a factualy one…and not even an opinion one. I use XP, OS X, and RH
it was more or less a questioning of anon’s assumption that it was PHPs fault that it choked.
I don’t care what you all think, there are limits to how long a poll can be. I would not give two places to PHP and ASP on this poll. They would have one together, or none. I decided to give them one. So, don’t whine about it.
It’s just not realistic to pair them… the poll seems to lose all meaning in light of it. It’s like saying… What’s your favorite brand of car… BMW/Ford and then you get like 98% of the people voting that option and you’re not sure whether it’s cause of Ford or BMW… well you are sure, because well… look at them, but not everyone knows enough about cars to understand that BMW is carrying all the votes there.
Normally, I’m not one to bitch about poll choices, but this one deserves a flame. Most of the languages on the list are very similar (all of them are pretty much OOP or procedural). You missed complete catagories of languages:
Functional — This is the big catagory after procedural and OOP. Lisp is mostly a functional language, even though it has many multi-paradigm elements. SML, OCaml and Erlang are good examples of mainstream functional languages, while Clean and Haskell are examples of pure, lazy-evaluated functional languages.
Declarative — This catagory includes mercury and prolog, neither of which have absolutely anything at all to do with Scheme and Lisp!
You even missed Smalltalk, the mother of all OOP languages! A far better idea than a token “Lisp/Scheme/Prolog” and “Other” catagory would have been seperate “other” catagories for the major language paradigms.
My two cents — I can’t get too mad, though, my two favorite languages are on the list, C++ and Python. C++ has tons more power than Java, and Python is an order of magnitude more productive than either. I really should like Lisp — from a language design standpoint it’s absolutely phenomenal. It has pretty much every feature known to man, integrated in a clean way. All the cool stuff that C++ is just now getting (lambdas, functional elements, genericity, metafunctions, etc) and Java is rejecting for being too complicated, have been in Lisp forever. Unfortunately, for the type of stuff I do (embedded programming, OS-level stuff) I can’t use all of those nifty features, and I’m too much of a newbie in the language to put it on my favorites list. Maybe when I do some more scientific programming I’ll come back to it
C++ will get the most votes. Personally I don’t like it that much, there are far to many bits that seem, in comparison to modern languages, to be a bit of a cludge. But it is one of the most commonly used languages out there so more peole will not have had the chance to try the other, IMHO much better, languages.
Personaly I voted Python(haven’t tried Ruby yet), but I also like Java (the language). Objective C is my favoured C variant. I’ve never tried Fortan or Lisp or Assembly. Pascal is too restrictive. Perl a bit too succinct at times. VB == brain death. But of course while they are all general languages the old horses for courses aurgument holds (eg fortran might be better for number crunching than Perl, but Perl is better for string crunching).
It’s important to distinguish between types of languages at times. The whole functional/imperative schism is very significant. Functional languages have a lot over the imperative languages, for example, you can write Quicksort in 1 line in Haskell what would take twenty or more in C…
I heard you could do functional programming in Python too ?
Anyway, my favs are Python because it’s easy and fun (really!) and in second place Java, because it forces me to think before I code. The ying and yang of programming so to speak 🙂
A poll of favorite programming languages is meaningless unless you allow people to add their own favorite langauges to the poll, otherwise you’ve unfairly restricted the list to your biased choices. If effect you are asking a different question with your poll, “Which of these langauges is your favorite” rather than the question that you actually used.
Needless to say my three favorite languages are Assembly Language, Smalltalk and Zoku (the language that I’m writing). Io Language is pretty cool as are Self and Garnet. Ok that makes five.
I’d have to say that my favorite existing language is Smalltalk with the prototype langauges, coming in second and Assembly third, just because Assembly is harder to write for.
Oh the strongly typed languages, C, Java, etc… are a distant last eventhough I can work with these… they are just too ugly and force me to think in too constrained a box. At least with assembly you have total freedom.
Real far on the bottom of the list is ActionScript for Flash MX. While I enjoy the results of writing awesome flash graphics it’s one of the most painfull languages to program in due to it’s faulty and misguided attempt to make it easy for “web designers” by not reporting errors! You try and debug something when you don’t know if the statements are executed or not! Even with their adaqute debugger it’s a real pain. I hope thay smarten up and enable an option for the reporting of errors for advanced programmers.
I’ll be the first to admit that coding is not in my blood (means I can do it but it doesn’t come easy). After some Turbo Pascal at Uni my first real coding experience was with java on win95. Perhaps that helped me to realise that Python in fact is VERY OO although one can perfectly ignore that. It can do so much at any level of expertise/experience. That’s great for a language.
Plus there are so many 3rd party modules/GUI toolkits that your problem is more likely to be one of too much choice than of too little. And they all work in a K.I.S.S. way I like a lot.
Now some of the toolkits haven’t quite stabalised yet and often documentation is a bit hard (I recall py-GTK when playing with ROX on my FreeBSD box, hmm well I did make a silly GUI mixer ;-). But generalising into a simple and predictable set of data structures (which are heavily optimized to perform next-to-natively) is an excellent method to both attract developers and be more than just glue.
Cross platform? With a little determination you have several ways to achieve that. You can easily write some modules and have a GUI client program that uses them for the main OSes.
And being able to test snippets of code in the interactive interpreter prompt, that’s great. I can do some stuff but am by no means a professional programmer but I dare say that this mere nifty feature can cut your developing and testing time in half or better.
Now I admit performance might be an issue in some cases but usually it isn’t.
OK, enough already. Hope you found my experiences interesting. Just try it and you’ll find yourself able to write fairly complicated code in no time.
(Unrelated: This board really needs a preview option if having typed a somewhat long post)
Just wondering if you would have voted that way if Java was not a ‘write once, run anywhere’ languages? I mean, does it have any other virtues that make it stand out amoung the crowd?
It seems in theory that it would be a good language to do client-side stuff, but I’ve seen the results and I’m not impressed. Even when using a program like Jedit, which has a lot of great features, it’s speed and UI handling/look-and-feel still reek of Java. I could only imagine how much better it would’ve been had it been written with something else.
Why is it meaningless? Because your beloved smalltalk is not listed? Look sweetheart, if people used Smalltalk as much as would justify an option on the poll, the “Other” option would have more percentile right now.
There is no way to have a quick responded poll to show results immediately without having pre-defined choices.
I am really getting very angry with people over here not being happy with this or the other. If you don’t like it, DON’T vote. Go add a poll to your own web site. Give me a break. I am not your slave. I do the best I can. I don’t have to put with whiners that are impossible to please you know. I have better things to do on my weekend than getting pissed off with some of you guys.
My feeling about this is that you should’ve seen this coming. I don’t personally have a problem with the poll and wouldn’t even care if my favorite language were not listed. However, just looking at the choices, I knew exactly what was going to happen, knowing the nature of people who post here Knowing this, I think this poll was a bad idea. If you don’t include every damn language known to man that has ever been used by anyone since the invention of the computer, somebody somewhere isn’t going to be happy.
This time ask which language people use in their work or earn a living with. I would be more interested in those results. For instance, I get paid to do VB development, but I sure as hell don’t like it
Know what, let’s ask them what they hate the most, that should give the most unsubstantiated ranting flamefest ever. We could call it LangFlame 2003.
There’s nothing wrong with talking/telling about languages and how we experience(d) them. It’s interesting. It’s called socializing and in this case about a geeky subject. Stop whining and start talking. Pavlovian reactions take two to make the tango, the initiator and the receptor. Perhaps listen (read) for a change. Breath in breath out.
For someone who doesn’t care you sure are being a baby about it. If you didnt care you wouldn’t be posting anything in response to the comments you don’t like. As for Smalltalk its used in a *lot* of places. The fact that you don’t know that doesn’t change that fact.
Eug, no matter what a poll that generates 66+ comments on a weblog that thrives on comments can’t be that bad and a little controversy is healthy 😉
(I don’t nescessarily disagree with the objections to the poll list but heck it’s not like it determines what sandwich I’ll have tomorrow. Someone will always feel neglected. I’m surprised that no one yet has blamed “poll-outsourcing” which really is the sane thing to do if one doesn’t want a headache over any poll and why this-but-not-that etc)
My vote goes for Smalltalk- the most practical and powerful language I’ve come across so far. Pretty much every Smalltalk environment is not only an incredibly elegant, powerful and consistent language but also a really expressive and useful IDE. A Smalltalk IDE is the benchmark of what an IDE should be in other languages. It’s great for prototyping as well as final implementation. You can always write modules in C, etc for compute expensive parts or simply using libraries. Heck, unlike most languages in its class, you don’t even have to write a wrapper module in C a lot of the time- you can call into shared object libraries from within Smalltalk using a FFI (Foreign Function Interface).
There are many languages which are similar to Smalltalk in what it provides- Ruby and Python come to mind. But neither of those have the same sort of maturity or awesome IDE as Smalltalk.
Unlike Java, cross-platform development and deployment just works. Although Java has been getting better about this though, finally.
Thankfully, we have Squeak ( http://www.squeak.org ), which is a very free Smalltalk implementation being developed by a big group of awesome people- including the coiner of the term “object oriented” and the inventor of the WIMP (Windows Icons Menus Pointers) GUI as we know it today, Alan Kay as well as a number of other folks who worked on inventing Smalltalk 30 years ago.
I do desktop apps. My “favorite” language is the one I use every day and which makes my job possible. I’d be delighted to find something better but so far I haven’t and I look constantly.
I voted for C++. I’d be delighted to find something better but so far I haven’t and I look constantly.
Objective-C and C# do some things better than C++, but not everything and they don’t exist on all the platforms I work on.
Java doesn’t do desktop apps very well (and I avoid most of the things it does do well like the plague.)
I’d be delighted to have a scripting-type language for quick prototyping, but Perl is too complicated to stay proficient at when I don’t use it very often. I haven’t had time to really explore Python or Ruby. I hope to some day.
I’m fascinated by procedural languages: I’d love to have time to get good at Lisp or O’Caml, but I may have to retire first.
I may yet learn .NET if other platforms than Windows become well supported by Mono et al. I could then justify using several different languages where they make sense, which makes a lot more sense than creating one “perfect” one.
1.) It’s fast. I just hate languages like java, which are slow. No mattter if they’re clean or nice or something else, but a programming language must be fast or it’s not considered as a real language for me.
2.) I can do everything. It’s really a multiparadigm language in which I can write low-level things like operating systems but also high-level things like enterprise applications.
3.) The thing I really LOVE most, is that the language doesn’t tell me what to do or how to programm, but that I can do what *I* want, even if it causes a segmentation fault.
I also like C++ a lot, but I really find it easier to program procedural in C, therefore my vote for C.
It kind of seems odd that Prolog is grouped with Lisp and Scheme. Prolog is a totally different language from a number of standpoints. Prolog is a logic programming language, although you can do OOP and FP among others in it.
…Eugenia bashing…
Guys, give Eugenia a break. Like she says, she isn’t perfect. And while I enjoy Smalltalk as a tool quite a bit, she is right. A poll on OSNews isn’t a snapshot of the world- Smalltalk doesn’t seem to be used all that much by readers of OS News, or the “Other” choice would have a lot more votes. Or Smalltalkers are quiet, but I’m inclined to believe the former.
Smalltalk is used in a number of places in acedemia, research and business, but a lot of those folks use Smalltalk because they enjoy the boost in productivity, they’re often more interested in doing real work than participating in language cheerleading on a forum. A lot of the people reading and posting to OS News, Slashdot and the like are not seasoned coders… Everyone’s opinion is valid.
…E programming language…
E is a cool system. Definately worth checking out. There is also some work on a system being called “SqueakE,” which is an implementation of E’s capability and other features in Squeak, bringing the same features to Squeakers everywhere.
what an odd pairing. i definitely don’t like prolog, but i sure love lisp.
Not really, though. Given the limited amount of space and the limited amount of use these two language groups get (the languages are clearly meant to be representative of the functional and declarative families), it makes sense to include this thus: a category for non-procedural/-OOP–style langs. Maybe it should’ve been named Functional/Declarative languages, but everyone isn’t an expert on everything.
(I’m only a beginner to programming, and have only had a limited exposure to functional and declarative languages, but they seem to work more the way I think.)
some would even argue that scheme shouldn’t be paired with lisp.
Scheme is a Lisp (or a dialect thereof). If anyone was going to argue anything from a justifyable position, they would be arguing that Scheme was already included in ‘Lisp’.
Give Eugenia a break if you ever want a poll again. After that kind of behavior, and the abuse of polls we saw a while ago, if I were Eugenia, I’d never put a poll up again.
Objective-C and C# do some things better than C++, but not everything and they don’t exist on all the platforms I work on.
Well Objective-C’s main compiler is the GNU gcc… so how could it not exist on all the platforms you work on ? You should use a very uncommon platform 🙂
If you speaked about OpenStep/Cocoa framework, you should take a look to GNUstep : http://www.gnustep.org … Foundation works well, AppKit works quite ok on Unix, alpha on Windows.
what about an option like “my languaje isn’t listed here but i don’t want to waste Eugenia’s time on replies to mi sad-meaningless-angry posts. . so bye.”
It is tiny, c-like, a ‘tool’ language for jobs that you do once. I learned it 12 years ago, used it on Apollo and DOS, and I still like it for scraping and stripping.
Perl is fun too, so many great modules by great authors.
Python has real oopness, it’s clean, maybe antiseptic, doesn’t have the soul of perl.
C++ is too complicated, debug debug debug.
C is the most important to learn first. Manipulating chars and bytes and pointers, making your own structs, builds character and discipline.
Java can be fun but you have to type a lot. Great libraries
The only problem with Obj-C is that there’s no standard for what Objective-C is. Some implementations have protocols and some don’t, for instance.
The only compiled language I prefer to Obj-C is Eiffel, and that one feels somewhat limiting when it comes to low-level operations (though that same fact protects my higher-level code). The object model is so beautifully simple, yet the power and expressiveess of it just blows anything else away.
The importance of one language over another is greatly overrated. Why one would pick C# over Java is highly debatable. The runtime environment behind the language is what really counts.
When we talk about implementing an application in C# or Java, or C/C++ for that matter, we mainly worry about the libraries available, what platforms they run on and how flexible they are to meet the needs of the current project. One does not start a project with a language that they do not know so knowing the language is bleeding obvious.
Something like C/C++ or Java is able to meet most requirements and LOTS of people know these languages. Python is useful in some circumstances too. The toolkits/libraries that back these are numerous but relatively easy to learn if a reasonable amount of language experience exists. Unless specific benefits exist and using X, Y or Z language actually has a compelling advantage (rare), one of these more common options is usually the best idea. The only exception to this is if the code has to integrate with existing code in the same language, eg. EMACS lisp.
Not going to touch the whole let’s-start-a-holy-war angle over which language one prefers over another, but…
since when has ASP been a language?
AFAIK an Active Server Page is one that IIS processes on the back-end, in whichever language the server is configured to support. VBScript and JScript are supported in a basic implementation; other languages can be added (eg ActivePerl).
How valid is this poll if it doesn’t even take into account the definition of a language?
c/c++: because they’re both classic ones, and both very powerfull.
javascript: did u know that the whole user interface of mozilla firebird is written in javascript? (or XUL which is an XML of Gui Description and javascript). all mozilla/firebird extensions are pure javascript. the mozilla mail client is written in javascript.
supprisingly, javascript is a very powerfull language. same goes for php btw which is, as others have noted, far more than a web scripting language, and can be used as a general programming language, had it more interactive features (except for gtk).
I’m currently a big fan of C and its derivatives: C# and C++. I played around with Objective-C under Unix using
GNUStep after seeing Windowmaker, NextStep and OS X.
Syntactically, Objective-C is a little clunky and I’m still debating as to which “C with Objects” approach I prefer between C++,Objective-C, and C#. C# has really impressed me with its cleanliness and flexibility. I know the .NET initiative has critics but it’s a great environment especially for concurrent, GUI, and database programming. After having JAVA shoved down my throat in college, I found that C#/.NET actually provides everything that JAVA claimed to supply.
Following a compilers course in which we implemented a Scheme compiler in Scheme, I really became a big proponent of the language. Scheme is elegant, clean and (depending on the implementation: I use Chez) very fast. The only annoyance is that is difficult to supply in-line comments due to the structure of the code. With the advent of Scheme.NET there are plently of great opportunities with Scheme on many different platforms. What sold me on .NET (assuming that the CLR reaches other platforms) is the prospect of using any language that targets the .NET runtime (and there are many). Hopefully people will actually experiment with .NET before bashing it.
What’s with all the whiners on this website. Your favorite language is not listed oh its the end of the world and now this poll has no meanings… even though there is a big fat other option.
2 languages are listed in the same option… AHH! ohno! Eugenia is so mean!
Oh my god, just vote, its really not so hard, and its pathetic that most of the posts here have concentrated on how meaningless” the poll is instea of actually explaining why you picked the language you did.
Anyway, for those of you who stayed on topic, thanks.
my favorite languages are Java/Qt and python/Qt, I like to write python better, but I enjoy Java’s portability and many of its other virtues so its a tie.
I believe Delphi/Kylix should be a separate option from Pascal, just like C,C++ and C# are different options. There are millions of developers out there for these compilers.
As for my personnal opinion, for what it worth, the best language that ever graced my computer screen is that good ol’ classic “C++”. The king of them all …
I have two languages which I currently use for my diploma thesis: JAVA and TCL. So I voted for JAVA although in some cases TCL is really superior to any other language I ever coded. It´s not very eligant and hard to read, but the development speed is phenominal! Often I sit in front of my computer and during thinking how to code a feature I type some lines code and suddenlny I see, that´s it. THis never happened to me with JAVA
np
It isn’t a modern programming language??
Yup. Weekends are always slow, but today was phenomenal.
including HTML. I hate reading college grad. resume’s stating that they know how to program in HTML.
>It isn’t a modern programming language??
No. Plus, if people would really liked ADA, the “other” option would have more votes.
PHP/ASP…. COME ON — No need to be pairing those together.
It’s with Ocaml, Brainfuck, ALGOL66 … among “others”.
but VB might have been an option. Don’t get me wrong – I think it is a stupid language, but some people still use it.
I write stuff in PHP a lot and I have played with PHP5. I love it. I am thinking about might learn C# (Mono) or something else, I am not sure yet.
The stupid flame wars about why one language is better than another and why wasn’t a particular language listed.
Eugenia – the list you put up I believe is more than encompassing. If someone is programming in something not listed, it must be for a VERY specialized app.
>PHP/ASP…. COME ON — No need to be pairing those together.
Sorry, but there is a reason. PHP and ASP are pretty much doing the same thing, created for the same purposes. Under the same logic, Lisp/Prolog and Scheme are ALSO paired in the poll, and VB/Basic are also paired. PHP/ASP are very similar languages, and in fact, I wouldn’t normally put them in the poll at all, as they are mostly web languages created for very specific usage.
I could even pair up Java and C# to be honest. But seen that they are very big on their own, a pair up wouldn’t make sense between them. But definately pair PHP and ASP, especially because I didn’t even wanna list them in the poll in the first place, because they are very specific. I decided to list them in the poll, at the last minute, literally. If I wouldn’t pair them up, I wouldn’t include them at all.
There are lots of good programming languages, each with their own strengths.
But if I were to choose just one, my vote goes to Perl, because imho, that’s the one language you can the most different things with. Of course there are things perl isn’t suitable for, but that’s true for every language. Perl tends to adapt very well to the task at hand, whatever that task may be.
..by a large margin. First language I _really_ delved into and still like it.
PHP is slow!!! especially on Windows. If you have to run on a Windows platform DO NOT even think about PHP. ISAPI mode is complete unstable … fastCGI helps but is still slow. No caching or acceleration is available anymore for Windows.
ASP.NET is your best choice for a windows platform. Even better – you can simply put one statement at the top of all your .aspx pages and they will be Cache as HTML on the webser and you can designate the amount of time. Don’t get me wrong, I hate microsoft products but asp.net on windows beats everything else out there for windows … hand down.
Is SmallTalk community so small ? This is a great language for prototyping in industry.
Makes me sound grumpy but I kind of hate all those languages equally. I’ve yet to find my perfect language. Delphi/Object Pascal was one I worked with for many years, and is pretty damn good. But it had its warts as well, mostly old and unused syntax from the early days.
Java is probably my second favourite, because it’s clean. I also love JavaScript, it has a high DWIMness to it, I don’t really have to think about coding in JavaScript, it just flows.
I have to do a lot of work in C at the moment, for various reasons. It pisses me off totally. I’m surprised it got so many votes.
PHP & ASP should not be paired together the languages are very differnet even tho there both intended for same audience the language’s are not same. Sometimes you just gotta leave an option off a poll.
Erlang is a COPL, a concurrency oriented programming language.
http://www.erlang.org
Regards,
Marc
I love Python!!! simple powerful and clear.
though for compiled languages I enjoy C++ (I have never tried obj-c)
but Py was my first love so it has a special place in my heart.
Sorry, but I don’t agree. As I said, I wouldn’t even consider including these web languages to this poll. But because I know a lot of people are using them, I just gave them a single spot to the poll. If people don’t like their pairing, that’s their problem. As I said, I didn’t even wanna include them here.
I voted for Java, as it is my favorite language.
The *language* – I hate the halfassed GUI apps that are made in java. Actually, I don’t like any major apps made in java. They feel wrong and slightly off.
But the language is elegant and beautiful. I love it.
Funny duality, isn’t it?
Fully agreed.
PHP works pretty darned well as a shell scripting language too. I’m currently using it to run a regex on all of my MP3s (5,000+) on Windows, to parse out the artist name, year, album, and track name. It takes upwards of 5 seconds to run the whole thing.
PHP is slow!!! especially on Windows. If you have to run on a Windows platform DO NOT even think about PHP. ISAPI mode is complete unstable … fastCGI helps but is still slow. No caching or acceleration is available anymore for Windows.
ASP.NET is your best choice for a windows platform. Even better – you can simply put one statement at the top of all your .aspx pages and they will be Cache as HTML on the webser and you can designate the amount of time. Don’t get me wrong, I hate microsoft products but asp.net on windows beats everything else out there for windows … hand down.
Who said that I use PHP on Windows, anyway? Perhaps, should I letuce on you about not use ASP on *nix platform?
If you’re going to include PHP, you might as well toss in JavaScript, SQL, REXX, etc. I’ve always considered PHP to be a really dynamic platform – but hardly a “programming language”. Don’t get me wrong, I use it myself and I know I’ll get hissed and boo’d for this – but PHP is like a jack of all trades that can’t seem to figure out what it wants to be when it grows up.
Oh btw: No, PHP is not slow peroid.
PHP works pretty darned …
I have php on a quad Pentium III 1GHz. I always thought PHP was good until I realized that the webserver would choke and die on 4, yes 4, concurrent users. This is on a Windows 2003 Server connecting to SQL Server 2000 database (database is on another machine). So all of you who claim that PHP is great, I beg to differ. 4 concurrent users is NOTHING. Especially when you have 4GB of RAM and when a person hits refresh really fast in their web browser … it brings down the server.
We use PHP on OSNews. We used it both on a dual celeron machine, on a single celeron machine and an athlonXP, all running Red Hat Linux versions. We never had problems with it under Unix/Linux. The problems you encountered are possibly because of buggy ports for Windows. Also, don’t forget that Win2k3 is not 100% backwards compatible with stuff. If the PHP porters haven’t SPECIFICALLY tested with Win2k3 and adjust their port to the new Server OS from MS, it is of no wonder you had problems. I suggest you file a bug report.
OS and Database independance long before Java was ever thought of. It’s the fastest RAD tool ever. Nothing comes close, and I’ve used them all so I know. Be prepared for a STEEP learning curve though!
http://www.magicsoftware.com
Version 8.3 was it’s finest hour. Version 9 (Or eDeveloper), isn’t my cup of tea.
I have php on a quad Pentium III 1GHz. I always thought PHP was good until I realized that the webserver would choke and die on 4, yes 4, concurrent users. This is on a Windows 2003 Server connecting to SQL Server 2000 database (database is on another machine). So all of you who claim that PHP is great, I beg to differ. 4 concurrent users is NOTHING. Especially when you have 4GB of RAM and when a person hits refresh really fast in their web browser … it brings down the server.
I find that’s hard to believe, you must have done something wrong. If you are talking about PHP on Windows, then you shouldn’t use PHP and use ASP(.NET) instead. ASP(.NET) rocks when it’s on Windows and PHP rocks when it’s on *nix.
Perl: it’s the most useful to me, doing everything from system admin chores to GUI applications (Tk may be butt-ugly, but it works and it’s portable). The CPAN makes most projects plug-and-play.
Ruby: it’s just downright cool, and is a lot like I think Perl would be now if Larry had set out to design an OO language. I’ll probably end up using Ruby instead of Perl for the GUI applications I write for in-house use.
Java: just because I need money.
C: it was the first language I actually studied (as opposed to “learned enough to get by”) and because it’s pervasive.
Eugenia
I had the same problems when running Windows 2000 Server for the past 2 years. I upgraded to 2003 last week.
I suggest you file a bug report.
What would I file a bug report about anyway …
My favourite programming language is bash. As that wasn’t listed, I voted for my second favourite, Perl.
You could always vote “other”. This is why we have it there you know.
what an odd pairing. i definitely don’t like prolog, but i sure love lisp.
If any of you think this is odd, i suggest you take a look at lisp. it may have “ancient” roots, but it has grown in to quite the modern language.
some would even argue that scheme shouldn’t be paired with lisp.
I use SmallTalk you insensitive clod!
Wait! That’s the “other” website.
Seriously, my vote’s for SmallTalk (Squeak specifically). One can get quite a bit done.
C++ all the way up! I simply love that language. I fell in love with C++ since very first // comment.
While PHP was designed for the Web, as of late it’s a very different beast. All in All PHP is more of a functional equivalent to Perl (and no Mr. Perl User… I’m not trying to say PHP is better than your language)… what I’m trying to say is PHP has grown so much that it’s now used as much for scripting on the server side as it is for scripting for web backend. Furthermore, it’s got things like GTK-PHP to extend it’s uses even further. Maybe I’m biased because I’ve been using it for a long time and what not, but I wouldn’t think NOT to put PHP in such a poll, aside from the fact when you look at the words, it’s not a programming language, it’s a scripting language. But in that sense neither is Perl or Python. Also, VB/Basic make a perfect pairing, because VB has complete support for all of Basic’s functionality. When it comes down to it, everything you did with Basic you can do with VB in the same manner, of course VB has it’s own ways of doing things too. Pairing ASP and PHP together on the grounds that they are both primarily used for web backends is horrible, by that system of thought you could pair every single language up there that is used for system programming, application programming. I’m sorry, but it’s just not right.
yeah I though I might have gone over board. if you will believe me I ment it sa a rehtorical question not a factualy one…and not even an opinion one. I use XP, OS X, and RH
it was more or less a questioning of anon’s assumption that it was PHPs fault that it choked.
I don’t care what you all think, there are limits to how long a poll can be. I would not give two places to PHP and ASP on this poll. They would have one together, or none. I decided to give them one. So, don’t whine about it.
Eugenia wrote:
> You could always vote “other”. This is why we have it there
> you know.
I know, but I realised that *after* I voted, didn’t I?
how i miss my college days…
happy father’s day to me and all the fathers out there!!!
It’s just not realistic to pair them… the poll seems to lose all meaning in light of it. It’s like saying… What’s your favorite brand of car… BMW/Ford and then you get like 98% of the people voting that option and you’re not sure whether it’s cause of Ford or BMW… well you are sure, because well… look at them, but not everyone knows enough about cars to understand that BMW is carrying all the votes there.
Maybe it’s not “flexible” or “Turing-complete” but it sure is nifty, easy to learn and understand, and good at what it does!
I looove Prolog.
Normally, I’m not one to bitch about poll choices, but this one deserves a flame. Most of the languages on the list are very similar (all of them are pretty much OOP or procedural). You missed complete catagories of languages:
Functional — This is the big catagory after procedural and OOP. Lisp is mostly a functional language, even though it has many multi-paradigm elements. SML, OCaml and Erlang are good examples of mainstream functional languages, while Clean and Haskell are examples of pure, lazy-evaluated functional languages.
Declarative — This catagory includes mercury and prolog, neither of which have absolutely anything at all to do with Scheme and Lisp!
You even missed Smalltalk, the mother of all OOP languages! A far better idea than a token “Lisp/Scheme/Prolog” and “Other” catagory would have been seperate “other” catagories for the major language paradigms.
My two cents — I can’t get too mad, though, my two favorite languages are on the list, C++ and Python. C++ has tons more power than Java, and Python is an order of magnitude more productive than either. I really should like Lisp — from a language design standpoint it’s absolutely phenomenal. It has pretty much every feature known to man, integrated in a clean way. All the cool stuff that C++ is just now getting (lambdas, functional elements, genericity, metafunctions, etc) and Java is rejecting for being too complicated, have been in Lisp forever. Unfortunately, for the type of stuff I do (embedded programming, OS-level stuff) I can’t use all of those nifty features, and I’m too much of a newbie in the language to put it on my favorites list. Maybe when I do some more scientific programming I’ll come back to it
C++ will get the most votes. Personally I don’t like it that much, there are far to many bits that seem, in comparison to modern languages, to be a bit of a cludge. But it is one of the most commonly used languages out there so more peole will not have had the chance to try the other, IMHO much better, languages.
Personaly I voted Python(haven’t tried Ruby yet), but I also like Java (the language). Objective C is my favoured C variant. I’ve never tried Fortan or Lisp or Assembly. Pascal is too restrictive. Perl a bit too succinct at times. VB == brain death. But of course while they are all general languages the old horses for courses aurgument holds (eg fortran might be better for number crunching than Perl, but Perl is better for string crunching).
I like RealBasic, now out for windows. so easy to use and it does what i need it to.
Give me a break Rayiner. I DON’T care about functional and declarative sh*t. All I care to know WHAT people use.
If you don’t like it, do your own poll.
Gee, calm down Eugenia, it’s only a poll…
It’s important to distinguish between types of languages at times. The whole functional/imperative schism is very significant. Functional languages have a lot over the imperative languages, for example, you can write Quicksort in 1 line in Haskell what would take twenty or more in C…
I heard you could do functional programming in Python too ?
Anyway, my favs are Python because it’s easy and fun (really!) and in second place Java, because it forces me to think before I code. The ying and yang of programming so to speak 🙂
i am old school…i like fortran and pascal.
ECMA-Script would be a good companion of Python.
I wanted to vote for PHP but then I saw ASP.
AFAIK ASP is not a specific language, is it? What did you mean VBSript, JScript, … ?
Dim
Variant
Ubound
Lbound
Thank God, I don’t have to earn my money with that.
My favourits: C++(STL), Java, PHP and JavaScript … HTML is the best
A poll of favorite programming languages is meaningless unless you allow people to add their own favorite langauges to the poll, otherwise you’ve unfairly restricted the list to your biased choices. If effect you are asking a different question with your poll, “Which of these langauges is your favorite” rather than the question that you actually used.
Needless to say my three favorite languages are Assembly Language, Smalltalk and Zoku (the language that I’m writing). Io Language is pretty cool as are Self and Garnet. Ok that makes five.
I’d have to say that my favorite existing language is Smalltalk with the prototype langauges, coming in second and Assembly third, just because Assembly is harder to write for.
Oh the strongly typed languages, C, Java, etc… are a distant last eventhough I can work with these… they are just too ugly and force me to think in too constrained a box. At least with assembly you have total freedom.
Real far on the bottom of the list is ActionScript for Flash MX. While I enjoy the results of writing awesome flash graphics it’s one of the most painfull languages to program in due to it’s faulty and misguided attempt to make it easy for “web designers” by not reporting errors! You try and debug something when you don’t know if the statements are executed or not! Even with their adaqute debugger it’s a real pain. I hope thay smarten up and enable an option for the reporting of errors for advanced programmers.
Cheers to your favorite language!
PYTHON!
I’ll be the first to admit that coding is not in my blood (means I can do it but it doesn’t come easy). After some Turbo Pascal at Uni my first real coding experience was with java on win95. Perhaps that helped me to realise that Python in fact is VERY OO although one can perfectly ignore that. It can do so much at any level of expertise/experience. That’s great for a language.
Plus there are so many 3rd party modules/GUI toolkits that your problem is more likely to be one of too much choice than of too little. And they all work in a K.I.S.S. way I like a lot.
Now some of the toolkits haven’t quite stabalised yet and often documentation is a bit hard (I recall py-GTK when playing with ROX on my FreeBSD box, hmm well I did make a silly GUI mixer ;-). But generalising into a simple and predictable set of data structures (which are heavily optimized to perform next-to-natively) is an excellent method to both attract developers and be more than just glue.
Cross platform? With a little determination you have several ways to achieve that. You can easily write some modules and have a GUI client program that uses them for the main OSes.
And being able to test snippets of code in the interactive interpreter prompt, that’s great. I can do some stuff but am by no means a professional programmer but I dare say that this mere nifty feature can cut your developing and testing time in half or better.
Now I admit performance might be an issue in some cases but usually it isn’t.
OK, enough already. Hope you found my experiences interesting. Just try it and you’ll find yourself able to write fairly complicated code in no time.
(Unrelated: This board really needs a preview option if having typed a somewhat long post)
Just wondering if you would have voted that way if Java was not a ‘write once, run anywhere’ languages? I mean, does it have any other virtues that make it stand out amoung the crowd?
It seems in theory that it would be a good language to do client-side stuff, but I’ve seen the results and I’m not impressed. Even when using a program like Jedit, which has a lot of great features, it’s speed and UI handling/look-and-feel still reek of Java. I could only imagine how much better it would’ve been had it been written with something else.
Why is it meaningless? Because your beloved smalltalk is not listed? Look sweetheart, if people used Smalltalk as much as would justify an option on the poll, the “Other” option would have more percentile right now.
There is no way to have a quick responded poll to show results immediately without having pre-defined choices.
I am really getting very angry with people over here not being happy with this or the other. If you don’t like it, DON’T vote. Go add a poll to your own web site. Give me a break. I am not your slave. I do the best I can. I don’t have to put with whiners that are impossible to please you know. I have better things to do on my weekend than getting pissed off with some of you guys.
My feeling about this is that you should’ve seen this coming. I don’t personally have a problem with the poll and wouldn’t even care if my favorite language were not listed. However, just looking at the choices, I knew exactly what was going to happen, knowing the nature of people who post here Knowing this, I think this poll was a bad idea. If you don’t include every damn language known to man that has ever been used by anyone since the invention of the computer, somebody somewhere isn’t going to be happy.
This time ask which language people use in their work or earn a living with. I would be more interested in those results. For instance, I get paid to do VB development, but I sure as hell don’t like it
Then, it is their problem, not mine. With this logic, EVERY poll is a bad idea.
Know what, let’s ask them what they hate the most, that should give the most unsubstantiated ranting flamefest ever. We could call it LangFlame 2003.
There’s nothing wrong with talking/telling about languages and how we experience(d) them. It’s interesting. It’s called socializing and in this case about a geeky subject. Stop whining and start talking. Pavlovian reactions take two to make the tango, the initiator and the receptor. Perhaps listen (read) for a change. Breath in breath out.
Take care.
I should have pointed out that my remarks were meant in general not to the OP per se.
This is one of the few polls of the kind that has
“c” and c++” as separate options! and the results pretty much show that they are not the same.
For someone who doesn’t care you sure are being a baby about it. If you didnt care you wouldn’t be posting anything in response to the comments you don’t like. As for Smalltalk its used in a *lot* of places. The fact that you don’t know that doesn’t change that fact.
>For someone who doesn’t care you sure are being a baby about it.
Sure I am. It is MY WORK we are talking about, MY TIME. I take comments like “this poll is meaningless” personally. What did you expect?
Did you know that….
Even PostScript is a programming language.
GWBASIC is still used by some people.
Parts of OpenVMS are written in PASCAL
COBOL almost dead.
Java is has a GTK LookAndFeel
http://www.erights.org/
Eug, no matter what a poll that generates 66+ comments on a weblog that thrives on comments can’t be that bad and a little controversy is healthy 😉
(I don’t nescessarily disagree with the objections to the poll list but heck it’s not like it determines what sandwich I’ll have tomorrow. Someone will always feel neglected. I’m surprised that no one yet has blamed “poll-outsourcing” which really is the sane thing to do if one doesn’t want a headache over any poll and why this-but-not-that etc)
Have a good weekend everyone
What about G programming language?
Others? What others?
C++ flows thru my body.
Pumping, screaming, yelling.
I can’t deny my veins.
😉
My vote goes for Smalltalk- the most practical and powerful language I’ve come across so far. Pretty much every Smalltalk environment is not only an incredibly elegant, powerful and consistent language but also a really expressive and useful IDE. A Smalltalk IDE is the benchmark of what an IDE should be in other languages. It’s great for prototyping as well as final implementation. You can always write modules in C, etc for compute expensive parts or simply using libraries. Heck, unlike most languages in its class, you don’t even have to write a wrapper module in C a lot of the time- you can call into shared object libraries from within Smalltalk using a FFI (Foreign Function Interface).
There are many languages which are similar to Smalltalk in what it provides- Ruby and Python come to mind. But neither of those have the same sort of maturity or awesome IDE as Smalltalk.
Unlike Java, cross-platform development and deployment just works. Although Java has been getting better about this though, finally.
Thankfully, we have Squeak ( http://www.squeak.org ), which is a very free Smalltalk implementation being developed by a big group of awesome people- including the coiner of the term “object oriented” and the inventor of the WIMP (Windows Icons Menus Pointers) GUI as we know it today, Alan Kay as well as a number of other folks who worked on inventing Smalltalk 30 years ago.
I do desktop apps. My “favorite” language is the one I use every day and which makes my job possible. I’d be delighted to find something better but so far I haven’t and I look constantly.
I voted for C++. I’d be delighted to find something better but so far I haven’t and I look constantly.
Objective-C and C# do some things better than C++, but not everything and they don’t exist on all the platforms I work on.
Java doesn’t do desktop apps very well (and I avoid most of the things it does do well like the plague.)
I’d be delighted to have a scripting-type language for quick prototyping, but Perl is too complicated to stay proficient at when I don’t use it very often. I haven’t had time to really explore Python or Ruby. I hope to some day.
I’m fascinated by procedural languages: I’d love to have time to get good at Lisp or O’Caml, but I may have to retire first.
I may yet learn .NET if other platforms than Windows become well supported by Mono et al. I could then justify using several different languages where they make sense, which makes a lot more sense than creating one “perfect” one.
I absoultely love C.
It’s mainly because of three three things:
1.) It’s fast. I just hate languages like java, which are slow. No mattter if they’re clean or nice or something else, but a programming language must be fast or it’s not considered as a real language for me.
2.) I can do everything. It’s really a multiparadigm language in which I can write low-level things like operating systems but also high-level things like enterprise applications.
3.) The thing I really LOVE most, is that the language doesn’t tell me what to do or how to programm, but that I can do what *I* want, even if it causes a segmentation fault.
I also like C++ a lot, but I really find it easier to program procedural in C, therefore my vote for C.
Yeah, Perl gets my vote.
…Prolog…
It kind of seems odd that Prolog is grouped with Lisp and Scheme. Prolog is a totally different language from a number of standpoints. Prolog is a logic programming language, although you can do OOP and FP among others in it.
…Eugenia bashing…
Guys, give Eugenia a break. Like she says, she isn’t perfect. And while I enjoy Smalltalk as a tool quite a bit, she is right. A poll on OSNews isn’t a snapshot of the world- Smalltalk doesn’t seem to be used all that much by readers of OS News, or the “Other” choice would have a lot more votes. Or Smalltalkers are quiet, but I’m inclined to believe the former.
Smalltalk is used in a number of places in acedemia, research and business, but a lot of those folks use Smalltalk because they enjoy the boost in productivity, they’re often more interested in doing real work than participating in language cheerleading on a forum. A lot of the people reading and posting to OS News, Slashdot and the like are not seasoned coders… Everyone’s opinion is valid.
…E programming language…
E is a cool system. Definately worth checking out. There is also some work on a system being called “SqueakE,” which is an implementation of E’s capability and other features in Squeak, bringing the same features to Squeakers everywhere.
Get that man some Forth.
Number two’s the only one I don’t know about. Any Forth enterprise apps out there?
what an odd pairing. i definitely don’t like prolog, but i sure love lisp.
Not really, though. Given the limited amount of space and the limited amount of use these two language groups get (the languages are clearly meant to be representative of the functional and declarative families), it makes sense to include this thus: a category for non-procedural/-OOP–style langs. Maybe it should’ve been named Functional/Declarative languages, but everyone isn’t an expert on everything.
(I’m only a beginner to programming, and have only had a limited exposure to functional and declarative languages, but they seem to work more the way I think.)
some would even argue that scheme shouldn’t be paired with lisp.
Scheme is a Lisp (or a dialect thereof). If anyone was going to argue anything from a justifyable position, they would be arguing that Scheme was already included in ‘Lisp’.
Give Eugenia a break if you ever want a poll again. After that kind of behavior, and the abuse of polls we saw a while ago, if I were Eugenia, I’d never put a poll up again.
i like cobol, where is it?
This is still widely used in embedded systems, Apple machines (Open Firmware), SPARC machines, Space Projects (NASA), FedEx (Tracker), etc, etc, etc.
Open Firmware isn’t Forth, but is a derivative of Forth.
Postscript is my favorite language, but it didn’t show up in the poll, so I voted for my second fave, C#…
Objective-C and C# do some things better than C++, but not everything and they don’t exist on all the platforms I work on.
Well Objective-C’s main compiler is the GNU gcc… so how could it not exist on all the platforms you work on ? You should use a very uncommon platform 🙂
If you speaked about OpenStep/Cocoa framework, you should take a look to GNUstep : http://www.gnustep.org … Foundation works well, AppKit works quite ok on Unix, alpha on Windows.
..
what about an option like “my languaje isn’t listed here but i don’t want to waste Eugenia’s time on replies to mi sad-meaningless-angry posts. . so bye.”
pascal in the list. . . so bye.
Open Firmware is close enough! Just like FICL, used in FreeBSD’s boot loader
How come, whenever there is a vote, I miss it? Couldn’t you have it running for 24 hours? Not everyone lives in the US.
awk is my ‘Other’ vote.
It is tiny, c-like, a ‘tool’ language for jobs that you do once. I learned it 12 years ago, used it on Apollo and DOS, and I still like it for scraping and stripping.
Perl is fun too, so many great modules by great authors.
Python has real oopness, it’s clean, maybe antiseptic, doesn’t have the soul of perl.
C++ is too complicated, debug debug debug.
C is the most important to learn first. Manipulating chars and bytes and pointers, making your own structs, builds character and discipline.
Java can be fun but you have to type a lot. Great libraries
and platforms, Jakarta. Can I compile it yet?
If there where it would be RPG and then COBOL.
I like simple.
The only problem with Obj-C is that there’s no standard for what Objective-C is. Some implementations have protocols and some don’t, for instance.
The only compiled language I prefer to Obj-C is Eiffel, and that one feels somewhat limiting when it comes to low-level operations (though that same fact protects my higher-level code). The object model is so beautifully simple, yet the power and expressiveess of it just blows anything else away.
Aside from that I’d choose Ruby.
You’re insane or just have a fucked install if you think PHP is slow.
The importance of one language over another is greatly overrated. Why one would pick C# over Java is highly debatable. The runtime environment behind the language is what really counts.
When we talk about implementing an application in C# or Java, or C/C++ for that matter, we mainly worry about the libraries available, what platforms they run on and how flexible they are to meet the needs of the current project. One does not start a project with a language that they do not know so knowing the language is bleeding obvious.
Something like C/C++ or Java is able to meet most requirements and LOTS of people know these languages. Python is useful in some circumstances too. The toolkits/libraries that back these are numerous but relatively easy to learn if a reasonable amount of language experience exists. Unless specific benefits exist and using X, Y or Z language actually has a compelling advantage (rare), one of these more common options is usually the best idea. The only exception to this is if the code has to integrate with existing code in the same language, eg. EMACS lisp.
Not going to touch the whole let’s-start-a-holy-war angle over which language one prefers over another, but…
since when has ASP been a language?
AFAIK an Active Server Page is one that IIS processes on the back-end, in whichever language the server is configured to support. VBScript and JScript are supported in a basic implementation; other languages can be added (eg ActivePerl).
How valid is this poll if it doesn’t even take into account the definition of a language?
c/c++/php/javascript (in no particular order).
c/c++: because they’re both classic ones, and both very powerfull.
javascript: did u know that the whole user interface of mozilla firebird is written in javascript? (or XUL which is an XML of Gui Description and javascript). all mozilla/firebird extensions are pure javascript. the mozilla mail client is written in javascript.
supprisingly, javascript is a very powerfull language. same goes for php btw which is, as others have noted, far more than a web scripting language, and can be used as a general programming language, had it more interactive features (except for gtk).
I’m currently a big fan of C and its derivatives: C# and C++. I played around with Objective-C under Unix using
GNUStep after seeing Windowmaker, NextStep and OS X.
Syntactically, Objective-C is a little clunky and I’m still debating as to which “C with Objects” approach I prefer between C++,Objective-C, and C#. C# has really impressed me with its cleanliness and flexibility. I know the .NET initiative has critics but it’s a great environment especially for concurrent, GUI, and database programming. After having JAVA shoved down my throat in college, I found that C#/.NET actually provides everything that JAVA claimed to supply.
Following a compilers course in which we implemented a Scheme compiler in Scheme, I really became a big proponent of the language. Scheme is elegant, clean and (depending on the implementation: I use Chez) very fast. The only annoyance is that is difficult to supply in-line comments due to the structure of the code. With the advent of Scheme.NET there are plently of great opportunities with Scheme on many different platforms. What sold me on .NET (assuming that the CLR reaches other platforms) is the prospect of using any language that targets the .NET runtime (and there are many). Hopefully people will actually experiment with .NET before bashing it.
C++(descended from C) will always remain the leader.
Any replacement for this?
What’s with all the whiners on this website. Your favorite language is not listed oh its the end of the world and now this poll has no meanings… even though there is a big fat other option.
2 languages are listed in the same option… AHH! ohno! Eugenia is so mean!
Oh my god, just vote, its really not so hard, and its pathetic that most of the posts here have concentrated on how meaningless” the poll is instea of actually explaining why you picked the language you did.
Anyway, for those of you who stayed on topic, thanks.
my favorite languages are Java/Qt and python/Qt, I like to write python better, but I enjoy Java’s portability and many of its other virtues so its a tie.
I believe Delphi/Kylix should be a separate option from Pascal, just like C,C++ and C# are different options. There are millions of developers out there for these compilers.
Assembly was there at the start (well machine language was first, but ML and Asm are 1:1), and assembly will be there at the end…
So unlike other langauges that come (C#) and go (COBOL, FORTRAN), Assembly will be here forever…
Chewy509…
RevAaron, I couldn’t agree more with you.
Hehe. I bet most of you don’t even know its a programming language. 🙂
As for my personnal opinion, for what it worth, the best language that ever graced my computer screen is that good ol’ classic “C++”. The king of them all …
I have two languages which I currently use for my diploma thesis: JAVA and TCL. So I voted for JAVA although in some cases TCL is really superior to any other language I ever coded. It´s not very eligant and hard to read, but the development speed is phenominal! Often I sit in front of my computer and during thinking how to code a feature I type some lines code and suddenlny I see, that´s it. THis never happened to me with JAVA