Programming languages

What is your favourite programming language?

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Second Summer

Second Summer

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This thread is to argue why your favourite programming language is particularly awesome.

I would argue that Python is an amazing language for the following reasons:
  • Easy to get started with. It doesn't have a complicated environment setup/installation procedure since pre-compiled packages exist for a vast number of OSes, and even if you have to compile it, it's pretty straightforward at least on UNIX-style OSes. And once you start writing code, no complicated pre-compilation of the code is needed.
  • Easy to learn as there is lots of easy-to-navigate and up-to-date documentation.
  • Helpful stacktraces when something goes wrong.
  • Fast (for a scripting language)
  • Relatively large standard library of modules that comes with every installation
  • Versatile - can be used with other languages such as Java or C/C++. It's often used as the "glue" between programs written in C/C++, Fortran etc when setting up pipelines of software. This is possibly one of the reasons why it's popular in scientific computing.
 
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Lord Snot said:
I would vote, but all I know is HTML. I'm old school (where old school is a euphemism for incompetent).
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Ah, good old HTML! Although it's "just" a markup language, there are lots of things you can do, especially when coupled with CSS, and Javascript. And I understand that HTML5 is supposed to be pretty awesome with its direct support for video, canvas, scalable vector graphics, etc.
 
I say VB, because that is the one I am most familiar with. I worked mainly with VB.Net in college, and C++, and a bit of Java. I did a Cobol class (we were the last class to have it available to us), which I didn't really care for, and lots of SQL. Of course, we got a basic HTML course, but I was already familiar with that at that point.
 
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Indian Summer said:
Ah, good old HTML! Although it's "just" a markup language, there are lots of things you can do, especially when coupled with CSS, and Javascript. And I understand that HTML5 is supposed to be pretty awesome with its direct support for video, canvas, scalable vector graphics, etc.
Click to expand...

I find it does everything I want to for content. I do the content for my work's e-mail address but the IT department control the design and I don't have permissions to change certain things. It's really frustrating trying to get them to do anything (think an office full of Michaels) but that's another thread :p
 
I use Perl for most things mostly out of familiarity. It has most of the advantages IS mentions for Python although a lot of the heavily idiomatic code used by experienced programmers can be confusing to beginners.

I have been meaning to have a good look at Erlang for a while as it looks very interesting but it is very different from Perl and other C style languages so I haven't really got my head around it yet.
 
I voted for and like java, but mainly because it's what I have the most experience with (in my limited time coding). The coolest language I've worked with, though, is SML (standard ml). I love the elegance of functional programming.
 
I'm not a programmer. I have dabbled with AutoIt and found it to be the easiest and most understandable language of all. For beginners, it's really easy to get started and make stuff that works.
 
I've only ever used C++ / C and so far that's only one uni module, but I'm hoping to do some more over the summer and next year. :)
 
I did some Basic programming in HS, in college they made me take a Cobol class so my knowledge is a bit dated. :)
 
Indian Summer said:
This thread is to argue why your favourite programming language is particularly awesome.

I would argue that Python is an amazing language for the following reasons:
  • Easy to get started with. It doesn't have a complicated environment setup/installation procedure since pre-compiled packages exist for a vast number of OSes, and even if you have to compile it, it's pretty straightforward at least on UNIX-style OSes. And once you start writing code, no complicated pre-compilation of the code is needed.
  • Easy to learn as there is lots of easy-to-navigate and up-to-date documentation.
  • Helpful stacktraces when something goes wrong.
  • Fast (for a scripting language)
  • Relatively large standard library of modules that comes with every installation
  • Versatile - can be used with other languages such as Java or C/C++. It's often used as the "glue" between programs written in C/C++, Fortran etc when setting up pipelines of software. This is possibly one of the reasons why it's popular in scientific computing.
Click to expand...

I'm a hardcore old-school C programmer, but most of the programming I do now is for GIS and ESRI products are becoming harder to use flexibly with any languages other than Python. The work I do is often heavy on recursion. Is overflow much of an issue? Can you control stack size limits?
 
nigel said:
I'm a hardcore old-school C programmer, but most of the programming I do now is for GIS and ESRI products are becoming harder to use flexibly with any languages other than Python. The work I do is often heavy on recursion. Is overflow much of an issue? Can you control stack size limits?
Click to expand...
Cool ... I've never had to modify the stack size, but it seems it's possible:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5061582/setting-stacksize-in-a-python-script

You might also be interested in this:
sys.setrecursionlimit(limit)
Set the maximum depth of the Python interpreter stack to limit. This limit prevents infinite recursion from causing an overflow of the C stack and crashing Python.

The highest possible limit is platform-dependent. A user may need to set the limit higher when she has a program that requires deep recursion and a platform that supports a higher limit. This should be done with care, because a too-high limit can lead to a crash.
Click to expand...
http://docs.python.org/library/sys.html#sys.setrecursionlimit
 
JavaScript. I'm not sure why you didn't list it as an option, but it is by far my favorite programming language. Then followed by PHP.
 
I did some 68k assembly at university. We used these little target boards with lights, switches and motors on and wrote level crossing and washing machine simulations and other similar things.

I play around a bit now with Atmel AVRs but am currently only as far as blinking LEDs and sending messages over the UART to an attached PC. It's fun!
 
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