Regarding the survey: What's your least favourite of these languages to code in?
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Agreed. I've never done a serious project where I reached the end and hated the programming language used. There have been a few I hated the development environment. IBM's VisualAge for C++ and Qt Creator are two examples that come to mind. VisualAge stored the visuals and source code in a data base that corrupted itself regularly and was unrecoverable. Qt Creator's build system was incompetent (incontinent as well, but I digress). That said, there are languages or language features I probably wouldn't like:
- Significant white space: Python and older FORTRAN's
- Academic languages that are documented using obscure or in-joke vocabulary: functional programming's "monad", for example
- Languages whose designer hated commonly-used syntax in mainstream languages and decided they were going to fix the problem;
:=for assignment in Pascal and Ada - Syntactic sugar that hides logic: C#, I'm looking at you
Software Zen:
delete this;Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
:= for assignment in Pascal and Ada
Contrariwise, that eliminates the issue in C-like languages wherein a developer types a single
=when a double=was intended. In my opinion, an unaccompanied=should be a syntax error. -
Well, it has features that make it a compelling choice in some cases. And to heck with it: I wrote programs in FORTRAN where you had to start in column 7 and place continuation mark in column 6. If I survived that, I'm sure going to survive a misplaced brace :D
Mircea
That's a tough one, you sir, have more patience than me. :)
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment "Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst "I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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Marc Clifton wrote:
it's an interesting realization (to me at least) that my dislike of a language is often based on my dislike of the previous coder's code.
Admit it Marc, you just don't like anyone's code but your own. :-D I really, I wouldn't fault you for that. I'm the same way. I'm sure most are. And yet we can't all be right at the same time. Hmmmm... :laugh:
dandy72 wrote:
Admit it Marc, you just don't like anyone's code but your own.
99% true!
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Agreed. I've never done a serious project where I reached the end and hated the programming language used. There have been a few I hated the development environment. IBM's VisualAge for C++ and Qt Creator are two examples that come to mind. VisualAge stored the visuals and source code in a data base that corrupted itself regularly and was unrecoverable. Qt Creator's build system was incompetent (incontinent as well, but I digress). That said, there are languages or language features I probably wouldn't like:
- Significant white space: Python and older FORTRAN's
- Academic languages that are documented using obscure or in-joke vocabulary: functional programming's "monad", for example
- Languages whose designer hated commonly-used syntax in mainstream languages and decided they were going to fix the problem;
:=for assignment in Pascal and Ada - Syntactic sugar that hides logic: C#, I'm looking at you
Software Zen:
delete this;Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
Academic languages that are documented using obscure or in-joke vocabulary: functional programming's "monad", for example
But why, ["a monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?"](https://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html) Also, [Dylan Beattie and the Linebreakers - Monads (Live at NDC Oslo 2019) - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoJGIqyriCc)
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius
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Mircea Neacsu wrote:
example of Go where you must place the brace on the same line as if and else.
Hmm, apparently I am never going to use that language. X|
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment "Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst "I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
While I've never used Go and prefer opening brace on it's own style; the only thing I hate worse than Java written in accordance with the Java Style Guide (or WT:elephant: they call it) is Java written as if it was C#. X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| &nb
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Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
:= for assignment in Pascal and Ada
Contrariwise, that eliminates the issue in C-like languages wherein a developer types a single
=when a double=was intended. In my opinion, an unaccompanied=should be a syntax error.Hmm. My point of view is that assignment is a more common operation than comparison for equality, so it should therefore require fewer characters to express. FWIW, I've always thought that allowing assignment in the 'C'
ifstatement was a serious design flaw in the language.Software Zen:
delete this; -
Hmm. My point of view is that assignment is a more common operation than comparison for equality, so it should therefore require fewer characters to express. FWIW, I've always thought that allowing assignment in the 'C'
ifstatement was a serious design flaw in the language.Software Zen:
delete this;Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
a serious design flaw in the language.
Nah, nah, it's a strength... :~ How about the comma operator? Ever use it?
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Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
Academic languages that are documented using obscure or in-joke vocabulary: functional programming's "monad", for example
But why, ["a monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?"](https://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html) Also, [Dylan Beattie and the Linebreakers - Monads (Live at NDC Oslo 2019) - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoJGIqyriCc)
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius
Dan Neely wrote:
But why, "a monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?"
:laugh:
Software Zen:
delete this; -
Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
a serious design flaw in the language.
Nah, nah, it's a strength... :~ How about the comma operator? Ever use it?
PIEBALDconsult wrote:
How about the comma operator? Ever use it?
Hmm. While I've obviously used it, I've never found a problem that was best solved with a user-defined comma operator. That strikes me as 'clever', and the poor schmuck who has to maintain my stuff over the coming years (namely me) :elephant:ing hates that sort of thing.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
Most languages require a single space between types and variable names though. Captain Pedantic strikes again.
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
MarkTJohnson wrote:
require a single space
Won't a TAB or other whitespace suffice?
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It occurs to me that my least favorite programming language is not actually determined by the language but rather by the coders writing awful code in that language. Even C# fits the "least favorite language" with some of the crap I've seen. I suppose I'm overthinking the question, but it was interesting when I started writing pure JavaScript for some personal projects and discovered I didn't hate it. I still prefer TypeScript, but my loathing of JavaScript was actually because of the code I had to touch that other people wrote. Functions that were a couple thousand lines long. Nested functions. Nested promises. Absurdly complex business logic implemented on the front-end with dozens of nested if-else. The way I was writing Javascript made working with Javascript a pleasant process. Anyways, it's an interesting realization (to me at least) that my dislike of a language is often based on my dislike of the previous coder's code.
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my dislike of the previous coder's code
I have been both blessed and cursed through my 23-year career that I almost never have to fix anything I didn't create/break! :laugh: The previous coder is me, so I only have myself to blame if it's hard to maintain or worse, misbehaves...but when it's good, well...at least nobody complains! :laugh:
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse "Hope is contagious"
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Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
Academic languages that are documented using obscure or in-joke vocabulary: functional programming's "monad", for example
But why, ["a monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?"](https://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html) Also, [Dylan Beattie and the Linebreakers - Monads (Live at NDC Oslo 2019) - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoJGIqyriCc)
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius
From the first link:
Quote:
1964 - John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz create BASIC, an unstructured programming language for non-computer scientists. 1965 - Kemeny and Kurtz go to 1964.
Lots of other hilarious stuff! :laugh: :thumbsup:
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse "Hope is contagious"
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From the first link:
Quote:
1964 - John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz create BASIC, an unstructured programming language for non-computer scientists. 1965 - Kemeny and Kurtz go to 1964.
Lots of other hilarious stuff! :laugh: :thumbsup:
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse "Hope is contagious"
Yup, it's a classic. Really kinda wish he'd update it for the last decades fun.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius
-
Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
:= for assignment in Pascal and Ada
Contrariwise, that eliminates the issue in C-like languages wherein a developer types a single
=when a double=was intended. In my opinion, an unaccompanied=should be a syntax error. -
It occurs to me that my least favorite programming language is not actually determined by the language but rather by the coders writing awful code in that language. Even C# fits the "least favorite language" with some of the crap I've seen. I suppose I'm overthinking the question, but it was interesting when I started writing pure JavaScript for some personal projects and discovered I didn't hate it. I still prefer TypeScript, but my loathing of JavaScript was actually because of the code I had to touch that other people wrote. Functions that were a couple thousand lines long. Nested functions. Nested promises. Absurdly complex business logic implemented on the front-end with dozens of nested if-else. The way I was writing Javascript made working with Javascript a pleasant process. Anyways, it's an interesting realization (to me at least) that my dislike of a language is often based on my dislike of the previous coder's code.
Latest Article:
Create a Digital Ocean Droplet for .NET Core Web API with a real SSL Certificate on a DomainI love JavaScript despite its haphazard nature. Always have; always will. It will always have a special place in my heart even if WASM replaces it one day. Outside of F# it's one of the few popular languages teaching functional concepts. Despite that... I 1,000% agree. Thar be some script kiddies that give it a bad name. Forget the functional vs OOP paradigm, we're talking folks who don't know the difference between a closure and a catfish but think they're experts because they've seen a
document.writeonce. It's so popular, that just comes with the territory. Any language with as many people using it would have tons of bad code floating around. Btw, I much prefer TS over plain JS these days too.Jeremy Falcon
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Agreed. I've never done a serious project where I reached the end and hated the programming language used. There have been a few I hated the development environment. IBM's VisualAge for C++ and Qt Creator are two examples that come to mind. VisualAge stored the visuals and source code in a data base that corrupted itself regularly and was unrecoverable. Qt Creator's build system was incompetent (incontinent as well, but I digress). That said, there are languages or language features I probably wouldn't like:
- Significant white space: Python and older FORTRAN's
- Academic languages that are documented using obscure or in-joke vocabulary: functional programming's "monad", for example
- Languages whose designer hated commonly-used syntax in mainstream languages and decided they were going to fix the problem;
:=for assignment in Pascal and Ada - Syntactic sugar that hides logic: C#, I'm looking at you
Software Zen:
delete this;Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
they were going to fix the problem; := for assignment in Pascal and Ada
:laugh: Every time I see that it reminds me of an emoji.
Jeremy Falcon
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Bah! ∴ U+2234 THEREFORE
I get the joke but why not ≔ Seriously now, I think it's a shame the only thing that hasn't changed in 40+ years of programming is the keyboard. We are stuck to the same limited set of characters that our ancestors put on a typewriter. Oops! seems I'm ranting again :laugh:
Mircea
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I get the joke but why not ≔ Seriously now, I think it's a shame the only thing that hasn't changed in 40+ years of programming is the keyboard. We are stuck to the same limited set of characters that our ancestors put on a typewriter. Oops! seems I'm ranting again :laugh:
Mircea
I would vote for
:=, I used Pascal a bit back in the day.Mircea Neacsu wrote:
limited set of characters that our ancestors put on a typewriter
Yet several languages allow Unicode now. Oh, and don't forget C's trigraphs. :rolleyes:
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While I've never used Go and prefer opening brace on it's own style; the only thing I hate worse than Java written in accordance with the Java Style Guide (or WT:elephant: they call it) is Java written as if it was C#. X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| X| &nb
I thought Java and C# were mutual wannabes, he says, donning his asbestos suit. :-D
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