Stop comparing programming languages

  • Python is versatile
  • JavaScript is powerful
  • Ruby is elegant
  • C is essential
  • C++
  • Java is robust
    • dohpaz42@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      41
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      5 months ago

      PHP is old

      Same age as Ruby, Java and JavaScript, but younger than Python, C, and C++. 😛

      • Guydht@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        29
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        5 months ago

        I’m guessing they meant “old” as in “no one uses it anymore, it’s dead”

    • DacoTaco@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      5 months ago

      Modern php is not bad actually. Still kinda slow and dangerous, but A LOT better than it used to be :')
      That said, i wouldnt build a web service with php still lol

    • chraebsli@programming.devOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      5 months ago

      Actual definitions (my opinion):

      • HTML is website
      • CSS is style
      • JS is everywhere
      • SQL is data
      • Python is simple
      • PHP is backend
      • Markdown is README
      • YAML is config
  • SatouKazuma@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    63
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    5 months ago

    Mfw Rustaceans don’t exist :(

    Also, JavaScript…why are you the way you are? Does anyone have advice for learning it so it makes sense? I can’t even get tutorial projects to run properly…

    • magic_lobster_party@kbin.run
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      5 months ago

      I like Douglas Crockford’s talks about the “good parts” of JavaScript. They’re old and probably a bit outdated, but he explain quite well the history and why JavaScript is the way like it is.

      It clicked for me when I saw them the first time. Still hate JavaScript though.

      • wreel@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        5 months ago

        What Crockford did was enable a lot of devs to realize there was a viable development platform built into the most prolific and open network client in the world. For that he should be commended but it should have never been taken as “this is a viable general purpose language”.

        • magic_lobster_party@kbin.run
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          5 months ago

          He also showed that JavaScript has more resemblance to functional programming languages rather than object oriented ones. If you try to treat it as an object oriented language like Java (like the seem to imply), you will have a bad time.

          This has changed with TypeScript though.

    • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      5 months ago

      The mantra that got me through JavaScript was “almost nothing we do here is able to be synchronous”.

      Everything about the language makes more sense, with that context.

    • sparkle@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      Cymraeg
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      5 months ago

      Not Scala and Rust. They are my beloved, my sweethearts, my knights in shining armor.

      Ok Rust does have some major issues, but not Scala…

      • BatmanAoD@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        5 months ago

        Oof, slow compile times to target, of all things, the JVM? Implicit methods? Some(null)? Function call syntax where the difference between a tuple argument and a sequence of non-tuple arguments can be determined by whether or not there’s a space before the parentheses?

        There are definitely some major issues with Scala.

        • magic_lobster_party@kbin.run
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          5 months ago

          They also thought the best thing to take from Python is that version 3 should not be backwards compatible with version 2

          • sparkle@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            Cymraeg
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            5 months ago

            I think that’s good when the objective is to improve the language. One key thing that holds many languages back is that they’re stuck with historical baggage, and it can be pretty difficult to replace/remove “outdated” stuff without breaking everything.

            I do not want to be stuck using Python 2, or Scala 2 (although there exist people who use Scala 2 instead of Scala 3).

            • magic_lobster_party@kbin.run
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              5 months ago

              Where I’m working we’re heavily using Spark, which kind of blocks us from upgrading. There seem to be ways to get Scala 3 to work, but we also have old terribly written baggage code no one understands. Just upgrading between 2.12 to 2.13 was a journey.

        • sparkle@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          Cymraeg
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          5 months ago

          I agree that the slow compile times are pretty bad (maybe even deal-breakingly for large projects). I think it’s kind of necessary for a language with as powerful of a syntax as Scala though, it’s pretty absurd how expressive you can get. Maybe if it didn’t target the JVM, it’d be able to achieve way faster compile times – I don’t really see a point of even targeting JVM other than for library access (not to say that that isn’t a huge benefit), especially when it has relatively poor compatibility with other JVM languages and it’s nearly impossible to use for Android (don’t try this at home).

          Even more so, I think that null handling isn’t nice – I wish it were more similar to Kotlin’s. One thing I’m really confused as to why Scala didn’t go all-in on is Either/Result like in Rust. Types like that exist, but Scala seems to mostly just encourages you to use exceptions for error propogation/handling rather than returning a Monad.

          A more minor grudge I have is just the high-level primitive types in general – it’s pretty annoying not being able to specify unsigned integers or certain byte-width types by default, but if it really is an issue than it can be worked around. Also things like mutable pointers/references – I don’t actually know if you can do those in Scala… I’ve had many situations where it’d be useful to have such a thing. But that’s mostly because I was probably using Scala for things it’s not as cut out to do.

          With the tuple arguments point, I get it but I haven’t found it much of an issue. I do wish it wasn’t that way and it consistently distinguished between a tuple and an argument list though, either that or make functions take arguments without tuples like in other functional languages or CLI languages (but that’d probably screw a lot of stuff up and make compile times even LONGER). I saw someone on r/ProgrammingLanguages a while back express how their language used commas/delimiters without any brackets to express an argument list.

          I think an actually “perfect” language to me would basically just be Rust but with a bunch of the features that Scala adds – of course the significant functional aspect that Scala has (and the clearly superior lambda syntax), but also the significantly more powerful traits and OOP/OOP-like polymorphism. Scala is the only language that I can say I don’t feel anxious liberally using inheritance in, in fact I use inheritance in it constantly and I enjoy it. Scala’s “enum”/variant inheritance pattern is like Rust enums, but on crack. Obviously, Rust would never get inheritance, but I’ve found myself in multiple situations where I’m thinking “damn, it’s annoying that I have to treat <X trait> and <Y trait> as almost completely serparate”. It would especially be nice in certain situations with const generic traits that are basically variants of each other.

          Plus, I’ve always personally liked function overloading and default arguments and variadics/variadic generics and stuff, but the Rust community generally seems to be against the former 2. I just really hate there being a hundred functions, all a sea of underscores and adjectives, that are basically the same thing but take different numbers of arguments or slightly different arguments.

          The custom operators are a double-edged sword, I love them and always use them, but at the same time it can be unclear as to what they do without digging into documentation. I guess Haskell has a similar problem though, but I don’t think Scala allows you to specify operator precedence like Haskell does and it just relies on the first character’s precedence. I would still want them though.

          How it goes now, though, is I use Scala 3 for project design/prototyping, scripting, and less performance-sensitive projects, and Rust for pretty much everything else (and anything involving graphics or web). Scala has good linear algebra tooling, but honestly I’ll usually use C++ or Python for that most of the time because they have better tooling (and possibly better performance). I would say R too, but matplotlib has completely replaced it for literally everything regarding math for me.

          • BatmanAoD@programming.dev
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            5 months ago

            Sounds like we’re actually in agreement about most of this.

            I’m okay with languages limiting their “expressive” power in order to provide stronger correctness guarantees or just limit how “weird” code looks; but this is largely because I’ve worked on many projects where someone had written a heap of difficult-to-understand code, and I doubt such limitations would be appealing if I were working strictly on my own.

            I also don’t really see the appeal of Java-style inheritance, but to be honest I didn’t use Scala for long enough to know whether or not I agree that Scala does inheritance “right”.

            It does make sense that Rust provides mutability in some cases where Scala doesn’t. Rust’s superpower, enabled by the borrow checker, is effectively “safe mutability.” I hope other, simpler languages build on this invention.

    • DacoTaco@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      5 months ago

      Writing raw byte binaries ftw!

      (Jokes aside, all programming languages have their good and bad things. Some just have more bad than good. And i say that as a C/C#/typescript/asm developer :p

      • polonius-rex@kbin.run
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        14
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        5 months ago

        good luck doing frontend development without it, but it can also do backend development

        it can do everything

        • odium@programming.dev
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          edit-2
          5 months ago

          That makes it versatile, not powerful.

          When I hear powerful language, I think of languages that are good at intensive tasks like assembly, c, rust, Python (because of numpy, pandas, pyspark, cuda, etc.).

          • echindod@programming.dev
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            8
            ·
            5 months ago

            Python is powerful because it easily wraps C libraries that do real work! Just kidding mostly.

            But yeah, js isn’t a language I would describe as powerful. Ubiquitous? More capable than you would expect given it’s history? Bloated?

            • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              edit-2
              5 months ago

              Python is powerful because it easily wraps C libraries that do real work! Just kidding mostly.

              Not kidding. There’s no rule against that though. It’s good at it’s niche.

              • 9point6@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                5 months ago

                Does that not put JS (node) back on the table?

                I’d say it’s the low level language doing the heavy lifting, python or JS in this scenario are just front-ends.

                Hell, I think FORTH has C bindings, that’s not power, that’s mental illness

                • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  6
                  ·
                  5 months ago

                  Sure, but there are good and bad frontends. JavaScript has a tendency to silently fly off the handle in mysterious ways due to the crazy type system. Python will typically fail more predictably, and is famously easy to write. I know nothing about FORTH, honestly.

        • lseif@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          5 months ago

          if its acceptable to force javascript onto the backend and everywhere else, then why not write the frontend in rust, or anything else than can compile to wasm ?

          • BatmanAoD@programming.dev
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            5 months ago

            WASM has no native ability to access most web APIs, including the DOM. JavaScript is literally unavoidable on the front end.

            • lseif@sopuli.xyz
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              5 months ago

              javascript cannot be compiled natively for the backend or desktop either…

              also libraries like wasm bindgen allow a developer to write almost no javascript. and i wouldnt could a few lines of bootstrapping.

              im dont advocate for wasm when its not necessary. nor do i advocate for backend js when its not necessary.

              • BatmanAoD@programming.dev
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                5 months ago

                Sorry, I’m not sure what your point is. I realize that you can almost completely avoid JavaScript, but the point I’m making is merely that there is a real technical limitation that limits the choices developers can make for front-end code, and although WASM is making great strides in breaking down that barrier (something I’ve been thrilled to see happen, but which is going much more slowly than I had hoped), the limitation is still there. Conversely, such a barrier has never existed on the backend, except in the sense that C limits what all other languages can do.

                • lseif@sopuli.xyz
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  5 months ago

                  my point is that languages have their places.

                  javascript is great for the frontend. not just because it’s the only choice, but it’s also a lot easier to write code for ui than say, C or rust.

                  however i do not see a reason why it needs to run on servers or desktop apps, bar a few cases. i know node is popular, but i think fullstack devs just like to have everything in the same language, even if it makes it harder to use and slower to run.

                  likewise C, rust, go, whatever, are great for backends, embedded etc, but they shouldnt be ran on in the browser, unless there is a specific reason like heavy computation with little dom interaction.

                  just because a barrier does not exist doesnt mean that we should write programs in a language not designed for the domain.

      • 9point6@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        5 months ago

        IIRC JavaScript + TypeScript is the biggest demographic of engineers in the industry if you go by GitHub stats

        I suppose you could call that power in a way

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        5 months ago

        JavaScript is also not fine.

        C++ apparently has a lot of footguns if you use too many parts of it. C and orthodox C++ are fine.

        • polonius-rex@kbin.run
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          9
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          5 months ago

          people say this but C is significantly more batshit than javascript

          oh you used scanf? one of the basic functions of our language? sorry that’s got a buffer overflow vulnerability so now your application is compromised

          • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            8
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            5 months ago

            Yeah, but as far as I understand that’s not a C vulnerability. It wasn’t added. C just exposes how the underlying CPU works.

            If you could avoid exposing dangerous memory quirks but still retain the same power… well, you’d have invented Rust. Rust is a better language than C, I agree with that.

            Edit: Yep, just double checked. Buffers live in physical memory and have to be finite, so if you advance outside of them you’ll go somewhere else. Scanf’s not special, this is just another inherent pointer issue.

            • polonius-rex@kbin.run
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              8
              arrow-down
              3
              ·
              5 months ago

              exposing the machinations of the underlying CPU with no regard for safety is like, the definition of a footgun

              • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                6
                ·
                edit-2
                5 months ago

                Okay, but how do you code on a CPU without directly interfacing the CPU at some point? Python and JavaScript both rely on things written in mid-level languages. There’s a difference between a bad tool and one that just has limitations inherent to the technology.

                Like, to echo the meme a bit, it’s not a totally straight comparison. They have different roles.

                • polonius-rex@kbin.run
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  6
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  5 months ago

                  a footgun isn’t inherently bad, it just implies a significant amount of risk

                  yes, if you need the ability to code on a low level, maybe C is necessary, but the times where that is actually necessary is smol

                  also rust

  • umbraroze@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    24
    ·
    5 months ago

    JavaScript is powerful

    Old joke (yes, you can tell):

    “JavaScript: You shoot yourself in the foot. If using Netscape, your arm falls off. If using Internet Explorer, your head explodes.”

  • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    20
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    5 months ago

    C++ is all of those, provided you pick any 10% of it.

    You’re not supposed to cast every spell in the evil grimoire.

    • BatmanAoD@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      5 months ago

      Well, except “robust”, unless you have very strict code standards, review processes, and static analysis.

      (And arguably it’s never elegant, though that’s almost purely a matter of taste.)

        • BatmanAoD@programming.dev
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          edit-2
          5 months ago

          I see where you’re coming from, but no matter how many null pointer exceptions there are in Java code, you’re almost always protected from actually wrecking your system in an unrecoverable way; usually the program will just crash, and even provide a relatively helpful error message. The JVM is effectively a safety net, albeit an imperfect one. Whereas in C++, the closest thing you have to a safety net, i.e. something to guarantee that invalid memory usage crashes your program rather than corrupting its own or another process’s memory, is segfaults, which are merely a nicety provided by common hardware, not required by the language or provided by the compiler. Even then, with modern compiler implementations, undefined behavior can cause an effectively unlimited amount of “bad stuff” even on hardware that supports segfaults.

          Additionally, most languages with managed runtimes that existed when Java was introduced didn’t actually have a static type system. In particular, Perl was very popular, and its type system is…uh…well, let’s just say it gives JavaScript some serious competition.

          That said, despite this grain of truth in the statement, I think the perception that Java is comparatively robust is primarily due to Java’s intense marketing (particularly in its early years), which strongly pushed the idea that Java is an “enterprise” language, whatever that means.

  • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    edit-2
    5 months ago

    C++ is focused on getting a strong degree of root control over the hardware of lots of systems. Which is part of why it’s difficult.

    • BatmanAoD@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      5 months ago

      I mean, if you’re talking about CVEs permitting attackers to get control of the hardware of lots of systems, then yes, I agree

  • tiredofsametab@kbin.run
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    5 months ago
    • Rust has safety and efficiency close to C
    • Perl is processing most of your healthcare records
    • Ada is doing space stuff
    • Go is going places