Waxing poetic about programming languages
This would have been more amusing if it wasn't so obviously written by a python enthusiast..
Python: Python cares deeply about you and does its best to make your life easier. Python is willing to try new things to make you happy -- "Sure, I can do generators, if that's what you want" -- and really doesn't mind if you're seeing other languages on the side. It insists upon arranging the cupboard into strict rows, but you stop noticing after a while, and eventually you come to prefer your shelves organized this way. Your friends think this is weird until they start dating Python too.
That really should say:
Python: I'm so beautiful and graceful and smart. If you don't love me you're obviously unbalanced and damaged!
Hey, if you're going to call C a "rat's nest of issues"...
Comments
Oh, that explicit "self" argument -- it's not a mole, it's a beauty mark.
Posted by: Joe Grossberg | March 3, 2006 03:12 PM
C is a rat’s nest of issues, and it’s also very tedious. But it’s fun; it’s like a marathon, long painful, tiring, but rewarding.
C++ is a double rat’s nest of issues and no fun.
Java removes the issues, but it forgets to put the fun back in.
Python removes the tedium, which is good, and by some that might be equated with fun, but it isn’t really fun.
Perl, that one’s fun. Great fun. Like controlled substances: you’re fine as long as you know to keep yourself in check, but if you try to have too much fun it quickly becomes no fun at all.
Ruby is less fun, but it’s also hard to have too much fun with it.
PHP is pasta with cheese.
Tcl, well let’s just agree not to talk about it.
Lisp and Scheme are everything to everyone.
Posted by: Aristotle Pagaltzis | March 4, 2006 09:00 AM
(Comment written before I read that article, btw. You are free to guess my bias, if it isn’t already know/obvious, and I freely admit to it.)
Posted by: Aristotle Pagaltzis | March 4, 2006 09:04 AM
So if I find Java fun, does it mean I'm boring :)
Posted by: kasia | March 4, 2006 02:13 PM
I agree and disagree here is my take.
C is a rat’s nest of issues, and it’s also very tedious. But it’s fun; it’s like a marathon, long painful, tiring, but rewarding.
C++ is the swiss army knife of programming but when used correctly can be incredibly fun.
Java removes the issues, but it forgets to put the fun back in.
Python, haven't tried it yet so I can't say.
Perl
Ruby, haven't tried it yet so I can't say.
PHP is pasta with cheese.
Tcl, 50 years of computer science lessons and learning thrown out the f#cking window. That said it's easy to extend with C.
Lisp and Scheme, The two most beautiful languages ever created but unless you wrote the code they are harder than h3ll to maintain.
OCaml, lots of fun but hard to wrap your head around even for a long time Lisper
Posted by: Andy | March 4, 2006 04:54 PM
That should have read for Perl:
Perl, hate it, it's d@mn near illegible unless you are the one who wrote it and then it's fun.
Posted by: Andy | March 4, 2006 04:56 PM
Andy:
I’ve read plenty of Perl and found it legible; the language merely doesn’t do anything to steer you toward clean, readable code, even though it makes it easy to write it. (Perl 6 is supposed to improve that; I hope it gets finished this decade…)
Lisp/Scheme: opinions vary greatly, both on the legibility and design of the languages as well as those of individual pieces of code. Hence “everything to everyone”…
kasia:
In terms of programming, yes. :-) Mind you I’ll take boring over too-clever-by-half any day. (We have *plenty* of those in the Perl community.)
(Some meta notes: the comment textarea is rather tiny – would be nice if you enlarged it a bit. Also, would you mind enabling i/b/em/strong/code tags?)
Posted by: Aristotle Pagaltzis | March 5, 2006 07:43 AM
heh. I'm a Python enthusiast and I thought the Python entry obnoxious.
Posted by: kp | March 7, 2006 12:47 AM