Favorite Programming Language?

[Prometheus98876]

I'm pretty old-fashioned. XEmacs and the GNU toolchain. But there's at least one guy in my group at work who puts me to shame -- he writes code in vi. Note, that isn't one of the enhanced versions like vim or elvis -- I'm talking bog-standard original v-freaking-i. I can only thing of two editors more hard-core than that. One is 'ed'. ("'Ed' is the STANDARD editor!"). The other would be:

cat > foo.c

...source code goes here...

^D

I have always been a big fan of IDEs, and have never much liked using things like XEmacs most of the time. I just do not see much point in doing things that way, it is inefficent and harder to envision the project as a whole. With an IDE I can do things with greater speed, ease, things that there is no reason for doing any other way when I have a fast IDE, things like compling. I make lots of typos so I like to be able to edit the source code and compile...and etc all in one window.

I would not say IDES are the weak . Lots of strong programmers use IDES.

[Thales]

Plus IDEs are for the weak; anything that cannot be ran in a terminal is more distraction than tool. Anyone wish to fight over development tools?

I'll challenge you on that.

IDEs reduce work load so that you can focus on other problems. The less work you have to do with the coding, the better job you can do integrating a project.

Hey, I don't code to code. I use coding as a means to get a job done.

However, for Perl, and HTML I use a sweet, and *free* little editor called Crimson! It also handles C/C++ and Java. It highlights syntax with colors, highlights the being/end parentheses (a real annoyance in programming), allows you to launch a DOS window via a menu option, and has several other options. I find it very easy to write code with. Of course, it's a Windows app, so won't work for Unix/Linux.

[softwareNerd]

I would not say IDEs are the weak . Lots of strong programmers use IDES.

This sub-debate is similar to the one sub-issue that was raised about C being more of a challenge.

An analogy would be a carpenter who does not like power tools. There could be valid reasons for not using a power tool for a specific task: perhaps it is more fun to use a hand-tool, or this particular task requires a more versatile tool and the power-tool is more "cookie-cutter", or even perhaps that the task is so simple to do with a hand tool, that a power tool is a waste of money.

There are many task where IDEs increase productivity by orders of magnitude. Just as a programming language abstracts thing up to a certain level, a good IDE takes that abstraction one step further. The abstractions provided by good IDE and a good set of libraries are indistinguishable from abstractions provided by a good language, if one's primary concern is productivity.

[engineer]

I'll challenge you on that.

IDEs reduce work load so that you can focus on other problems. The less work you have to do with the coding, the better job you can do integrating a project.

To me it is like the difference between manual and auto transmissions. With an auto you gain convenience at the price of power. I’ve used MS Visual Studio enough to know how easy it makes normal cases, but how difficult it makes special cases. In VS you have to navigate through menu after menu hopping to find the one obscure options which will change compiling behavior; with GNU build systems I just edit a line in a Makefile.

I understand that in some situations an IDE makes sense; when there are no special cases. But every time I try out a tool to sacrifice power for convenience it always comes back to bite me when I have to do something more.

[A.West]

My favorite programming language is R because it's free and it helps me do some statistical analysis that I need, and would otherwise not be able to perform. As a non-programmer, I find it difficult to use, but others keep on making the language more useful for me.

[softwareNerd]

My favorite programming language is R ...

A great concretization that value presupposes value for what and to whom.

[tnunamak]

Hmm... out of Java, C++, C, Scheme, ML, Matlab, and Perl... my favorite is by far Java. Granted, I'm only in my 3rd semester of computer science, so I haven't used any of them extensively.

For those who choose C++ over Java... one of my professors (my favorite in fact), told me something to the effect of, "There is no such thing as a good amateur C++ programmer. To be able to use C++ correctly you have to be an expert in it." After taking a semester of Java, then taking a semester of C++, I have realized that it is taking me much longer to learn my way around C++ properly than it did for Java. I would argue that I was able to do more in Java after a month than I can do now in C++ after more than 2 months. If you use C++ solely for managing data, or whatever else it is good for, then I'm sure it would be an ideal language to master. But if you need to be flexible... you will need to look to other languages and spending all of your time in one language is probably a bad idea.

Just a thought.