Stop comparing programming languages
- Python is versatile
- JavaScript is powerful
- Ruby is elegant
- C is essential
- C++
- Java is robust
There is another That you might say is a little rusty
This meme only works if you don’t include any example that is better than others in every regard.
I keep seeing people talk about Rust, and to be honest I never thought much about it because I’ve never had a reason to use it.
But when so many people in a programmer meme sub are saying “actually no joke Rust is amazing” that makes me pay attention.
So I looked into it and found this: https://github.blog/2023-08-30-why-rust-is-the-most-admired-language-among-developers/
Stop comparing tools
- Hammer is heavy
- Wrench is elegant
- Saw is versatile
- Screwdriver
- Drill is exciting
such pointless
Java is robust haha
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.”
C++ is… I got nothing.
C++ is inferior to Rust and should be used in no new projects unless it is absolutely necessary
The only reason I use C++ is because that’s what all the main audio plugin tools use. It’s warty and annoying, although I’m confused why Java would rank higher
So we just ignore JavaScript being on that list at sll?
I shit on JavaScript for years… but Deno (built around Rust) is honestly one of the most pleasant tools I’ve used for development, and you get all the completion in VS Code.
My main experience using C++ was because I got stuck modifying an app written with Qt Creator, an utterly insane cross-platform framework that used (still uses? I dunno, only people in Finland ever used it in the first place) C++ for the under-the-hood processing and Javascript for the UI. For good measure, the application developers had modified all the C++ stuff with macros to the point where it was barely even recognizable as C++. Fortunately, it mattered not at all because the app’s customers were ISPs who just wanted a Skype clone so they could say they had one even though none of their customers ever used the damn thing.
Oh, trust me, Qt is still primarily C++. It’s effectively a massive set of C++ libraries.
C++ is OVERWHELMINGLY SUPERIOR, if you ask any professional C++ developer.
Can confirm. Chose to focus on C++ because it literally makes me superior to other people.
I was a professional C++ developer for several years, and came to the conclusion that any professional C++ developers who don’t acknowledge its flaws have a form of Stockholm Syndrome.
This is true of every language. If you can’t think of things you don’t like about the language you’re working in (and/or its tooling) you just don’t know the language very well or are in denial.
Ehhh, I mean this more strongly. I’ve never met people more in denial about language design problems than C++ adherents. (Though admittedly I haven’t spent much time talking to Lisp fans about language design.)
It’s made worse by the fact C++11 made a lot of solutions for the deep problems in the language. As the C++ tradition dictates, the problems themselves are carefully preserved for backward compatibility, the solutions are like a whole different language.
And Lisp is small - the first Google result provides a Lisp interpreter in 117 lines of Python code.
C++11 also introduced new problems, such as the strange interaction between brace-initialization and initializer-lists (though that was partially fixed several years later), and the fairly arcane rules around move semantics with minimal compiler support (for example, it would be great if the standard required compilers to emit an error if a moved-from object were accessed).
I know Lisp is minimal, I’m just saying that I expect there are Lisp fans who won’t acknowledge (or would excuse) any shortcomings in the language, just as there are C++ fans who do the same for C++.
ITT: Rust programmers rewriting the joke in Rust.
Ruby is just happy to be included
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.
I mean, if you’re talking about CVEs permitting attackers to get control of the hardware of lots of systems, then yes, I agree
Sorry, Undefined Behavior Everywhere was yelling way too loud to hear you clearly.
Were you talking about strong controlling anything with C++?
Only a part. A lot of the complexity is completely unnecessary.
C is powerful. Javascript is a husky midwestern gal at a Chinese buffet.
C is the one you want to marry, but JavaScript answers all of your drunk texts.
What is C essential for anymore these days? Genuine question btw.
I thought C++ was essential for microprocessor control, but that it depends and sometimes I gather people use C instead, but not always.
Use the language that the company hires you to know:-).
I do embedded. Its all C. You can’t replace it.
Inertia is a mofo. I did embedded programming for industrial automation almost thirty years ago, building upon and expanding an existing nightmare of C code… and I bet there’s still some of mine running something out there to this day.
You can’t replace it.
Zig?
Or Nim?
Wait, that’s like C with
extrafewer stepsAnd I think they rewrote a bunch of C libraries in order to have a better cross-platform compiler for C and zig. Or something along those lines
Pretty much all of the command line coreutils programs I use daily are in C; cd, ls, pwd, touch, rm, etc. If I want to write some small utility I’ll usually reach for a scripting language first like bash python ruby etc, but if it needs to be small and fast I’ll use C instead.
Genuine question: if you’re writing a new CLI utility, why not Rust? This is arguably where Rust has most excelled, most famously with ripgrep.
I don’t have anything against Rust, I’m just not very familiar with it
The thing with C is that it’s almost always going to be the fastest high-ish level language and it has an extremely stable ABI. Self contained code written 30 years ago will likely compile with only minor (and sometimes no) tweaks today. You’re lucky to go 3 years on C++ without something fairly big breaking due to changes in the underlying language and ABI.
Most of the Linux kernel is written in C
This is a really good post about why C is so difficult to seriously consider replacing, or even to avoid by using a different language for certain projects: https://faultlore.com/blah/c-isnt-a-language/
It isn’t just a language, but it is a language - as it eventually gets around to saying, but it starts off by saying that it isn’t, then later corrects itself to say that it is, etc. I feel like the focus of this ignores the historical context of what C was written to be for - at the time there was like Assembly, BASIC, Fortran (?), other long-dead languages like was it A and/or A* or whatever, there was a B language too! (developed by Bell Labs, if Google can be trusted these days), etc. - and C was developed to be better than those. So saying that like it lacks type conversions is very much missing the point - those were not invented yet. A lawn mower also lacks those, but it’s okay bc it doesn’t need them:-) I am probably nit-picking far too many points, I suppose to illustrate that the style of the article became a hindrance to me to read it b/c of those reasons. But thank you for sharing regardless.
I don’t really like the title either, but the article does demonstrate how unfortunate it is that we’re effectively locked in to using the ABI at some level of nearly every piece of software.
That said, there definitely were languages with better type systems prior to the invention of C. Pascal is a frequently-cited example.
Used to be embedded systems mostly. Microwaves and the like. Although with the advance of the smart home I don’t know I’d that’s still true.
The majority of microwaves, fridges, etc. Still don’t connect to WiFi. It’s mostly the high end ones which do.
any sort of FFI on a modern OS will need to be done through C
-
Python is
NameError: name 'term\_to\_describe\_python' is not defined -
JavaScript is
[object Object] -
Ruby is
TypeError: Int can't be coerced into String -
C is
segmentation fault -
C++
-
Java is
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot read the term_to_describe_java because is null at ThrowNullExcep.main(ThrowNullExcep.java:7) Exec.main(ThrowNullExcep.java:7)C++ is std::__cxx11::list<std::__shared_ptr<table, (__gnu_cxx::_Lock_policy)0>, std::allocator<std::__shared_ptr<table, (__gnu_cxx::_Lock_policy)0> > >::erase(std::_List_const_iterator<std::__shared_ptr<table, (__gnu_cxx::_Lock_policy)0> >) /usr/include/c++/12/bits/list.tcc:158
I once forgot to put curly braces around the thing I was adding into a hashmap. If I remember correctly it was like ~300 lines of error code, non of which said “Wrong shit inside the function call ma dude”.
The only reason to use AI in programming is to simplify C++ error messages.
If you’re naming variables like that in Java you should definitely switch to C.
fixed ive using rust for a while
Rust is downloading 1546 dependencies
Crates aren’t exactly runtime dependencies, so i think that’s fine as long as the 1500+ dependencies actually help prevent reinventing the wheel 1500+ times
I’ll happily download 63928 depends so long as it continues to work. And it does, unlike python projects that also download 2352 depends but in the process brick every other python program on your system
Good for you. Not all of us have terabytes of free space on our computers.
If you’re not using a venv for python development, that’s kind of on you
-
C++ catchin strays
C pew pew
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…
Start simple.
And that probably requires not going with a tutorial. Because the JS ecosystem scorns at “simple”. Just make some HTML scaffold and use MDN to understand the DOM.
This meme is older than rust.
actually it says 8h meaning it’s only 8 hours old
It will be 8 hours old forever.
Forever young…
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.
use typescript and don’t look too hard at the infrastructure
I tried, but the infrastructure collapsed on me.
Lol any
Last company I worked at used Typescript, but used
anyfor everything… I have no idea why. I never got an actual answer.Because they didn’t want to train their JS developers and didn’t want to cause friction for new projects. They get to say they’re using TS, with basically none of the real advantages. (Apart from general rational error checking.)
Can it even make sense tho? To me JS is an example of a not too good thing that people started too eagerly so now they’re trying to make it make sense.
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.
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”.
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.
