So, I'm a programmer so I know a few computer languages. Here's how I rank
them, from most favorite to least favorite.
- Java - I just recently came to feel this way, and it's somewhat
a reflection of the IDE I've been using, IntelliJ's IDEA. It's awesome.
But meaningless for me to explain why. Anyway, I'm back on C++ and I miss
it. Anyway, the great thing about Java is that it makes doing everything
easy. Which, incidentally, is what makes IntelliJ good also - it makes
everything easy. So instead of wasting your time figuring out obscure
constructs or whatever, you can spend time writing meaningful code. It's
amazing how easy and how fast it is getting something working in Java.
Plus there's documentation galore online so you can always find what you
need.
The worst thing about it is that it's so darn slow. I wish Sun would be
more amenable to seeing it a cross platform language instead of having
these theoretical issues about the JVM. So that you could compile Java
into native machine code. I dunno, I think that would make Java more
attractive. Anyway, yeah, my favorite language.
- LiSP - I barely remember any LiSP now, but I'm one of the few
people I think that have taken a dedicated LiSP programming class. It's
absolutely unreadable, confusing and kind of limiting. But when you know
how to use it, and for certain applications, it's awesome. Did you know
emacs is written in LiSP? That's why your .emacs file has all the defun
functions and parentheses all over the place. I dunno, it's interesting to
me.
- C++ - The thing that makes C++ powerful is the same reason it
sucks - you can do almost anything in C++. Like you can override the '+'
operator for classes (I think). Stuff like that. So yeah, there's so much
you can do in C++, and it's pretty awesome. It's just incredibly complex,
and unlike Java, it's not easy to find what you need. Kernighan and
Ritchie's C manual is both concise and complete. Very useful. Stroustrop's
book is immense and confusing. His language is the same. But, it's still
a lot more useful than C, if for the STL alone.
- C - There's a quote about C somewhere, "All the power of
assembly with all the expressiveness of assembly." I dunno, in a lot of
ways I still feel most comfortable with C, but in terms of usefulness, how
quickly things can get implemented, it's probably at the bottom of the
list. LiSP maybe is lower, but in certain domains it's a lot easier.