Stop comparing programming languages
- Python is versatile
- JavaScript is powerful
- Ruby is elegant
- C is essential
- C++
- Java is robust
C++ EXISTS
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.
C++ is a surprise CVE generator.
I was caught by surprise and for some reason this joke clicked so much that I laughed for a while. Kudos
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.”
- PHP is old
- HTML is NOT A PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE!!!
- CSS is
︎ ︎ ︎ not alig-
︎ ︎ ︎ ned
PHP is old
Same age as Ruby, Java and JavaScript, but younger than Python, C, and C++. 😛
I’m guessing they meant “old” as in “no one uses it anymore, it’s dead”
Don’t tell my bosses that. Or the PHP community as a whole for that matter. Then I might have to get a real job.
I’m sorry. If you exclude the millions of sites using it, it is virtually unused.
The year they both came out (1995) I was coding in Visual Basic 3. Ack.
Meanwhile PHP quietly runs 80% of the internet by being used for WordPress.
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 lolActual 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
C++ catchin strays
C pew pew
- C++ is fine
- Python is fine
- C# is fine
- PHP is fine
- JavaScript is fine
- C is fine
- Java is fine
I could go on
Go on…
Don’t give them ideas
PHP is fine
i will fine you
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.
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 compromisedYeah, 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.
exposing the machinations of the underlying CPU with no regard for safety is like, the definition of a footgun
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.
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
What’s the point of having a function in the standard library if the universal recommendation is to never use it?
Is that the recommendation? This is the first time I’ve actually seen it discussed.
I’m wondering at this point if a new, different stdlib would be better. Or just use Rust.
To be honest, my comment probably applies more to
gets, but the point is the same.
A true programmer
Are those adjectives randomly chosen?
Pretty much so.
Yeah, JavaScript powerful? How?
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
JavaScript is AN UNAVOIDABLE HARDSHIP
By running everthing in a single thread obviously. Won’t get more powerful than that
good luck doing frontend development without it, but it can also do backend development
it can do everything
but it can also do backend development
The same way a rusty spoon can dig a hole, sure.
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.).
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?
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.
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
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.
I exercised JavaScript out of some of my apps, and I’m happier for it.
Did they get a good workout?
The thing it can do best is bewilder developers with it’s strange choices
i wouldn’t want to program in pure assembly either but asm is definitely powerful
I would argue that ASM isn’t “powerful”. It’s direct. You can access advanced features of a CPUs architecture with the trade off limited portability. Sometimes it’s necessary but power comes from being able to express complex control and data structures in a concise and readable amount of text.
The subjective topic of what “concise and readable” means is where the language wars come in.
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 ?
WASM has no native ability to access most web APIs, including the DOM. JavaScript is literally unavoidable on the front end.
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.
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.
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.
C++ is all of those, provided you pick any 10% of it.
You’re not supposed to cast every spell in the evil grimoire.
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.)
When the standard for “robust” is Java–
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.
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++.
C# is also here
I’m a [primarily] C# turned JavaScript dev. I miss C#.
The ecosystem is really it, C# as a language isn’t the best, objectively Typescript is a much more developer friendly and globally type safe (at design time) language. It’s far more versatile than C# in that regard, to the point where there is almost no comparison.
But holy hell the .Net ecosystem is light-years ahead, it’s so incredibly consistent across major versions, is extremely high quality, has consistent and well considered design advancements, and is absolutely bloody fast. Tie that in with first party frameworks that cover most of all major needs, and it all works together so smoothly, at least for web dev.
deleted by creator
Shhh don’t tell people they’ll ruin it.
Tea? i saw it once in a wikipedia article.
ITT: Rust programmers rewriting the joke in Rust.
