I'm a self taught web developer working primarily with advanced PHP and wanted to get an idea of what you guys think is the most enjoyable language to create something with? I tend to feel "comfortable" coding things with PHP but hate the fact it's one of the poorest languages to have in the toolkit. Looking for prospects...
I'm pretty much a self-taught programmer in my 50th year of programming, and the languages I've enjoyed most aren't so much languages as environments. They all provide one thing: quick feedback: not necessarily a REPL, but very close.
They've included: assembly language on III Comp-80/FR-80, Basic and Modula-2 on DEC Vaxen, Oberon-F/Black Box on 68K Macs, and Octave, Racket, and Scala(in Eclipse) on current Macs. My favorite is still the Black Box environment, and I mourn the fact thet Oberon Microsystems hasn't seen fit to port it to Intel Macs.
Clojure (or any Lisp dialect). Because there are few simple powerful abstractions (so it puts less cognitive load in terms of language so you focus on problem) and of course you can change the language to suit your problem (whereas with other language you have to change your problem to suit the language)
Gonna second the Clojure. Made a thread-safe concurrent "RequestContext" mechanism for Ring apps in like 15-30 minutes of putzing around. No surprises. Very enjoyable.
Not the most remarkable Clojure story I have, just the most recent one.
I use Python in my day job, but Clojure is the only time I really feel like I'm enjoying myself or that my time is being spent well. Or that I'm not profoundly limited.
Like you, I was a self taught developer working on PHP. I switched jobs to a Python shop and love it. It is so clean and nice to write.
That said, I think I like JavaScript the most. Simply because I know it the best, it's simple, and flexible.
I picked up Objective-C last year and really liked it too.
All that to say, there's a lot more out there and I think you should definitely explore outside of PHP. Once you get comfortable with a couple the rest come much easier and it doesn't really matter anymore.
For me it's always been the language that gets the job done. If you are a hobbyist programmer you can pick whatever feels fun or interesting, but if someone is paying you to code they usually don't care about programming languages. In most real work you won't get to choose the language anyway, because the decision has been made already or you are working with a big base of production code.
I enjoy getting things to work and making clients happy. The programming language doesn't really enter into it, though some tool sets can be more frustrating than others. I charge more if I have to work with something I know in advance will be tedious or painful.
As for saying PHP is "one of the poorest languages to have in the toolkit," that's only true for bragging to other programmers. PHP is what the majority of web sites are written with. If you want to make money programming you'll find that the uncool languages and tools such as PHP and MySQL (like Visual Basic and Access before them) are the richest vein of paying work.
Keep your eye on new things but don't forget that professional programmers -- those who get paid for programming -- shouldn't hobble themselves by insisting on only using their favorite language or tools.
And then to answer your actual question: for me C has been the most enjoyable, but that is largely a function of my age and career experience. One of the most fun applications I've written in my 30+ years was in Fortran IV.
I agree with a lot of you about PHP being quite great for the applicable job. I just tend to feel the hn community can be pretty biased at times. Either way, I appreciate the input. Lots of great points made, particularly:
"You can make a masterpiece in any programming language."
and
"Keep your eye on new things but don't forget that professional programmers -- those who get paid for programming -- shouldn't hobble themselves by insisting on only using their favorite language or tools."
I actually enjoy javascript better than PHP even though it tends to be more tedious.
C# for backend stuff (servers, DB access, business logic). LINQ, Lambdas, await and all the other syntatic sugar is unmatched.
MXML + AS3 for frontend stuff. MXML with the easy (two way) databinding, event system combined with a strictly typed language like AS3 are so fast to get things done and maintainable. (For the notes: I am not using FLEX witch is kind of bloated, just MXML)
Self-taught like you and by no means a coding genius (I can only really code Ruby/JS) - but I really enjoy Ruby's syntax, its super clean and simple. I think Python has a similar approach.
Well written Ruby just reads like plan 'ol English.
I like Python and JavaScript. But I code in Java because of robustness, speed (runtime and ... development speed, yes!) and because here (in Germany) Java is first choice language and because of good salaries.
For me its C# - but maybe because I've become 'fluent' in it, so I now find it easy to churn out decent code. Also I find the Visual Studio IDE a great help.
I have to agree. Visual Studio + Reshaper makes coding an absolute pleasure.
The best investment I made was actually getting a book and really learning how to use the VS IDE - time well spent.
A poor coder blames his tools (or language). You can make a masterpiece in any programming language. For that matter though I love PHP, been using it for over 10 years. I've used other languages extensively too but for my own projects it usually falls back to good old PHP.
Language are not just tools. A tool has a specific purpose like Excel is a tool, hammer is a tool. Do you create only "Text editor" using programming language OR only "Database systems"? No, you create various kind of other tools using programming language and hence it is a kind of meta tool and thats why it matters a lot. A language is a kind of cognitive model for you to think about and build other tools.
"You can make a masterpiece in any programming language" : Sure you can (make be you will take year's in the effort), but you need to consider the cognitive load it will have.
Quoting "Beating the Averages" written by the creator of the community you're ostensibly participating in, emphasis mine because I know reading is hard:
Blub programmer wouldn't use either of them. Of course he wouldn't program in machine language. That's what compilers are for...
As long as our hypothetical Blub programmer is looking down the power continuum, he knows he's looking down.
Languages less powerful than Blub are obviously less powerful, because they're missing some feature he's used to. But when our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other direction, up the power continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up.
What he sees are merely weird languages. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to Blub, but with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well. Blub is good enough for him, because he thinks in Blub.
When we switch to the point of view of a programmer using any of the languages higher up the power continuum, however, we find that he in turn looks down upon Blub. How can you get anything done in Blub? It doesn't even have y.
By induction, the only programmers in a position to see all the differences in power between the various languages are those who understand the most powerful one. (This is probably what Eric Raymond meant about Lisp making you a better programmer.) You can't trust the opinions of the others, because of the Blub paradox: they're satisfied with whatever language they happen to use, because it dictates the way they think about programs.
Edit:
Your crab-in-a-bucket mentality will not be welcomed warmly here. You might consider encouraging other people to learn new things instead of being a sour asshole to somebody asking the community for advice.
> Your crab-in-a-bucket mentality will not be welcomed warmly here.
Excuse me?
All I said was "you shouldn't be taking for granted that PHP is terrible, when you don't know other languages, just because a bunch of people have told you so."
I have actually been here quite a bit longer than you have; years before I created my account. I've also been a professional developer for more than 20 years.
Just because you disagree with my position doesn't mean you get to insult me and announce that a community which has received me better than it has received you (take a look at our score averages, please) is not going to like me.
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> You might consider encouraging other people to learn new things
Maybe you should calm down and re-read what you're arguing with. That's exactly what I did.
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> instead of being a sour asshole to somebody asking the community for advice.
I think maybe you should also consider whether you're speaking to yourself by accident. I didn't curse, or make any personal attacks.
What I did was say "if you make this assumption, and choose not to learn directly, it will cost you."
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> Please go back to lurking.
I would appreciate it if you don't speak to anyone in this fashion anymore. Your tone is far beyond appropriate, you don't appear to have taken the time to figure out what I was actually saying, and you have been really quite unacceptably aggressive.
If anything, your tone encourages me to speak out more often, because I find this sort of lynchpin "anyone who disagrees with the herd is just being a crabby asshole" nonsense to be one of the most direct ways to challenge people's intent to grow.
I mean, yes, you've managed to quote a blub article. Very nice.
But I don't think you've received the impact you were going for. I was not an asshole by saying "don't take for granted what the crowd tells you; learn for yourself." And I don't need to be told, in response, that I should be encouraging learning.
The next time you feel like being this severely critical in public, it may help for you to take a few hour breather, and then come back and make sure the person really actually did say the thing you thought, and that your tone in response is at least somewhat appropriate.
I hope you will consider the possibility that you're just yelling at your own imagination. I'm kind of mortified by what just happened here.
I don't know how to walk away from this supportively. I realize you're trying to defend someone, but it's from an attack that didn't exist, and in response, you've gotten just astoundingly vulgar.
They've included: assembly language on III Comp-80/FR-80, Basic and Modula-2 on DEC Vaxen, Oberon-F/Black Box on 68K Macs, and Octave, Racket, and Scala(in Eclipse) on current Macs. My favorite is still the Black Box environment, and I mourn the fact thet Oberon Microsystems hasn't seen fit to port it to Intel Macs.