A proper language comparison...

Chris wendlec at tcd.ie
Fri Jul 26 07:17:44 PDT 2013


On Friday, 26 July 2013 at 14:05:12 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 03:18:03PM +0200, Chris wrote:
> [...]
>> I have learned to be wary of comparisons like that. Any 
>> language
>> that is sponsored or owned by a big company always 
>> "outperforms"
>> other languages, and at the end of the day they only want to 
>> bind
>> you to their products, no matter how "open source" they are.
>
> +1.
>
> I'm skeptical of attempts to reduce everything down a single 
> number or
> three, that can serve as a basis for numerical (or hand-waving)
> comparisons. As if programming languages were that simple that 
> one could
> place them neatly on what is effectively a scale of 1 to 10!
>
>
>> You can basically proof whatever you want. Most of the 
>> discussions I
>> have had don't revolve around whether the language is good or 
>> not,
>> it's about what people have heard/read, "Who uses it?", "I've 
>> heard
>> ..." "Someone said ..." I once told a guy about D. He said 
>> "Ah, D,
>> old-fashioned!" and he showed me a link that said "C# has a 
>> more
>> modern feature ... bla bla". How ... scientific!
>
> I get that a lot from Java fanboys. They make bold-sounding 
> statements
> like "Java is the future!", "Java is the best!", "D sucks, 
> nobody uses
> it!", "Java will get you a job easily!". But I've yet to hear 
> some
> factual evidence to back up these claims. Well, maybe except 
> the last
> one -- it's true that given Java's popularity, it has a high 
> chance of
> landing you a job. But the point is, just because it will land 
> you a job
> doesn't necessarily make it a *good* language, it merely shows 
> that it's
> a *popular* one.  Popular doesn't imply good.
>
>
> T

Yep. And I think that someone who knows D or any other language 
that is not mainstream is seriously into programming. If you know 
Java or Python, what does that mean? That you are a good 
programmer? If you know how to program, you can learn any 
language you want. The question is usually not "I wonder if I can 
write the program." the question is usally "I know what I have to 
do. But how do I do it in D, C, Java ...?" It's the how, not the 
if.


More information about the Digitalmars-d mailing list