A proper language comparison...

[Chris]

On Friday, 26 July 2013 at 14:17:45 UTC, Chris wrote:
> 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.

If I think about it, learning and knowing languages makes you a 
better programmer. If you know D, you become a better programmer 
in general. If you learn Objective-C or C or whatever, you become 
a better programmer. You learn new concepts and know what works 
and what doesn't, rather than sheepishly following rules as if 
they were universal laws. Ok, that's a bit off topic now.