Thread: What's your favourite language?

ain't Cocoa objective C ??

You are definitely missing some languages on there.

Ruby, Python, Lua, PHP... etc...

Cocoa is actually an API to access OS X systems. Objective-C is separate, but commonly used next to Python for programming on OS X.

You're missing tons of popular languages e.g. perl, python, php, ruby, tcl, awk, lisp and its many variants, Haskell, OCaml, Objective-C, various shells, etc. By the way, C# has nothing to do with Cocoa (NeXT's/Apple's API for Objective-C). The main implementation of C# is part of Microsoft's .NET environment. Also, markup languages don't really belong in the poll because they aren't comparable to programming languages; the former specify a format and the latter are a series of instructions.

P.S. Certain programming languages are better for certain tasks, but I tend to use Python for anything that doesn't require the executable to be an opaque binary (and security through obscurity isn't a great practice anyway). By the way, ninja9578, is there anything specific that you dislike about Java? And probably a better question, do you actually know the language well enough to pass judgment? I can think of many Java annoyances off the top of my head but none that don't apply to Objective-C/Cocoa.

I am pretty fluent in HTML and XHTML, and I am learning Javascript. I like Javascript more, you can do more with it

My favorite language is english. But its obviously not yours. See, because you never said you were talking about PROGRAMMING languages!

But being serious, I quite liked Haskell. Twas refreshing.

But for simplicities sake, I liked plain old C. Although I haven't had much experience with its variants.

Assembly

Memory editing hacking games... just used it abit from tutorials for memory editors

Woops, Cocoa is objective C :-\

Dreamviews polls can only accept 10 different responses, I chose the most popular. I should have added Python, but forgot.

My biggest annoyance with Java is lack of a (real) compiler. I'd rather have to port a program for multiple platforms that have one slower app. Java 3 (version ?) added a feature that fully compiles commonly used methods, but it is still largely virtual machine based. That and the fact that the programs are HUGE. I can write a program in C++ that compiles to 100KB that will compile to 500KB in Java, a C port would be even smaller and by far the fastest. ("Bloatware" is one of my top pet peeves... 2GB for an office suite? AHHH!)

Converting everything to big (little?) endian notation also bugs me since I do a lot of bit manipulation for speed purposes.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

My biggest annoyance with Java is lack of a (real) compiler. I'd rather have to port a program for multiple platforms that have one slower app. Java 3 (version ?) added a feature that fully compiles commonly used methods, but it is still largely virtual machine based. That and the fact that the programs are HUGE. I can write a program in C++ that compiles to 100KB that will compile to 500KB in Java, a C port would be even smaller and by far the fastest. ("Bloatware" is one of my top pet peeves... 2GB for an office suite? AHHH!)

That's not a problem with Java, just with Sun Microsystem's implementation. Check out the GNU Compiler for Java (GCJ) if you prefer to compile Java source code directly to machine code ahead of time.

C

C/C++ with assembler in appropriate places. (Just finished optimizing an IDEA-implementation using SSE2, now that was fun.)

[edit]
ADDA? Never heard of, and I would think Ada would be more popular.
[/edit]

Originally Posted by Nefarious

Assembly

Memory editing hacking games... just used it abit from tutorials for memory editors

Good old softice, ollydebug, w32dasm , I used to crack programs and games too (only as a hobby, never released anything), didn't do too much assembly, it was just basic code caves to output serials and change jumps etc, although i suppose you have to know a certain amount to follow the code.

My favourite is either VB because its so damn easy to pick up and use, and if you know what you're doing you can make some pretty decent apps with it... or C/C++ because I really like the languages and you can actually make decent crackme's with it, unlike with VB. Im a sucker for visual programming though

I can only answer HTML/XML/XHTML as that is all I know.

Gaelic.

:O Where is the Common Lisp?

Originally Posted by archdreamer

:O Where is the Common Lisp?

It'th mithing...

Haha I chuckled

Favourite?
I'm most at home with C++
but for sentimental value - Sinclair Basic

Originally Posted by Ynot

Favourite?
I'm most at home with C++
but for sentimental value - Sinclair Basic

Man did YOU just date yourself.

Commodore Basic for me!

Punchcard FORTRAN, anybody? Or (shudder) COBOL?

Code:

IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
       PROGRAM-ID. HELLO-WORLD.
       PROCEDURE DIVISION.
       PARAGRAPH-1.
           DISPLAY 'Thou shalt never speaketh of COBOL. It is the work of Satan'.
           STOP RUN.

Oh yeah, as Stalker said, what the heck is ADDA?

Originally Posted by archdreamer

:O Where is the Common Lisp?

And what about Emacth Lithp? Ynot has a nice Scheme going ...

Originally Posted by pj

Man did YOU just date yourself.

I'm only 25
it's just the ZX spectrum was the only machine I had around during my childhood

I believe in using the right tool for the problem. And yes, without the more scripty stuff on your list, you are greatly reducing your ability to efficiently solve certain types of problems :p.

As for Java being slow... unless you're writing a low level thing (like an OS, or a high-end video game), the "slowness" introduced by using bytecode/interpreter is negligible. If you write a service or web app that talks to a database, the network overhead and database calls are the limiting factor (and those are almost never implemented in java anyway). If it really is your java code that's slow, then it's probably bad code, and can be fixed by high level optimization.

I think most people equate Java to slow, because of poorly written swing GUI's
(heaps of donkey work written directly into the GUI event handlers, meaning this donkey work ends up in the same thread as the GUI)

Originally Posted by Ynot

I think most people equate Java to slow, because of poorly written swing GUI's
(heaps of donkey work written directly into the GUI event handlers, meaning this donkey work ends up in the same thread as the GUI)

That's probably it. The vast majority of my Java work has been either back-end stuff, or JSP, so I've very seldom touched swing. That being said, the one school project I've used Swing for was really bad. A buddy and I did the backend portion, and trusted the other two to do a front-end framework to make hooking up this stuff really easy, and they fucked it up royally. Apparently, to them, copying and pasting 50-100 lines of code all over the place is acceptable *sigh*.

The Eclipse UI is written using swing, isn't it? That one's pretty reasonable.

Originally Posted by dsr

And what about Emacth Lithp? Ynot has a nice Scheme going ...

Ynot, you skipped over my pun!

As I said before, the Java language itself is not slow, but Sun Microsystem's implementation does underperform native code for most operations. Ahead-of-time compilers like GCJ solve the whole "virtual machines are slow" problem.

GUIs written in Swing tend to be less responsive than native ones because they take up a ton of memory and they don't use the OS's native widgets in order to be completely platform-independent. If you want to write a responsive but still highly portable GUI, check out the wxWidgets project. It's mainly for C++, but there appears to be a Java port. My experience with wxPython suggests that you'll write GUIs a lot faster than you will with Swing, but that might be due to Python's merits as opposed to those of wxWidgets.

Originally Posted by Replicon

The Eclipse UI is written using swing, isn't it? That one's pretty reasonable.

That's because it's written in SWT, not Swing.