In this weekly roundup, we highlight what we believe to be the most thoughtful, helpful, and/or interesting discussion over the past week! Though we are strong believers in healthy and respectful debate, we typically try to choose discussions that are positive and avoid those that are overly contentious.
Any folks whose articles we feature here will be rewarded with our Discussion of the Week badge. ✨
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The Discussion of the Week
This week we're spotlighting @kaamkiya's fun and interesting discussion titled "What is the most fun coding language?"
Kaamkiya's prompt is such a great one for getting folks to open up about their interests. Not only that, but it can be quite helpful to a newbie, providing them a window into other's preferences, so they might get a sense of what different programming languages are like.
Like a lotta the best discussion posts out there, the focus is really on the comments sections. There are lots of different folks chiming in with their faves — MiniScript, JS, Ruby, Rust, Lisp, Closure, Python... the list goes on.
It's cool to hear folks' reasonings and breakdowns too. For instance, shoutout to @sedwin97 for this thorough and interesting (thoroughly interesting) take on Perl:
Perl can be a very fun language. It gives you the ability to do so much that you can write some really cool code that other languages would never allow. That being said, the fact that Perl does that is also why it is the most hated language. I enjoyed it for a little while but I got really sick of it as I wrote more complex scripts.
Just to highlight my point, in Perl's own documentation it says
...Perl always gives you enough rope to hang yourself with if you ask for it
You can make some really cool knots with that rope but you could end up with that knot around your own neck.
And sometimes you don't know that the rope is around your neck as this person stated
Perl idea of freedom is to give you enough rope to hang yourself, if you are tempted to. But sometimes I got paranoid feeling that there is enough rope around my neck, and I cannot feel it ... yet, but rope is still there. Sometimes I am making decisions without fully understanding the price I just agreed to pay.
There's always time to hop in and make the case for whatever you think is the most fun programming. Don't be shy, get in there and share your thoughts! 🗣
What are your picks?
The DEV Community is particularly special because of the kind, thoughtful, helpful, and entertaining discussions happening between community members. As such, we want to encourage folks to participate in discussions and reward those who are initiating or taking part in conversations across the community. After all, a community is made possible by the people interacting inside it.
There are loads of great discussions floating about in this community. This is just the one we chose to highlight. 🙂
I urge you all to share your favorite discussion of the past week below in the comments. And if you're up for it, give the author an @mention — it'll probably make 'em feel good. 💚
Top comments (20)
Thank you so much! This made my day :)
Hey!! So happy to hear that. And really, thank you so much for writing up this discussion!
I'm sorry if I mistakenly hijacked your topic, btw. 😅
I did change the formula for the title of my post in this series in an effort to grab more attention — previously I'd have called this Discussion of the Week - v11 — but I really wasn't expecting folks to comment with their most fun coding languages here.
So, any onlookers, I'd love to hear your choices in the thread of my post, but also make sure to participate in the original post:
What is the most fun coding language?
Kaamkiya ・ Nov 27
Depends on your definition of fun.
For me, PHP is incredibly fun, because it is really flexible and you can do anything you want... for good or for bad (and unfortunately older versions allowed the bad things often.) Also, CSS is super fun. You can do magic with it beyond styling web pages.
...but those two languages seem to have bad rep (more like general misunderstanding, but won't fight that right now.)
I really just ignore most of the bad rep. some languages get. Often its because the one criticizing try to do stuff the language wasn't designed for, or press the boundaries of its use. I often make an allegory to a tools chest. You can definitively get a screw in with a hammer, but why not just use the screwdriver instead. Languages are like tools, and most languages have pros and cons. Some are more arcane than others, and some are specialized for a particular task. For instance you can code scripts in postscript.
make the file factorial.ps:
% Factorial function definition
/factorial {
% Expect the number on the stack
1 exch { % Start with 1 and the number n
mul % Multiply the running total by n
1 sub % Decrement n
dup 0 le % Duplicate n and check if it is less than or equal to 0
} { exit } ifelse % If n is 0 or less, exit the loop
loop % Loop until n reaches 0
pop % Remove the last 0 from the stack
} def
% Example usage: Calculate 5!
5 factorial
% Print the result
and then go
gs -q -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE factorial.ps
...But why ???
Agreed. But being able to do things that the language was not designed for (e.g. doing CSS Art or creating a FSM with HTML+CSS) is part of the fun.
I absolutely agree. I do stuff like that all the time just for the heck of it. Besides its a very cool way to test the capabilities of the language. That is actually why I found out that postscript can be (mis)used to "outsource" codebits to a postscript capable printer ;) ...
For practical fun, as I've mentioned before, Python, D, and F♯ are all great fun languages.
Back in the day, I had a lot of fun programming in 6502 assembly, but I had even more fun programming in 68000 assembly (which was an absolute joy to program in).
I really think it depends on what I am trying to do.
Overall I mostly code in C++-17 simply because, that is the language I have worked with for the longest. I do write scripts in bash. And sometimes small things in Python (I am currently learning that one) But the most fun language that is a tough one. I actually find c fun because you can go void (*f[SIZE1][SIZE2])(void *); (and yes I know it is a big no no, but :D its fun)
I find Dart extremely fun. I added Perl to my “to-learn” list because of @sedwin97 ’s recommendation.
I thought my comment would scare people off. It was not my intention to encourage someone to learn this language, but I'm glad I could have an impact.
It actually made me want to learn it! I like languages that give you the freedom to screw up (and come up with extremely hacky solutions).
All great inventions started as unstable hacks (in my opinion).
I’m also a big fan of Perl.
Dear devs.
I am glad to send my oppinion on this discusstion.
For me, Vue.js is very incredibly fun language. Vue has all advantage of React and Angluar. Of course, other developer's overview will be different with me.
Anyway, Vue will be grow the best langauge.
Hi Alain.
Vue is a Javascript based framework, not in language in itself. ;)
That being said I worked with Vue for a little less than 5 years and it was a great experience!
Hi Julien.
I have 4 years of experience with Vue.
The one I get to use to build cool stuff!
Right now I am still going strong with JavaScript (CommonJS form), and Rust is still fun to work with as well.
It definitely ain't APL! That is a Write-Only-Language
Since the majority of my coding career, it would have to be C, C#, C++.
awk is a very useful tool.
Definitely Piet:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esoteric_pro...
JavaScript mostly if you are working in Web Dev. I feel learning C# is fun too if you are into making games in Unity.
For me, it is Css.
It so fun to learn and use, one can use it turn the most boring websites to pretty interesting ones.