Hating on languages you don't use

As everyone knows I've been around a while and I've seen the advent of many different languages. They're not good or bad -- they're different tools, for different things with different features; that may or may not be better for your project. I think the popularity is based on how useful they are and how quickly a programmer can learn to implement the benefits.

So, I have a story about this:
About 4 or 5 years ago I took a lot of flack from another dev who did only server side code (C#, java, php). He flat out told me he thought all frontend coding was non-essential and could be replaced with a framework of some kind. He also said things like javascript, CSS and HTML was easy.

So, I said to him "if that's true, let's both code a little js and see how we do". He said yes; but then he made a point of avoiding me at all costs for like two weeks! He never brought it up again and started showing me the respect we all deserve.

Haters gonna hate. If you don't like it, address it and maybe you can change their minds. :) :)

I think it's partially up to not only languages but also the timings we meet them.

I had trouble to use JavaScript ten years ago and enjoy using it these days.
I don't know which is the reason that it has changed or that I have.

When it comes to PHP, I didn't like its grammar while just reading its code.
And I felt more familiar with it gradually as I understood how to write it.

Haters gonna hate. Potaters gonna potate. I got no time for it.

Every language is good at something

Except JavaScript.

(Sorry.)

I think it's perfectly normal to hate languages for the effect they have on the world, in terms of software that is around us, what languages new projects choose, what skills and concepts developers learn.

For example, why not hate Go for taking developers and projects that would otherwise have used Rust? If there are pain points that make people choose Go for server and cli projects where performance isn't absolutely critical, these should be addressed to make Rust a better language/ecosystem, not resorting to a language with garbage collection, no generics, and weird package management.

Also Java. And I'm not talking about today when it's popular to hate, I mean back when it was the hypest.

“There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.”

― Bjarne Stroustrup, The C++ Programming Language

I like languages but I don’t like frameworks around it. As Michael Brooks already said in his comment: “People just blindly follow what others say because it's hip or cool”.

I hate anything that transpiles to javascript, including javascript itself :)

The best way to overcome herd mentality influencing you to hate a tool is to unplug your wifi router and get out of your head.

I hate PHP and JavaScript and I use both a lot.

I also love both languages in a way, too.

You are free to love and hate whatever language, just don't intentionally make others feel bad about their language.

I like trash-talking PHP, but it's only fun for me if it's among people who also know PHP and can relate. When I see somebody who doesn't know PHP trash-talking it, it does bother me. It's like "ha ha, really funny /s"

It's like, I can beat up my little brother or make fun of him but "you better not lay a finger on him, and don't you dare talk about my family like that."

I think we all know what this really means is "publicly hating in a way intended to demean those that use it".

Hands up who likes being told that the thing you like is stupid and you are stupid for liking it? Anyone?

It's absolute fine to hate a language, a food, a genre of music etc. Having a personal opinion on stuff is one of the joys of life.

Forcibly inflicting or publicly broadcasting those opinions, however, is not cool.

Exactly the same reason we have "console wars" (and why people find it so hard to get out of a con deal) - no-one wants to admit they are wrong, therefore they will defend their choice.

With coding (and consoles) it's not only about not being wrong, but being right-er than others, to justify your investment in time in your toolset (or few hundred bucks in your choice of console).

Therefore any competing technology is frowned upon.

It obviously does not help that language demand sometimes is superficially and in extreme measures inflated not by what it does, but how many non-technical people demand it, either for direct project work or recruitment agencies hiring to match their client requests.

Not a surprise then that programmers feel the need to publicly make every other language or framework look absolutely useless and incompetent.

I did java for about 8 years, never really liked it.

I was sceptical about moving to javascript after 8 years of java, but I loved JS.

I came back to PHP after about 10 years of not using it, and I loved it.

Bottom line: it's just a language. Languages evolve, and it really depends on what you're trying to achieve which language is suitable to your needs. They're just tools. As with real-life languages, it doesn't hurt to actually learn something about a language before you start bashing it.

Unproductive disparagement of other programming languages is explicitly disallowed at discourse.elm-lang.org, for essentially this reason.

I'll add that it is the case that some languages are designed with haste or other constraints that make them less good at even their stated purpose than other alternatives. The thing is, though, that this is virtually never an interesting insight that adds to conversations in the places it is brought up, both for logical and contextual reasons and because tribal boundary drawing in online conversations tends not to lead to positive exchanges. "I don't like using foo-lang, and I think this understand of my own process for creating mental models explains why." is a correct characterization, but "foo-lang sucks" feels way better to say.