I am following The Practical Dev and dev.to for quite some time and had the impression, that this great community consists of a majority of frontend and scripting language developers. I was more than happy, that my article about Modern Java Development gained some attention.
Now I am curious to know, What is you main programming language and what are you using it for?
Top comments (103)
Vanilla Javascript, however, I'm shopping around for a library or framework. I'm looking at React for obvious reasons * coughiworkatfbcough * but I've recently been Ruby on Rails-curious since I've heard it mentioned a lot on Learn to Code With Me and Code Newbie podcasts.
TL;DR: since JS was my first language, I equate new programming languages with what I know in JS. So yeaaaah. Vanilla JS.
You may want to take a look at Cycle.js if you are interested in functional programming. Found it, used it, then joined the team
Ruby is my main language. I code in other stuff as well, but I'd call myself a Rubyist at heart.
dev.to is built with love and Ruby. ❤️
What did you do before dev.to?
Immediately before dev.to I was building a messaging dashboard with Node, and before that it was a marketplace app in Rails.
Most of the code I write at work is in Java, but more and more I am replacing my Java side projects with Kotlin.
And what kind of SW are you building?
I'm a consultant so the specific projects/technologies change frequently at work, but my current project is a large Android application. A lot of my side projects are also Android apps, but the big thing I'm working on is Orchid, a new static site generator. The core is still in Java, but I've been building all its many plugins in Kotlin.
Nice. I’m also tempted to start with Kotlin. But as I had the same feeling when Scala came out, I’m waiting if the hype will last...
Yeah, I had similar concerns for a while, but when Google announced first-class Android Kotlin support, I decided to take the plunge. I think the support of Google and Jetbrains, both large and influential companies in the Java space, give Kotlin an edge that other JVM languages do not have.
Python here ! For tasks automation and APIs, but for pretty much everything else too.
Jasmine, a testing framework for Javascript, since my job is software QA. I use Protractor and supertest with it to test Angular front ends and REST APIs.
Mocha would have worked for those, too, but Jasmine is a tad more straight forward. If more people were reading my spec files, I'd consider switching.
Personal projects then end up using Angular or vanillaJS, but I'm itching to get back into Python to do something data related.
Are you only write tests? In my team, we also develop angular apps, but all testing from unit to E2E UI tests is done by our developers. Do you really see a need to have a separate QA?
At my location (one office of a larger organization), they try to maintain a 2:1 dev:QA ratio within teams. Devs write unit tests for their code and then QA writes the integration and E2E tests for the app as a whole.
In theory, this allows for devs to focus on deving and QAs to not be as tied to the code so they’re able to catch things better (going off of the spec rather than what the implementation does).
So, does it work in your opinion? I mean in terms of quality and also team responsibility? I would assume that it will end up in a situation where “they” write the bugs while “them” alway being to picky.
I’ve been on teams where it’s been siloed between dev and QA, and there has been a bit of infighting amongst those who find bugs and those who write code. It’s never been hostile just certainly a sense of otherness.
Most teams, though, if QA and dev are integrated then there’s no issue with that. Like, don’t have QA site bunched together away from dev, don’t have QA only lunches, etc. If everyone acts as a team, there’s no otherness.
Biggest issue I have with it is that I’m bored more often than not. Once I set up the initial framework, it’s a whole lot of waiting on dev to implement features for me to E2E test. 2:1 is good when a project is spinning up fast, but I think they need to revisit how many QAs are needed when a project is more in a sustaining pace. If the devs are working on infestructure or tech debt, I’ve got nothing to do.
Java for the front and backend: serverless on AWS Lambda with an Android client. In the near past I was using Java for web servers using Spring & Tomcat.
I've been learning Python on my own time, but putting that on pause while I pickup Objective-C and Swift for iOS at work.
In what field are you working?
I work for a website that sells books :)
Moonscript(Lua), especially with Lapis + Openresty for backend and rest API. For the frontend, vanilla Javascript with frameworks like React help me build prototypes faster. Because Moonscript and Javascript are so alike, I learn one for two.
Interesting. What kind of apps (as in domain) are you building with Moonscript?
A news web app (naneung.com/) and a web note editor that translate karaoke into lao, currently in development.
To illustrate what I'm doing...
Fancy! karaoke? 🎤
Reminds me of using Pinyin for Chinese...
Yes. Karaoke is the most popular language among millenials in Laos for chatting.
I work in education, and I use Ruby as my go-to platform for web apps and system scripting. It's stable, performant at my scale, and the code is beautiful.
When I want to write a truly bulletproof server/daemon I've been leaning toward Elixir. When I want to write front-end apps that go beyond Neapolitan JavaScript, I use Elm. I'm very happy with this set of tools!
JavaScript, if it had static types I’d use it for everything. But right now I pretty much only use it on the web which is where I spend most of my time anyway haha
Why not using Typescript then? Our frontend devs migrates all Code to TypeScript from JS. You still need to transpile but maybe WebAssembly will have some answers in the future...
Because typescript needs to be transpiled, and I like being more in control of what gets outputted
Well, even ES6 needs to be transpiled...
BTW, you didn’t answer my second question. What are you building with JS?
All sorts of things :)
github.com/Nektro/apps.nektro.net is a WIP suite of PWAs to serve as Web alternatives to all your regular native app needs. Every OS comes with basic productivity utilities, and I'm making those very apps for the Web.
github.com/Nektro/modules.js is my collection of ES2015+ modules for all sorts of things you might need when making programs with JS
Those are my main projects right now and I've plenty in the works on the side too
I’m using Ruby on Rails to build a music school administration app.
Interesting! What was first, you or the app? 😄
I was hired as a teacher/manager, and I learned to code specifically to build this app.
I started off in the same job as the other managers. I was more efficient than the other managers at technical jobs, so I got put in charge of all things tech (and fewer things sales 😄). We wanted to make our teachers' notes paperless and accessible to other teachers, so I built note systems in a no-code app platform based on spreadsheets. That was slow and clunky, so I learned to program in order to build a web app. I'm the only coder, so I needed a framework for fast development, thus Rails.
So yeah, one thing kind of just led to another. To be honest, I guess my main language is actually music. 🎶
Awesome!