What programming language people are migrating to?
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... according to people who go out of their way to use Git.
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woah, nice analysis. it has the problem that almost every study of this kind has, it's only focused on the OSS. but anyway, interesting
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That makes no sense. All anyone does anymore is Javascript, no matter how bad an idea that is. Everything is falling before that mass of putrid code...
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Everyone is moving to Python. The smartest people move first, but all will follow the lead. Brace for a world with no braces in the scope.
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@dse The smart ones are already moving off of Python, as they realize what the even smarter ones knew all along: trying to build large, complex projects in a dynamic language is an exercise in pain and futility.
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@masonwheeler that is what libraries and Cython are for. Prototype in Python, then make libraries in some system language then glue everything in Python.
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@magus said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
That makes no sense. All anyone does anymore is Javascript, no matter how bad an idea that is. Everything is falling before that mass of putrid code...
You missed this part:
We did not include Javascript because …
The first reason is that 40% of Github users we analyzed had JS in their profiles, and the proposed transition model becomes useless. The second is, citing Erik, “(a) if you are doing it on the frontend, you are kind of stuck with it anyway, so there’s no moving involved (except if you do crazy stuff like transpiling, but that’s really not super common) (b) everyone refers to Javascript on the backend as ‘Node’”. Our data retrieval pipeline could not distinguish regular JS from Node and thus we had to exclude it completely.
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@wharrgarbl So, "Okay, lots of factors mean we had to take JS off the list, but it's absolutely the thing that would have been in first place by any measurement if we hadn't"
Good. Fine.
Our world is doomed.
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I'd like to know the story behind the four people who went from C# to Fortran last year.
Or, from Erik's graph, those who moved to cobol.
I'm imagining this guy, fed up with getting Visual Studio to work, flipping his desk over dramatically and saying, "That's IT! I'm moving to FORTRAN!"
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@the_quiet_one said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
"That's IT! I'm moving to FORTRAN!"
that'd make a really good signature for this place
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BAL and PAL-8 all day long....
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@magus Well, part of the problem they may have had was distinguishing front-end JavaScript from back-end JavaScript which are two very different beasts.
It's not a surprise that they would want to not include the former for the reasons they listed.
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@powerlord I still have no idea why any sane person would choose to write server code in JavaScript, for any reason.
There are languages better suited for it. There are languages better suited for front-end work, if only JavaScript was not the only language supported directly by browsers.
Everyone is really excited to be able to use this rough, badly designed, poorly scoped, horribly typed language for everything, but as far as I'm concerned, a tool should be selected because it's the right tool for the job, not for any other reason.
And right now, JavaScript is a tool that is only even considered because there isn't an alternative. No one should be excited about that.
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@magus you know, i used to hate javascript... and it took a good 10+ years, but it's now actually my favorite of all languages at the moment. Not because of some underlying superiority of resource usage or language prettiness.... I just like it is all :(
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@magus Tell that to the people who use NodeJS which is server-side JS.
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@the_quiet_one said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
from C# to Fortran last year.
all hired by banks.
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@darkmatter Yes, isn't it interesting how when someone kidnaps you, forces you into something, and gives you no alternatives, eventually you seem to just fall in love?
@powerlord said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
@magus Tell that to the people who use NodeJS which is server-side JS.
That's precisely what I'm doing. The very concept is insane.
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oh wait, nevermind.
gives you no alternatives, eventually you seem to just fall in love?
it's d3's fault tbh
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@magus i actually work in a more or less "experimental" group within the company i'm at, so i can do whatever i feel like for the most part - so long as it doesn't cost anything ;).
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@darkmatter And that's great, unless you're doing web stuff, where its JavaScript or bust. You can compile to JS if you're feeling fancy, but that's pretty uncommon and not great for debugging.
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@magus i do a pretty wide variety of shit - not many can boast doing RPG IV and Javascript in the same day's work (only 1 of those by choice ;) )
that being said... if you've seen RPG, maybe you know why i love getting to work in Javascript!
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@darkmatter said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
RPG IV
ick. get your boss to switch back to RPG III.V or better yet PATHFINDER. they's 90-ish percent compatible with RPG IV and a hell of a lot more pleasant to work with.
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@accalia I liked RPG IV. Yes, it was a major break from RPG III.V (and would have done better under a different branding), but for what it was it was a good package.
More on topic--I have programmed in Fortran. Lots of hardcore numeric work (physics simulations, etc) is still written in Fortran. It's painful.
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@benjamin-hall said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
I have programmed in Fortran. Lots of hardcore numeric work (physics simulations, etc) is still written in Fortran. It's painful.
That was my first introduction to programming. In about 2012. (Differential equations for a Chaos Theory course at uni.)
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@jarry said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
it has the problem that almost every study of this kind has, it's only focused on the OSS.
Hard to do otherwise, given that most commercial code simply isn't available for that sort of analysis (and Github likely don't want to let people poke through private repos). Also you shouldn't really trust any C vs C++ figures from Github; it gets the identification of many header files wrong.
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@benjamin-hall said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
More on topic--I have programmed in Fortran. Lots of hardcore numeric work (physics simulations, etc) is still written in Fortran. It's painful.
Well, it's either do it in Fortran or do it in one of C or C++ (which has some advantages and some disadvantages).
The really hardcore numerics people write in assembler.
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@magus said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
@powerlord I still have no idea why any sane person would choose to write server code in JavaScript, for any reason.
Because JavaScript is your only choice for the client side of web development. It's easier to have everything in one language, especially when it comes to hiring programmers who only need to know one language.
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@dragnslcr said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
It's easier to have everything in one language
Only if you're sharing code between server and client. If not, then choose the server language based on what's best. And if it's not JS, tough: learn another language. It's not hard.
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@raceprouk said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
Only if you're sharing code between server and client. If not, then choose the server language based on what's best. And if it's not JS, tough: learn another language. It's not hard.
Frystare.tif
For YOU. It's not hard FOR YOU. I swear, the complete lack of empathy in this industry for other's experiences is a large part of what makes it so shitty.
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@heterodox Different problems require different solutions, and some languages are better at certain problems than others. For instance, if I needed to do a statistical analysis, I wouldn't pick JavaScript (designed for web scripting), I'd pick R (designed for statistical analysis). It would mean learning R, but I consider that a very small price to pay.
Similarly, JS on the server can work well when you can take advantage of its asynchronous nature, which you can do best when you have a lot of dependency on external storage or network connections. But if you're working on large in-memory datasets, you're better off with something like C#.
Basically, if the problem requires a screwdriver, don't pick a hammer.
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@raceprouk I don't disagree with anything you're saying there except "I consider that a very small price to pay." Not having to learn a new language is an advantage of using Node. It demonstrably is difficult for many people to learn new languages, and the value of the time it takes to do so is proportional to the number of projects in which that language will be used, e.g. if only one project in the whole company would be using R, the company's not going to be very interested in hiring new employees that only know R/retraining existing employees.
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@raceprouk said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
@dragnslcr said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
It's easier to have everything in one language
Only if you're sharing code between server and client. If not, then choose the server language based on what's best. And if it's not JS, tough: learn another language. It's not hard.
I didn't say it was better, I said it was easier (from the company's point of view) to only need to hire JavaScript programmers. Not many people hate JavaScript more than I do, so I would never use or recommend something like Node.
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@raceprouk said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
Similarly, JS on the server can work well
[Citation needed]
when you can take advantage of its asynchronous nature
Aren't there better frameworks with the same asynchronous structure, written in another language? There must be one, somewhere.
I mean, trolling aside, while I agree with your general argument (pick the right tool for the job), I'd still argue that NodeJS doesn't have any other advantages than currently being the only viable solution if you want to use the same language on the server and the client. And I really hope that Kotlin or Ceylon or something similar which offers the same thing gains enough traction over the next few years to replace JS for both server-side and client-side development.
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@asdf said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
Aren't there better frameworks with the same asynchronous structure, written in another language? There must be one, somewhere.
Oh yes. The Node people are still a few years away from realising just how much better others do this stuff.
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@asdf said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
Aren't there better frameworks with the same asynchronous structure, written in another language? There must be one, somewhere.
I will admit, with the TPL, C# and other .NET languages can do all the async stuff that JS is good at, so that's an alternative.
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@raceprouk said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
Similarly, JS on the server can work well when you can take advantage of its asynchronous nature
There's nothing particularly asynchronous about JS. It just happened to be the language Node.js developers chose.
Twisted uses Python (and it's older than Node.js, but Python has significant whitespace, the horror!). Vert.x uses Java and looking at the sample in its homepage it looks a lot like Node (but Java requires compilation; plus, it's Java).
I think the fact that JavaScript is a stringly typed, no compilation necessary, already familiar language played a bigger part.
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@zecc said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
There's nothing particularly asynchronous about JS
Apart from the fact that JS runtimes are all built around event loops.
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I'm moving all my Java stuff to Kotlin, which feels much closer to C#.
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@raceprouk said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
Apart from the fact that JS runtimes are all built around event loops.
... Ok. I accept. Ten points to Griyfindor.
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@carrievs said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
@benjamin-hall said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
I have programmed in Fortran. Lots of hardcore numeric work (physics simulations, etc) is still written in Fortran. It's painful.
That was my first introduction to programming.
Ok. Classic
In about 2012. (Differential equations for a Chaos Theory course at uni.)
Fortran! FOR INTRODUCTION COURSE IN 2012
You are perhaps a decade younger than me, and I used BLAS (yes I know it is Fortran, but I used it in C like normal human beings) and MATLAB in 2002 for that subject
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@dkf said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
The really hardcore numerics people write in assembler.
No. They use other people's handoptimuzed Assembly code. IPP, MKL,...
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@raceprouk said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
For instance, if I needed to do a statistical analysis, I wouldn't pick JavaScript
Yes
(designed for web scripting),
Yes
I'd pick R (designed for statistical analysis).
No. You would choose Python. There are R bindings for Python, but you do not need those either.
It would mean learning R, but I consider that a very small price to pay.
The price is your soul. If you touch R you are doomed to use R and never a real language again. Also you will grow eyeglasses and fangs.
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@dse said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
The price is your soul. If you touch R you are doomed to use R and never a real language again. Also you will grow eye
glassespatch andfangspeg leg.RTFY
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@dse Well it wasn't exactly an introduction to programming course. I didn't study computer science or anything related. It was a maths course that used some basic programming.
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@darkmatter I liked JavaScript back when it was a small, clever, embedded language. (Kind of like Lua, but before Lua existed.)
I hate it as an applications language, because it's not one and was never designed to be one.
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@raceprouk said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
Similarly, JS on the server can work well when you can take advantage of its asynchronous nature, which you can do best when you have a lot of dependency on external storage or network connections. But if you're working on large in-memory datasets, you're better off with something like C#.
You can do async better in C#, with strong-typing and LINQ and all those goodies.
The idea that Node uses JS because JavaScript is somehow "more suited" for their async ideas is moronic. It's also putting the cart before the horse.
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@asdf said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
Aren't there better frameworks with the same asynchronous structure, written in another language? There must be one, somewhere.
You can easily do it in tons of languages. C# could do it in a heartbeat, it has all the primitives it needs and more. (One of its original uses was to power WinForms, so yes it's fine at event loops and has event handling as a core language feature.)
The thing is: C# can also do quality multi-threaded development, so nobody bothered. Because it has something better than async already.
Node.JS is async because there's no good way to build a back-end JavaScript application that's not. (And it's not a very good way, either. But it dose kind of work.)
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@blakeyrat said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
@asdf said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
Aren't there better frameworks with the same asynchronous structure, written in another language? There must be one, somewhere.
You can easily do it in tons of languages. C# could do it in a heartbeat, it has all the primitives it needs and more. (One of its original uses was to power WinForms, so yes it's fine at event loops and has event handling as a core language feature.)
The thing is: C# can also do quality multi-threaded development, so nobody bothered. Because it has something better than async already.
Node.JS is async because there's no good way to build a back-end JavaScript application that's not. (And it's not a very good way, either. But it dose kind of work.)
The problem with C# is that it was open-sourced late. You may be against the idea of OSS and you maybe right. However, programming languages (like science) will grow much better if open.
Even now I cannot get any C# and assume dotnet-core capable of running it. So yeah, it is a shame because C# is clearly a better language than JavaScript or Java.
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@dse said in What programming language people are migrating to?:
The problem with C# is that it was open-sourced late.
No, the problem is it was created by Microsoft, and OSS types are "MS is the evulzzz!!!", so will refuse to use MS stuff, no matter if it's better than whatever half-baked shit they eventually come up with.
