Which language is the least bad?
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@maciejasjmj said in Which language is the least bad?:
@pie_flavor said in Which language is the least bad?:
It doesn't seem like anyone's been discussing Rust yet.
"Quick! The Rust Evangelist Strike Team must rectify that!"
I don't see what REST has to do with this. Isn't that an HTML programming language thing?
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@dreikin said in Which language is the least bad?:
@maciejasjmj said in Which language is the least bad?:
@pie_flavor said in Which language is the least bad?:
It doesn't seem like anyone's been discussing Rust yet.
"Quick! The Rust Evangelist Strike Team must rectify that!"
I don't see what REST has to do with this. Isn't that an HTML programming language thing?
I assume BobX can handle REST. Or was the HTML thing just an analogy?
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@pie_flavor said in Which language is the least bad?:
It doesn't seem like anyone's been discussing Rust yet. I would say that it closely competes with C# for my least-hated language. What's the general opinion of Rust here?
I'm still in the "wrestling borrow checker and lifetime parameters" phase of learning Rust.
I generally like it.If I ever do anything beyond drawing a bunch of hexagons (using piston) I'll get back to you.
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@maciejasjmj said in Which language is the least bad?:
@twelvebaud said in Which language is the least bad?:
Fortunately, at the API level, all you need to do is rebuild; there's no syntax difference between field access and property access in most CLR languages, so as soon as the compiler notices the changed metadata you're good to go.
Unless something somewhere reflects over the class, in which case the reflection APIs for fields are properties are vastly different and things will break silently once what used to be a field is now a property.
Well yeah, but that's one of the penalties you expect to pay for using reflection, along with slower performance (at least initially) and the verbosity of manual binding. There's a reason you don't do it yourself unless it's absolutely necessary, and pre-existing ORMs, mock frameworks, and IoC containers can do that for you.
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@pie_flavor said in Which language is the least bad?:
It doesn't seem like anyone's been discussing Rust yet. I would say that it closely competes with C# for my least-hated language. What's the general opinion of Rust here?
I don't think many people have used it at all.
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@pie_flavor I don't think that's what he meant. It's one thing to produce bindings for existing libraries. Are there native Rust only GUI toolkits yet?
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@arantor There's conrod, which is Rust-only but sort of weird. But really, who cares what the library itself was written in? All that matters is that you have an API in the language.
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@pie_flavor said in Which language is the least bad?:
@arantor There's conrod, which is Rust-only but sort of weird. But really, who cares what the library itself was written in? All that matters is that you have an API in the language.
That's a fair point: .NET's WinForms is just a wrapper around the native GDI+, after all. And it wouldn't surprise me if WPF is just a wrapper around DirectDraw.
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@pie_flavor Ah but it matters. Rust's principle claim to fame is memory safety. What good's that going to do you when your application crashes owing to issues in the bound library for, say, memory unsafe behaviours?
THAT is, I believe, the point @dkf was trying to make - until such time as a native environment exists, it's still completely at the whims of other environments, none of which have any of the benefits of Rust, and just showcase that Rust is limited because it apparently can't do those things.
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@arantor said in Which language is the least bad?:
@pie_flavor Ah but it matters. Rust's principle claim to fame is memory safety. What good's that going to do you when your application crashes owing to issues in the bound library for, say, memory unsafe behaviours?
THAT is, I believe, the point @dkf was trying to make - until such time as a native environment exists, it's still completely at the whims of other environments, none of which have any of the benefits of Rust, and just showcase that Rust is limited because it apparently can't do those things.
Technically that's possible, but you have to interact with the OS at some point, which means C functions. A lot of the stdlib is Rust bindings to regular C functions - that's why you need
#![no_std]
if you don't have a C environment. The key point is that the libraries that the bindings are written for behave predictably, and are generally considered to be well written. The Rust bindings aren't just function wrappers - they make sure the memory behaves as it's supposed to, and maintains memory safety on the Rust side.And again, a Rust-only GUI toolkit is absolutely possible, as conrod demonstrates. The problem is simply infancy - neither Rome nor GTK were built in a day. Conrod may evolve to look better, or another GUI library might spring up. But as @RaceProUK said, the same could be said about the relationship between C# WinForms and GDI+, and yet it all still works.
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@pie_flavor Rust's been around for 7 years... that's a bit longer than a day.
I'm not invested either way in the language, I was merely pointing out why some may consider it a toy language.
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@raceprouk said in Which language is the least bad?:
And it wouldn't surprise me if WPF is just a wrapper around DirectDraw
DirectDraw was deprecated in Windows XP, so probably not ;).
The windows base library, for 2D or 3D, is Direct3D. Then there's Direct2D which is a second layer of functions on top of Direct3D, and then there's Win2D which is an extra wrapper around Direct2D because raw Direct2D was apparently terrible to use. Simple!
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@anonymous234 I keep forgetting DirectDraw was deprecated, and essentially merged into Direct3D
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Python and C# are the least bad IMHO.
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@lucas1 said in Which language is the least bad?:
Python and C# are the least bad IMHO.
Python is a good language, to be sure, but the global interpreter lock and related tomfoolery are the primary reasons why I can't agree with this.
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@pie_flavor That isn't a language problem is it?
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@raceprouk said in Which language is the least bad?:
That's a fair point: .NET's WinForms is just a wrapper around the native GDI+, after all.
That's a hell of a stretch of the word "just".
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@lucas1 I count the official implementation and stdlib along with the language. You could easily claim that PHP isn't garbage, if you're just talking about the language and not the stdlib and Zend engine.
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@pie_flavor Daily Motion and Facebook have made those things work, which they are not optimal.
We are talking about things least bad and I think Python and C# as they are least bad IMHO.
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@lucas1 To quote the article that was already linked earlier in this thread:
Do not tell me that Facebook and Wikipedia are built in PHP. I’m aware! They could also be written in Brainfuck, but as long as there are smart enough people wrangling the things, they can overcome problems with the platform. For all we know, development time could be halved or doubled if these products were written in some other language; this data point alone means nothing.
Meanwhile, back on topic, you're unlikely to be executing your Python code on anything other than the official implementation, meaning the GIL and everything it causes is still a Python problem. C# is agreed, though.
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@pie_flavor we were talking about language not implementation.
C# is bollox you judge it by the 1.0 CLR. Java is bad before 1.4 is terms of performance.
Python 3.5 and above are fast enough.
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@lucas1 said in Which language is the least bad?:
@pie_flavor we were talking about language not implementation.
C# is bollox you judge it by the 1.0 CLR. Java is bad before 1.4 is terms of performance.
Python 3.5 and above are fast enough.
I'm saying I judge by the implementation as well, because it's what you're almost definitely using, and is usually an integral part of your code. .NET 1.0 and JVM 3 were crap, but .NET Framework 4.7/Core 2.0 and JVM 8 are awesome while CPython 3.7 still has the GIL, which is not remotely offset by how fast it may or may not be.
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@pie_flavor It is fast enough for me to make money via my web services with low-medium work load. So it is good enough for not.
The GIL lock can be got around using PyPI for example.
It not something I am worried about when Azure does most of the hard work on scaling a service.
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@lucas1 I don't recall saying Python was slow. And we're not talking about 'good enough' or 'not something I deal with'. We're talking about 'least bad' here, and third-party workarounds mean the original is still bad.
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@pie_flavor As I said it is good enough langauge. It is clear and works fast enough for most things.
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@lucas1 I'm tempted to believe you didn't actually read the post you're replying to.
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@pie_flavor Sorry I did. Good enough and least bad make the same meaning for most people. Do I really need to draw a graph.
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@lucas1 Good enough is a statement that can be applied to multiple languages. It is furthermore entirely subjective, because what you consider good enough depends not only on your opinion, which is the argued topic, but also on use-case, which is not. Meanwhile, least bad is a superlative, which applies to languages not simply because they work not bad, but because they work the least bad. If you still don't know the difference, I simply can't hold a discussion on the topic with you.
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@pie_flavor Good enough and least bad are totally subjective. I know I fucked up on case statement (I am not a real programmer btw and never claim to be) but they are subjective.
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@lucas1 I still maintain that you're not reading what I'm writing. Opinion is what we're arguing here. 'Least bad' is opinion-only. Suitability for one single use case isn't what we're arguing here. 'Good enough' depends on use-case (and also the developer's ability to accept shortcomings). Best and good enough are entirely different classifications.
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@pie_flavor Semantic wankery at its finest.
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@lucas1 Either you're trolling, or stupid. Can't tell which; not sure I care. Either means I don't care to respond anymore.
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@pie_flavor Good enough and least bad are pretty much the same thing for most people. It is semantic wankery
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@lucas1 Least bad == the best != good enough
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@pie_flavor said in Which language is the least bad?:
The key point is that the libraries that the bindings are written for behave predictably, and are generally considered to be well written.
Did I not just post a link to Rust bindings for Enlightenment?
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@pie_flavor said in Which language is the least bad?:
@lucas1 Either you're trolling, or stupid. Can't tell which; not sure I care. Either means I don't care to respond anymore.
I see you've met lucas.
@lucas1 said in Which language is the least bad?:
@pie_flavor Good enough and least bad are pretty much the same thing for most people. It is semantic wankery
Not for me.
Good enough:
Python, Java, some Javascript, C++Least bad:
Uh.... C#?
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@pie_flavor said in Which language is the least bad?:
Technically that's possible, but you have to interact with the OS at some point, which means C functions.
Redox is an attempt at making an OS in as much Rust as possible, resorting only to assembler otherwise.
Its GUI toolkit is orbtk which still isn't very complete.
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@sloosecannon said in Which language is the least bad?:
Good enough:
PythonAs I've said before, Python's not too bad if you can avoid writing modules and classes, or using threads. OK, everything you put in a file is a module :) but if it is just a script for immediate execution, the really odd things don't kick in much and it's pretty reasonable for users. Provided you're not doing much with threads; Python's threads are deeply fucked (unless you use Jython or IronPython, but then you're stuck without a lot of the more useful packages written by others, and they're the point why you'd use the language).
I don't like Python very much any more.
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@dkf said in Which language is the least bad?:
@sloosecannon said in Which language is the least bad?:
Good enough:
PythonAs I've said before, Python's not too bad if you can avoid writing modules and classes, or using threads. OK, everything you put in a file is a module :) but if it is just a script for immediate execution, the really odd things don't kick in much and it's pretty reasonable for users. Provided you're not doing much with threads; Python's threads are deeply fucked (unless you use Jython or IronPython, but then you're stuck without a lot of the more useful packages written by others, and they're the point why you'd use the language).
I don't like Python very much any more.
Oh I'm not a fan of it either. But it counts as "Good enough" to me - in that it usually works pretty well most of the time
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@pie_flavor said in Which language is the least bad?:
Technically that's possible, but you have to interact with the OS at some point, which means C functions.
Well, you can write something that talks to an X server that only uses C libs for the basic “open a socket and talk down it”, which is stuff that is simple enough that we can pretend it isn't a C library. (Theoretically, you could do raw syscalls from assembler for that too, but ain't nobody got time for that.) I guess it is a bit more difficult if you're on Windows or OSX, where the standard GUI libraries are more deeply hooked into things. But given that you can work at that level, a GUI ought to be possible.
The big problem with GUIs though is that they're incredibly asynchronous, and the messages coming in from the outside world can have profound consequences. This means that the model of the world used by a lot of Rust examples don't work well; lexical scoping isn't well matched with the lifetimes of GUI entities (except in the most trivial of user interfaces). It's this sort of thing that makes a lot of people suspect that Rust isn't suitable for one the key things for which it was made.
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HTML.
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@boomzilla I actually removed my downvote, because the title just says 'language', not 'programming language'. HTML is almost definitely the least bad computer language. (For least bad language overall, Esperanto.)
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@pie_flavor said in Which language is the least bad?:
(For least bad language overall, Esperanto.)
I suppose the language that gets no use can't be used for bad.
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@boomzilla said in Which language is the least bad?:
no use
There are more people who speak Esperanto than who speak Swedish.
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@pie_flavor Like, voluntarily? They actually speak it to each other?
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@boomzilla said in Which language is the least bad?:
@pie_flavor Like, voluntarily? They actually speak it to each other?
No, they're forced at knifepoint.
Yes, they speak it to each other. There are thousands of people who are raised speaking it natively. Knowledge (or at least elementary googling) should come before posting.
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@pie_flavor said in Which language is the least bad?:
There are thousands of people who are raised speaking it natively. Knowledge (or at least elementary googling) should come before posting.
No way I'm getting esperanto in my search history. Do the authorities know that people are doing this to their children?
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@boomzilla said in Which language is the least bad?:
@pie_flavor said in Which language is the least bad?:
There are thousands of people who are raised speaking it natively. Knowledge (or at least elementary googling) should come before posting.
No way I'm getting esperanto in my search history. Do the authorities know that people are doing this to their children?
"I shouldn't have to explain myself. QED."
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@pie_flavor said in Which language is the least bad?:
There are more people who speak Esperanto than who speak Swedish.
Debatable.
Wikipedia puts the estimate of Esperanto speakers between 2M and 10M, and from what I understand, that's mainly people with it as a secondary language. The 10M estimate is from 1996, and the 2M from 2015. Swedish native speakers are estimated to be 9M.