September 23, 2003

Every Language War Ever

Idiot 1: Your Favorite Language is bad at doing arbitrarily chosen task X, which it was never designed to do. This just happens to be a field in which My Favorite Language excels.
Idiot 2: Ah yes, but YFL is bad at doing Y, which MFL is great at.
I1: Plus YFL is slow. MFL is fast.
I2: But MFL is faster to develop in than YFL. Besides, Moore’s Law. Mooooooore’s Laaaaaaw.
I1: I’ve never really used YFL, but I’ve read it’s much worse to support.
I2: A programmer can write unmaintainable code in any language. Let’s compare a carefully prepared code snippet from MFL with a horrifically bad snippet from YFL written by a drunken monkey.
I1: Yeah, but strong typing, which MFL supports, prevents many common programming errors.
I2: Strong typing, which MFL doesn’t support, is for weak minds!

(If YFL == Perl)

I1: YFL is ugly!
I2: You just aren’t used to it! Shut up!

Posted by Bill Stilwell at September 23, 2003 03:49 PM
Comments

Since I am merely idiot #3, I'll offer two quotes from people much smarter than I:

There are two types of programming languages; the ones that people bitch about and the ones that no one uses.
-Bjarne Stroustrup

If I were chained to a bench and 'perl' was the only thing that could open the lock, I'd probably cut my hand off.
-Gerald Penn

Posted by: Miles at September 28, 2003 09:43 AM

All languages suck in their own special and unique ways.

I'm personally convinced that the whole goal of artificial programming is so that one day computers may know the frustration of trying to program themselves.

Posted by: Techno at October 22, 2003 09:57 AM

There is also another thing - MMUL (My Most Used Language), MFLTCI (My Favorite Language To Code In), MFLBOIC (My Favorite Langauge Because Of Its Concepts), MDL (My Dream Language)... If you're lucky, some of those converge...


Hmm, artificial programming - does that mean that it's not really programming?

Posted by: liorean at October 22, 2003 02:35 PM

Hilarious. Nice quotes, Miles.

Posted by: Dris at October 23, 2003 09:50 AM

I1: feature X sux!
I2: feature X rulez
or
I2: feature X is not needed

if (YFL==python)
I1: indentation based syntax sux!
I2: you're going to do it anyway!
I1: it's not fully OO!
I2: it is OO!
or
I2: you dont' need it!

if (YFL==ruby)
I1: full OO sux!
I2: you never tryied ruby!
I1: 'do..end' sux!
I2: it is more clear!
or
I2: you can avoid it!

Posted by: luser at October 23, 2003 12:27 PM

Niccceee pagee

Posted by: Meban at February 20, 2004 04:49 AM

"If I were chained to a bench and 'perl' was the only thing that could open the lock, I'd probably cut my hand off."

Lmao!

Posted by: Louis Parks at February 27, 2004 01:40 PM

And the best part is, the quotes are nearly arbitrarily re-orderable! (Not quite completely.)

"Strong typing, which MFL doesn’t support, is for weak minds!" "But MFL is faster to develop in than YFL. Besides, Moore’s Law. Mooooooore’s Laaaaaaw." "YFL is ugly!" "A programmer...’s... a carefully prepared ...horrifically bad... drunken monkey."

That makes about as much sense as most wars I've seen...

Posted by: Jeremy Bowers at February 28, 2004 05:09 PM

And the best part is, the quotes are nearly arbitrarily re-orderable! (Not quite completely.)

"Strong typing, which MFL doesn’t support, is for weak minds!" "But MFL is faster to develop in than YFL. Besides, Moore’s Law. Mooooooore’s Laaaaaaw." "YFL is ugly!" "A programmer...’s... a carefully prepared ...horrifically bad... drunken monkey."

That makes about as much sense as most wars I've seen...

Posted by: Jeremy Bowers at February 28, 2004 05:09 PM

If MFL is same as YFL, then arguments cease to exist but this is not the case most of the times so lets continue the argument !!!

Posted by: Shan at February 29, 2004 10:34 PM

la

Posted by: la at March 18, 2004 02:22 PM

"If *I* was chained to a bench and 'java' was the only thing that could open the lock, I'd probably cut my *head* off."

dave

Posted by: no at March 19, 2004 05:30 AM

Dave: How about "lock.open()"? There, spared you a head.. Mm... Don't make me regret this. ;-)

Posted by: M at June 14, 2004 12:31 AM

Even if 'sh' was the only thing that could open the loc I would try to use it... (but die of hunger before I learned how to open a lock with it)

Posted by: pascal at July 16, 2004 12:58 PM