And python was created to teach programming. And PHP was something a guy used to maintain his webpage. If a language is useful it will gain popularity, and I never used a language which I didn't find frustrating at some point.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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

-- Bjarne Stroustrup

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

True, but I see this quote repeated so often that it kind of bugs me. It seems to be used in a thought-terminating way. As if we shouldn't criticize languages. As if they aren't tools that are able to be improved upon, or they're all made equal. But I'm sure Bjarne Stroustrup needs to fend off hostility and unfair criticism as much as any programmer with a successful language.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

oh i never considered that reading of the quote

i read it as more: complaints about a language, particularly the amount of complaints, don't mean it is a Bad Language that should be dropped in favor of something else

in fact the complaints validate that the language is being used by people, and that--the number of people actually using the language to Do Things--is imo a decent proxy metric for the usefulness of the language

so please complain about your languages' shortcomings! i hate so many things about terraform / sh / python / golang / java and will gladly rant at length, and then go right back to using them

except groovy

fuck groovy