Pick your poison, Percy

First things first. I have no idea who Percy is but it’s a funny totally cool name, and I don’t know.. just came out.

I was having a discussion today with a fellow developer and close comrade. This discussion turned into a language debate, which ultimately led to mass bloodshed (as these debates usually do). He’s recovering though, don’t worry.

I’ve been asked to explain my typical pros and cons for the languages I have used many times (as I’m sure a lot of you have), and this time was no exception. He asked me what languages I have taken the time out to learn, why I spent time learning those languages, why I did so in such an order, and to list my pros and cons for each language. I hesitated for a while, in the hope to avoid repeating myself and having to step into the ring of fire. A place where my comments would be barraged, razed, and hog tied before being thrown into the burning pits of predictability.

This time was different though. Steve wanted an explicit amount of pros and cons per language, three to be precise. At first I thought this was inconsequential, until I sat down and thought about it. Have I really answered this question over a hundred times without having a specific amount of pros and cons I had to adhere to? Yes, yes I had. Now you may be thinking, ugh.. what’s the difference? It’s still the same question and he’s still laying breadcrumbs in the form of jaffa cakes leading you to the firey pits of foreseeable faeces. Sounds elegant, eh?

I explained to Steve that learning a language was irrelevant and that the work I have spent developing my programming skills has not been spent learning new languages, but improving my comprehensive understanding of computer programming and the operating system in general.

All that aside though, attempting to figure out three pros for programming language, usually weeding down from a lot more than three, would certainly be interesting. As would it for pros per language, I’d probably have trouble trying to find three major pros out of a possible ten or more for a programming language I really enjoy. I may write a complete article on this some time.

Steve also asked me if I think programmers should learn more than one language, at which point I directed him towards a small post on Stack Overflow which pretty much sums up my feelings about this, it’s over here. What do you guys think about this?

PS: If you enjoy blog rants and bashing Java programmers, see here. (And no I am not bashing Java programmers, I am a Java programmer, just don’t tell anyone)