[Craig White]

On Sat, 2010-02-20 at 19:12 -0700, Joseph Sinclair wrote:
> Let's not devolve into a favorite language war.  There are situations where Python is a great language choice, and situations where it's terrible.
> Every language choice comes down to what you want to accomplish.
>   Some languages are good for rapid development of websites (Ruby, PHP, etc...).
>   Some languages are good for systems management scripts (Python, Perl, etc...).
>   Some languages are good for developing large web systems intended to be maintained for years (Java, others).
>   Some languages are good for developing packaged COTS software (C++, Java, etc...).
>   Some languages are good for system software and embedded devices (C, C++, etc...).
>   Many languages are most useful in very specific niches (Forth, Lisp, ADA, XSLT, LOLCode, Objective-C, etc...)
> 
> Most languages have multiple areas where they work well, and multiple areas where they're not so good.
> What exactly you want to accomplish in your software development should drive the language choice, although it rarely does.
> 
> No one particular language is the best choice for learning how to write software; each type of software development will drive a different choice of the best "first" language to learn.
> 
> Mike, you need to specify your goal more precisely in order for the community here to give you a useful recommendation that will help you best accomplish that goal.
> 
> ==Joseph++
> 
> Kevin Fries wrote:
> > Wow, now I know why it is so hard to hire people that are competent!  Python is fun, not right, but fun... Thats your argument?  If you want to know why we refuse to hire Python programmers at our company, I can give you real facts on why you should not use that language as a place to learn... Not opinions.
> > 
----
and then of course there is the motivation to learn a language for
gainful employment which in some circles would be none of the above.

I think Kevin was looking at it from his particular employment angle.

Personally, I am particularly amused by Joseph's placing both Ruby and
PHP both in the same 'rapid web development' category because my
experience has been that it takes me 1/4 to 1/5 the time to accomplish
'rapid web development' with RoR than it does with PHP.

The only thing worse than trying to decipher 'other peoples' PHP code is
trying to decipher 'other peoples' perl code.

Craig


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