VB - Big fat bloated slow crap programs, enjoy that 4 meg copy of 'hello world' and the 6 odd megs of libraries needed to make it run. Gotten better since .Net - but anyone who makes 'commercial applications' in it needs a brick upside the head. C# - Cleans up C++ a bit, but being M$ proprietary works against it - but Mono kind of fixes that issue... This one is a tough call but for a lot of applications it's really one of the better solutions. Ruby (and Ruby on Rails) - Slow as molassas at the North Pole in Febrary, this steaming pile of cryptic nonsense makes perl look peppy and well thought out - I really do not understand the recent hard-on some people have for it. Python - strictly enforced formatting for logic flow, a good thing. Language structure that makes BASH scripts look like a programming language - bad thing. Cute for command line crapplets that you don't care about the execution time of, fairly useless for anything else despite the crazy attempts to make it useful. Cold Fusion - It is a miracle this steaming pile survives to modern use. It can't figure out if it's a markup script or a programming language, and I can't be bothered to make the distinction. Asp - The only 'real' rival to php, being a Microshaft development you rely on the Mono project to use it on a REAL server. Relies too heavily on inlining open and closes of .asp itself which makes it annoyingly slow, annoying to debug, and in general not the best way of doing things. I can work in it, it doesn't mean I like it. PHP - NOW we're getting somewhere... 90% of the AT&T style syntax is intact here, working like a real programming language - hence the problem, it's a real programming language not some goofy scripting, yet it lets you USE it as goofy scripting as a stepping stone (which I consider a mistake). Perl - The old beast. Needlessly cryptic, but full featured enough to do most anything you'd want it remains the old standby when all else fails. C++ - ... and THIS monstrousity is what we have to blame for the abysmal object model that all AT&T offshoot languages are saddled with today. Overly complex for no reason, it takes C and stands it on it's ear - and not in a good way. (Man, I'd kill for a Modula compiler in the same class as a modern C++ one. When it came to objects, Wirth had it right) Java - Interpreted language sitting inside emulated hardware trying to pass itself off under the name "virtual machine"... What a load of bullshit. "Virtualization" my ass, let's call it like it is, a JIT compiling Interpreter. No matter how fast you make it on math, the UI's for most every java program tend to suck donkey and be slow as molassas. Swing sucks, the qt port sucks, and in general it's nigh impossible to get java to make a program that actually looks like it belongs in the host OS - which is why java programmers have such a raging chodo for skinning in the first place. That there were wild claims about it being faster than assembly in it's early days (which ANYONE who knows ANYTHING about computers would call bullshit on). I have NEVER seen a Java program that impressed me in the least, and as a rule have it blocked from running except where absolutely needed. (which does NOT mean in the browser)... That every time I've turned it on in my browser my machine ends up ass raped inside a week adds to my distrust of this white elephant. Oh, let's add some humor to the mix - this has been circulating the web since 1991 CREATORS ADMIT UNIX, C HOAX In an announcement that has stunned the computer industry, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan admitted that the Unix operating system and C programming language created by them is an elaborate April Fools prank kept alive for over 20 years. Speaking at the recent UnixWorld Software Development Forum, Thompson revealed the following: "In 1969, AT&T had just terminated their work with the GE/Honeywell/AT&T Multics project. Brian and I had just started working with an early release of Pascal from Professor Nichlaus Wirth's ETH labs in Switzerland and we were impressed with its elegant simplicity and power. Dennis had just finished reading 'Bored of the Rings', a hilarious National Lampoon parody of the great Tolkien 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy. As a lark, we decided to do parodies of the Multics environment and Pascal. Dennis and I were responsible for the operating environment. We looked at Multics and designed the new system to be as complex and cryptic as possible to maximize casual users' frustration levels, calling it Unix as a parody of Multics, as well as other more risque allusions. Then Dennis and Brian worked on a truly warped version of Pascal, called 'A'. When we found others were actually trying to create real programs with A, we quickly added additional cryptic features and evolved into B, BCPL and finally C. We stopped when we got a clean compile on the following syntax: for(;P("\n"),R-;P("|"))for(e=C;e-;P("_"+(*u++/8)%2))P("| "+(*u/4)%2); To think that modern programmers would try to use a language that allowed such a statement was beyond our comprehension! We actually thought of selling this to the Soviets to set their computer science progress back 20 or more years. Imagine our surprise when AT&T and other US corporations actually began trying to use Unix and C! It has taken them 20 years to develop enough expertise to generate even marginally useful applications using this 1960's technological parody, but we are impressed with the tenacity (if not common sense) of the general Unix and C programmer. In any event, Brian, Dennis and I have been working exclusively in Pascal on the Apple Macintosh for the past few years and feel really guilty about the chaos, confusion and truly bad programming that have resulted from our silly prank so long ago." Major Unix and C vendors and customers, including AT&T, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, GTE, NCR, and DEC have refused comment at this time. Borland International, a leading vendor of Pascal and C tools, including the popular Turbo Pascal, Turbo C and Turbo C++, stated they had suspected this for a number of years and would continue to enhance their Pascal products and halt further efforts to develop C. An IBM spokesman broke into uncontrolled laughter and had to postpone a hastily convened news conference concerning the fate of the RS-6000, merely stating 'VM will be available Real Soon Now'. In a cryptic statement, Professor Wirth of the ETH institute and father of the Pascal, Modula 2 and Oberon structured languages, merely stated that P.T. Barnum was correct. In a related late-breaking story, usually reliable sources are stating that a similar confession may be forthcoming from William Gates concerning the MS-DOS and Windows operating environments. And IBM spokesman have begun denying that the Virtual Machine (VM) product is an internal prank gone awry. Which in a number of ways sums it up - and to think people call me crazy when I say assembly is clearer and easier to understand... Then again, my view might be skewed since I started out hand compiling my own i4040 machine language one byte at a time and entering it through an amazing UI known as nine toggle switches and a push-button
Excellent comparison ... I would Add Perl to Be good at Web work with all its modules and stuff... C,C++,PHP rule .... Java , though useful and feature rich is crappy and a bit tough to learn ....