Martyr2, on 16 June 2013 - 04:38 PM, said:

I don't know that this is a fair statement - a lot of guys making these new languages aren't people that don't know how to do something in Java. Seriously, what are the chances that somebody is able to create a language that large groups of people (whether the language challenges the likes of Java/C# or not) can use and LIKE to use, but somehow this same person couldn't use the existing languages due to some knowledge/skill limitation?

No, I'm pretty sure the motivation is that they find the current languages lacking in various decisions, semantics, and capabilities. Writing a new language in this case could be compared to removing old plumbing because you keep fixing leaks and you just want something that was designed with these leaks in mind.

(Not a claim on the actual qualities of Go/Dart)

Also CS degrees aren't $200k. They aren't cheap, but come on. You hae to work to pay that much for school.

Python:

while true:
  print("Hello")

Ruby:

loop do
   puts "Hello"
end

Those both look easier, though I would argue that Hello World is generally a poor indication of a language's verbosity/complexity. Java's, however, does serve as a good indicator of what's to come:

public Class Hello
{
  public static void main(String[] args)
  {
    System.out.println("Hello");
  }
}

That aside, I would probably agree on BASIC or Python being easiest to learn, and on Python having an excellent utility to difficulty ratio.

Yay for the drawn out car analogies, but I suspect there would be similar annoyance if you had to deal with the manufacturer to buy a used car. They got their piece when the car was sold new.

Just to post a differing viewpoint:

Atli, on 31 May 2013 - 03:06 PM, said:

PHP is everywhere, and I agree that it's easy to stand out. It's actually verboten where I work due to its many flaws, but a tool is a tool and php lets you get going easily and quickly.

Quote

Mostly agreed. There's nothing fun about web dev in Java, end of story. Scala is something that I think is very much worth learning if it interests you, but I'd avoid EE if I were you; it's unmotivating.

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Rails is HUGE in the startup scene, and it definitely not trailing any (or even all of them) Python framework in the web dev sector, either. It has clear advantages over .NET for the "fun factor" and for portability, and is the second most popular language where I work (we have a LOT of Java services).

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.NET is a solid framework and both C# and F# have REALLY nice features. Visual Studio is a far superior (in my opinion) IDE to most used by Java developers. I personally would never chain myself to the Windows platform, but that's truly all I have against it.