Items tagged programming, programminglanguages
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Are traditional web frameworks and languages like RubyOnRail, Spring Boot and PHP dying now when new fast reactive pure JavaScript frameworks and services like Meteor, Node, Angular 2.0 and Firebase are breaking ground?
No.
[... 40 words]Have you ever experienced a boost in productivity by switching to a different programming language?
Switching from PHP to Python (over a decade ago now) dramatically improved my productivity as a programmer.
[... 38 words]Why doesn’t Google use their resources to improve coding languages?
Google invest vast resources in to language improvements, and have been doing so for over a decade now. Just off the top of my head...
[... 184 words]Why do programmers tend to fall in love with non-mainstream languages?
Just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s right for every person, every problem or every situation. If no one ever explored non-mainstream options, better solutions would never be discovered.
[... 47 words]In which programming language do programmers get paid the most?
The best (and best paid) software engineers work in multiple languages, and pick new ones up as and when they need to. If you pigeon-hole yourself as an “X programmer” you’ll limit yourself to relatively uninteresting, interchangeable roles.
[... 54 words]Which should I learn: Python or PHP?
Python will teach you more about programming than PHP—and you’ll be able to learn PHP easily if you learn Python first.
[... 36 words]What are some hidden features of Python?
Generators and Iterators are pretty amazing. These two tutorials will really open your eyes as to how powerful they can be:
[... 63 words]Which language and framework would you use today?
Unless I had a very good reason to use something else (a pure websocket/real-time collaboration app perhaps) I’d go with stock Django on PostgreSQL and maybe a bit of Redis. Simple, powerful, stable and works reliably.
[... 50 words]How can some really large services (like Dropbox) afford to use Python as a primary language, if it’s one to two orders of magnitude slower than other, compiled languages?
Because raw language speed often doesn’t matter that much. In the case if Dropbox the client software spends most of its time waiting for bits to load from the network or from disk. Most large websites spend their time waiting for the database. You can’t speed up network or disk performance by using a faster language.
[... 91 words]What are the best resources for learning regular expressions?
The O’Reilly book on Regular Expressions is absolutely superb. It will help you build a much deeper understanding if how they actually work than any online tutorial I’ve seen.
[... 62 words]Wouldn’t an ASCII cellular automaton in javascript be the simplest starting point to teach/learn programming?
Absolutely not. The first step in learning to program is understanding that a computer can be quickly made to do something useful by executing lines of code. Personally I’m a big fan of firing up something with an interactive prompt (like Python, or even Firebug or the Google Chrome JS console) and demonstrating that typing a line of code hitting return will get a useful response.
[... 87 words]What is an intuitive explanation of Unicode and why a programmer needs to know it?
Check out “The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)” by Joel Spolsky: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ar...
[... 55 words]Why is Java perceived as not cool for startups? We seem to be getting a lot of feedback lately that a startup should be using Ruby on Rails, PHP, Python, etc., if they want to be agile and iterate quickly.
You should re-evaluate your beliefs. Dynamic language programmers spend a great deal of time thinking about code quality and maintainability. TDD (and BDD), which I believe was first popularised within the Ruby community) are extremely widespread, and profiling and debugging tools are widely used and constantly improved. A strong test suite provides far more effective protection against bugs than static typing and an IDE.
[... 152 words]What are the main weaknesses of Ruby as a programming language?
Ruby still has a cultural tendency towards monkey-patching, aka action-at-a-distance. There are plenty of gems which modify existing classes—sometimes in ways that can break working code.
[... 45 words]