Which programming languages have the happiest (and angriest) commenters?

[Steve R.]

Trivia of the day. My daughter sent me this.

Which programming languages have the happiest (and angriest) commenters?

The bad news, Access didn't make the happiest. The good news, Access didn't make the angriest list either. But then again this was based on Stack Overflow so it doesn't really count. Well what some people do for fun.

 

[NauticalGent]

Interesting read. I am NOT a programmer; I am not afraid of VBA therefore I am able to do things that give me the appearance of a programmer. But when you get down to brass tacks, all I really am is a plagiarist with just enough savvy to customize.

That being said, I do work with a software engineer who often looks at my work and is quick to tell me the shortcomings of VBA and how if I were to use ____, it would be much more easier and efficient. Incidentally, he was the one who introduced me to REGEX which has come in real handy for parsing large texts and such.

Got to agree with your assessment of someone having too much time on their hands!

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Anyone who categorically recommends a language isn't a programmer; s/he's a salesperson.

You should always look at the environment to decide which language to use. When you are dealing with databases, you need to know SQL sometimes, but there will ALWAYS be a preferred language for a preferred DB vendor. For Access/Office, the preferred language is VBA because it is integrated into the environment. If you are working with ORACLE, however, there would be an advantage for using PL/SQL.

If you are into REALLY exotic math, try APL. Be prepared to be totally bewildered by it, though. And if you are dealing with list processing, try LISP. You want to implement an operating system? DEC/COMPAQ/HP used BLISS for a lot of what they did.

However, hands down, the most fun comes from assembler language. I could code "from the hip" in VAX assembler. Now THAT was a fun environment.

 

[kevlray]

Back in the days of programming assembly on the Apple II and Commodore 64. I had control of the machine. I could make it do anything I wanted (within the limits of the hardware). I took over the video ram (switching in and out, kinda fun). But alas, I do not know how to do any Windows programming (at any level).

 

[Steve R.]

Interesting read. I am NOT a programmer; I am not afraid of VBA therefore I am able to do things that give me the appearance of a programmer. But when you get down to brass tacks, all I really am is a plagiarist with just enough savvy to customize.

Good assessment. Access development, for me, has always been a sideline to my main job before retiring. Constituently a lot of my time was spent searching for answers (on this forum) to customize my project development.

Which actually makes for a good segue into this past Christmas and how times have changed. The boyfriend of one of my daughters does commercial webpage development so we thought it would be a great idea to get him a reference book that would help him. (Over the years I developed a library of Access books.).

When asked, she gave us a very quizzical response of why we would get that as a gift for him. Dumbfounded and confused, we responded, obviously for reference. She countered, he doesn't have any books, all the answers are on-line. Times they do change!!!

 

[kevlray]

I have a few books at work (training manuals for the most part). But mostly I reference the internet for information. The last book we got for work (reference book for SAP Design Studio) has so many spelling errors and other reference errors, it was a bit hard to follow.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

all I really am is a plagiarist with just enough savvy to customize.

Actually, Gent, that is the way that almost EVERYONE learns how to program. In essence, you see how someone else does something and you adapt it to your needs. Every time you see a new method for doing something, you are just adding a new tool to the toolbox. Some years ago in a private-industry job, I encouraged the developers in my product development team to review each other's code to see if someone else did something better, faster, more elegantly, ... whatever.

Also, remember the physical-science researcher's guidelines on plagiarism. If you copy one paper - it's plagiarism. If you copy two papers - it's gross plagiarism. If you copy five or more papers - it's a review article.

 

[kevlray]

When I worked as a programmer for an game developer (Sierra On-Line, for those who can remember them), we were encouraged to 'steal' any code from another co-worker that might work in our project.

 

[NauticalGent]

I encouraged the developers in my product development team to review each other's code to see if someone else did something better, faster, more elegantly, ... whatever.

I can imagine there were some bruised egos that came about with that!

 

[Vassago]

I knew nothing about coding until I started copying everyone here and adjusting it to my requirements.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I can imagine there were some bruised egos that came about with that!

In the particular shop where I was the design leader, most of the programmers were junior or novice programmers who had really low-level skills but were intelligent. Fresh out of college, wet behind the ears. One of my best guys was a social-sciences type who knew his statistics and simple math but was not always sure about how to do things. I actually only had one "real" programmer in the bunch - and she had a Bachelor's in Programming from a small college that was the ONLY one to offer such a degree. Everyone else (including me) had learned as a side-effect of having a computer course attached in some way to our main curriculum. For me it was a Physical Chemistry course where a lot of math was involved when you did various kinds of spectral analysis.

I approached the issue of regular reviews this way: Don't go solving a problem someone else has already solved unless you know for a fact they did it wrong. And even then, be prepared to prove it. My group was more like a bunch of software engineers than programmers and understand that re-inventing wheels was not productive.

 

[Steve R.]

I knew nothing about coding until I started copying everyone here and adjusting it to my requirements.

This forum made it possible for me to do my database development. A big thank-you to everyone.

 

[drb75088]

Well, my happiest day programming was the first time I got to use a two pass assembler, instead of machine code. COBOL was the best for business. Fortran for math.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

My absolute favorite programming language was the VAX assembler. But then again, in a machine with several hundred instructions include a one-instruction block copy and a one-instruction Edit Packed Character string (by template), what's not to like. Not to mention a true polynomial instruction that made collapsed trigonometric polynomials a piece of cake, plus a hardware function call that included an argument list pointer... what's not to like?