I noticed that the tech forum is all but dead, so I figured I'd throw a quick question out to all the coders on the board. The question is, of all the languages you know, which is your favorite to use and why? My personal answer varies a touch: I like MSVB 6 for short, sweet, personal applications, but to do any real developing, the portability of C++ can't be beat. The unfortunate part of Visual Basic is that it isn't portable in the least...none of my Linux friends can do anything other than ready m'source...can't even test it. C++, on the other hand, is completley cross-platform, and generally beautiful, but it's an overly cryptic pain-in-that-ass for short, two-day projects.

Of course, that's my opinion; Love it, or leave it

Steve Gazzo

Sounds good!

I lost my programmer's card in 1992 when I went to sysadminning, but since '96 I've been web developing with Perl and more recently PHP. They are great in their own ways - Perl for being so amazingly powerful for what it is, and PHP for making coding fun again. I won't code unless it's fun, dammit.

>I won't code unless it's fun, dammit
--Tony Shepps

One thing though, there is no fun at all in that all night, X-thousand line search for a single character error. The words "parse error before `('" still send chills down my spine.

I think Java is fun. But then I'm a notorious perv.

My favorites
 

Hi all,

My favorite programming language depends on the tasking I'm working on.

For programs/stuff that I just want to work, nice and quick, with a point and click interface, I usually use Visual Basic. People tend to get up-tight when they hear about Visual Basic (it's not a real programming language, it's a kiddie language, it causes tb, etc, etc), but I like it.

For programs that I want to use under Unix/PC, I almost always use C++. C++ is, I think, the language I am most proficient in. For any "serious" program or large program, I generally use C++.

For web stuff, I use Perl. I'm a big fan of Perl, although I'm not all that talented with it. I managed to teach myself enough that I can do what I need with it, in a fairly reasonable amount of time.

Lastly, I've been learning Java. I like it so far, but as of yet, I don't see it replacing any of my stand-bys.

Cheers,
Jarett

C++ is just plain ugly. Kludge upon hack upon kludge in an attempt to produce a language that is all things to all people yet still compatible with C. I'll stick with Java or plain, unadorned, C. For quick and dirty it's C, perl, or shell. I'm a professional Java programmer now, though.