Python = Love at first sight.:study:

This one was tough. Are you looking for the "best" or the fav? I mean it is difficult to compare most of those languages. But since PHP has been making me money I voted for it. With C# and C++ trailing closely behind.

Why Why Why
 

Why no BASIC ?? Come on guys it don't get better than that. And if you believe that then you believe Windows is a superior OS too.

My personal favourite is ruby since about 4 years. All my web-related stuff goes via ruby - and without Ruby on Rails. I am very proud of this. :-)

It is also more sophisticated and flexible than the old php "engine" I used (self-written, it was not much to be proud of though... it felt like an ugly hackish pile, and the OOP in php is so horrible compared to ruby or python)

I can understand people that pick python. I think python is an acceptable language. It is rather clean and tries to not confuse the programmer. It is a lot cleaner than perl.

However, there are two choices which I believe are BAD and WRONG:

- Perl.

Why do people still use perl? Perl is a horrible language. It was practical 1980. Now it is obsolete.
There is also still a lot of legacy code that is in perl and needs to be maintained so it is understandable if people still use perl.

But BOTH python and ruby are better than perl.

- PHP.

Why do people use php? I grant php that for web stuff it is a good choice. Or lets say... it is acceptable.

PHP focus on the www, so it is not bad there. I always try to tell the ruby folks to compete better with php directly, but without using RoR (because RoR is in a same situation like django for python: Both wont be able to directly compete with php if people have to install it and the dependencies afterwards, and what is even worse, learn a framework for web-related stuff. In php it is just "off you go")

But PHP is really the most horrible language designed that I am aware of, which has really caught a HUGE mainstream push up.
Yet it is still in such widespread. And we all know why - it is because we all depend on the www now.

I am fine if people continue to use PHP as long as they realize that PHP sucks. I maintained my php code for ~3 years. It took me that long to rewrite slowly. (Yes i am slow, but it was mostly for personal stuff, so nothing critical anyway).

I would still use PHP for certain things, but whenever possible I will use ruby for countless reasons.

So please people, if you acknowledge that PHP is a bad language and if you doubt that the PHP designers will really make the language better, then support python or ruby (or best both)!

I started to give python a gander.. and got scared off upon discovering that whitespace actually has meaning - and that it varies from one context to the next. :eek:

Curious: what do you mean by that?

Also, I don't really understand why people are scared off by the whitespace thing, but it's probably just my anal nature to keep my code neat and clean that has made it a non-issue for me.

I don't know exactly myself, because I didn't get past the intro in a python book before bailing on the idea. But someone told me the whitespace sometimes has meaning that changes depending on how much whitespace there is, under some circumstances. I said, no thanks. It's bad enough that the language is going to make style decisions for me. May be appropriate for a team environment, but not the individual.
Everyone has a different idea of what's readable. You're apparently lucky that the language mandated layout appears clean to you.

I cannot stand the K&R format, but to others there's nothing more readable. And others find my Whitesmith style intolerable, when really there's no better choice.

It is indentation that has meaning rather than the more general 'whitespace'.

The rules for indentation in Python are:

1. Indentation follows program logic.
2. Don't mix tabs and spaces in indentation.

The first is enforced by the interpreter. Why would you want the programs indentation to not follow the programs logical structure?
The second isn't, but gets more support in Python 3 which is currently alpha testing.

- Paddy.