

Ask HN: What are the current trends in programming? - xmmx

Languages, web vs standalone, etc. I&#x27;m extremely out of the loop and I&#x27;m not sure where to start looking. I&#x27;ve tried looking at the top tags in stackoverflow - c#, php, java - but these don&#x27;t seem too relevant from what I&#x27;ve seen lurking around on HN.
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ScottWhigham
Another vote for "It's often a matter of where you look and what you read".
Like others have said, HN has a slant towards some languages - if you only
took thoughts/advice from this site, you'd be led to believe that everyone
everywhere uses those languages. That's not the case though - look at lots of
sources.

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shubb
From reading job ads, I think most people work in the languages you mentioned.

HN is more oriented towards python/ruby/objective C because it's demo is
making relatively simple applications as fast as possible, and critically
don't have legacy code.

C# and Java have moved a lot in the past 10 years. You could say that Scala is
the next natural transition for Java. Microsoft have a really compelling offer
in terms of Azure and .net 4.5, and have a functional language of their own
(F#) if they take off.

Personally, I'm watching C++11. It is really transformative, making the
language feel much more modern (even sort of python like). If it improves C++
productivity enough we may see a resurgence, although I think it does too
little to make coding for parallel/asynchronous natural.

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andrewcooke
don't suppose there's a great c++11 book that shows that, is there? (seem to
have been searching forever for a good, modern c++ book, so sorry if this is a
repeat)

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tubbzor
you are going to see different langs here than what's generally trending at
stackoverflow purely due to the culture that surrounds hn (which is start-up
based), so you're going to see more Ruby, Python, Go, ect (although you should
be able to search all those tags on SO as well).

In the industry (as far as what I read anyway), it seems mobile programming
and 'Big Data' are currently at the forefront.

Web vs standalone: depends on the application. If there is a need to make it
web-based...then make it web-based. If there's no need then why put in the
extra work/resources.

It really is a very broad question, but you want to pick the best tools for
the job. You wouldn't use a spoon to saw a tree down, similarly you wouldn't
use Java for a car control system. The only way to know the differences is to
dive a little into each language and learn it's pros/cons.

