
Ask HN: Do you program in a language that you feel indifferent towards? - vanilla-almond
Maybe you don&#x27;t have a choice in the language you use at work. Or maybe you chose a language for its features or performance even though you neither like or dislike the language. Does this sound like a familiar scenario? If so, what are your thoughts? How have you found the experience of using a language that you have no liking for?
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cutety
That’s more-or-less how I feel about Python, it’s a solid language, first one
I learned and only one used outside some C++ for school, for several years.
But, after branching off into other languages, I’m just really not that
interested in Python. Maybe it’s because I’m not particularly interested in ML
or data science, which outside of it almost being the ubiquitous intro
language, is really the big draw to it these days. I just don’t find Python
sexy, which isn’t a bad thing, it’s just not as fun to use, which can also be
a good thing as it can prevent some shitty hacks just because I wanted to code
golf/try some obscure language features.

Though, I’m a bit of a language junky, I love playing with new languages that
largely break away from the classic C Style. My daily languages I use, and
actually deeply enjoy working with are Ruby, JS/TS (mostly TS now-a-days), and
Elixir. Likely Haskell is the next language I’ll try to seriously learn, as
it’s one I just want to check off my list. But, I’ve also dabbled around with
rust, tried to drink the lisp koolaid, but couldn’t get past the (((())))))) -
I hope one day to try again to see what the hype is about, and I occasionally
check up on Idris, but I’m going to let that one mature a bit more/at least
get Haskell under my belt before I give it a serious effort.

With all that said, Python is solid, but with all the other options out there,
it just seems terribly boring. Maybe that’s largely due to my lack of
meaningful work with it in the past few years, but I’m not at all interested
in using it anymore. Also, the whole white space thing is a huge turn off,
Which is one of the things I actually used to really like about it.

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gregjor
Yes. I feel indifferent about all programming languages. I don't understand
emotional attachments or reactions to programming languages.

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romanovcode
Professional right here.

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ArrayList
Or just not passionate ...

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gregjor
You're right, I don't feel passionate at all about programming languages or
technologies. Not interesting anymore. I am passionate about solving problems,
happy clients, and a solid reputation in my niche. And making a good living.

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altairiumblue
No feelings is a fine situation. Languages are just a tool.

But some tools are more powerful and/or easier to use.

Using R for work at the moment - what a mess. So many exceptions, silent
errors, unexpected behaviour, special cases, 3 object-oriented systems in a
non object-oriented language - each of them slightly different; lazy vs non-
lazy evaluation, 3 different types of data frames - similar to each other (but
not quite the same) and you can use the same operations and packages on some
of them, but not always; the same algorithms implemented in different packages
with a similar but slightly different syntax... and so on.

Many tools/languages that have a difficult learning curve also provide a
significant payoff/increase in productivity when you master the tool. R is
nothing like this. Learning all of the strange features just brings you up to
a level where you can write code have it do what you expect it would do.

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kevinherron
I had grown to dislike programming in Java over the years but once Java 8 was
released it became tolerable again. I vastly prefer Kotlin these days.

The JVM is still my go to for any project. Go and especially Go 2 seem
interesting but there's basically zero chance I'd be able to use it at work
so... meh.

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muzani
PHP basically. It's a blunt weapon, simple yet effective. And while using it,
it's a lot like using a hammer. There's no emotion, which is not a bad thing.

Something like Kotlin, on the other hand, is so pleasurable that people often
make up projects to have a reason to use it. Which is not necessarily a good
thing.

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evoneutron
While I learned Java in college it has never been my language of choice.

For the last 8+ years I have written mostly in Java, professionally. I'd much
rather write Python or C#, but I have to work in Java, at least for now.

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muzani
I disliked Java before mostly because of Eclipse. But Kotlin excited me. It
does many of the things Java did, but was more beautiful.

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sotojuan
Python. It mostly stays out of my way. I guess I like that about it but I’m
definitely not a “Pythonista”.

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altairiumblue
I like Python but for some reason the term "pythonista" sounds so cringey.

