
Ask HN: What language has the best developer experience? - xupybd
There are many new languages to learn and many reasons to choose one over the other. But do any stand out as having a great developer experience?
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nowarninglabel
I think this is kind of like asking what car has the best experience or what
hotel has the best experience. It depends so much on what you want from it
that there's no clear recommendation.

~~~
xupybd
I was hoping for raw opinion. It might not be my preference, but I'd love to
hear what makes a language great for one person or another.

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saluki
Laravel (PHP) has been a great experience.

Composer Valet/Homestead (Local Development) Forge (Builds Servers/Deploys
Repos) Envoyer (Zero Downtime Deployment) Spark (SaaS Application Starting
Point)

It keeps getting better and better.

laravel.com

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projectramo
You should probably ask about domain-language-IDE combos.

For example (and these are going to be controversial, but they're just
examples):

Datascience - Python - Spyder IDE

iOS - Swift - Xcode

For the web, you get a lot more competition because it is a little harder to
develop, and there are lots of backends and front ends to pick between.
Probably:

Web app- Django/Rails/Restful Node - Sublime, Dev tools in chrome

and so on...

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uptownfunk
Data science - r/rstudio

~~~
projectramo
That is exactly the combination I was thinking of when I wrote it is
controversial.

I agree that combination is at least as good.

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NicoJuicy
I programmed in a couple of languages (nodejs, python, ruby, ..) and on my
work i use c#

I always believe that c# has the best developer experience within the tools of
Microsoft ( Eg. Visual Studio).

Try out Visual Studio community edition and see for yourselve

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arcanus
C.

Nothing else has the right mix between a high level, portable programming
language, and the low, system level call capabilities of C.

~~~
J_Darnley
Seconded. It is also one of the few languages in which you can easily bundle
everything into a static executable.

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ivan_ah
Python is very good for beginners. It has lists and dictionaries as native
objects, which are very versatile.

JavaScript is very good too because you have the "developer tools" in your
browser and you don't need to install anything.

Don't have much experience with other languages to talk about them...

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panic
Of the languages I've used, Visual Basic (pre-.NET). I never used Hypercard,
but I hear it was pretty good too. Newer languages tend to be too complicated
to have great development environments.

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wallace_f
I really did not expect to see someone say pre-.NET VB on Hacker News

~~~
bbcbasic
HN never fails to suprise. I found vb6 ok for simple stuff but a recipe for
spaghetti on medium to large projects

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wallace_f
I had to use it at one job and it was exactly that, a spaghetti nightmare. I
did not like it. I don't want to say it's bad, though, I just prefer to shy
away from it and don't see any point in using it again.

~~~
bbcbasic
It certainly had its place on Windows development before .net was released

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deepaksurti
Common Lisp (Emacs, Slime) or LispWorks (which has a free personal edition).
After using live image based development, going back to the edit, compile,
test cycle is like going back to the stone age.

And CL has libraries. See quick lisp. [1]

My own comparison with Python, which I have been using regularly. Python is a
toy Lisp with all the adult parts hidden.

[1] [https://www.quicklisp.org/beta/](https://www.quicklisp.org/beta/)

~~~
MyNewAcc
ditto. I've used just about every language and IDE out there. Eclipse and
Java. C++ with every IDE out there. Javascript. Some niche languages.
Everything.

Common Lisp and it's tooling is the best dev experience I've found. Other
langs _can_ support live coding, but it's always a poorly supported exotic
option that feels like crap compared to SLIME.

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brudgers
Racket. It's an ecosystem of languages. If it doesn't provide the language the
developer wants, the developer can just make the changes.

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kek918
I probably don't have as much experience as others, but I've dabbled around in
a few languages and I think my best/most fun experience was when I were
learning and creating a couple GUI desktop programs with Qt framework in C++
using their Qt Creator IDE. It's really a blast to work with and everything
just feels in harmony.

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bbcbasic
Haskell. Terse language means ide is not necessary and vim with your fave
plugins does the trick nicely. No need for debugger as you can compose your
program beautifully and test the last ounce of shit out of every little
component using properly based testing.

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hoodoof
It's a matter of personal preference.

Explore a few languages, give them a try, see which one you like, then your
question is answered.

~~~
xupybd
Yeah, that's what I've been doing. So far Scala is winning. Go didn't seem to
fit. Nim next.

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premium-concern
Yes, Scala is a great choice.

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deathtrader666
Elixir and Elm are your best bets right now.

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AnimalMuppet
Java with IntelliJ.

Um, that is, as long as you can just do Java or Android or something. If
you're having to get into EJB and Spring and the corporate heavyweight
development environment, that's not a pleasant world to work in, even with
IntelliJ.

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RaitoBezarius
IMHO, Rust. Rust is very developer-friendly, great doc, user-friendly error
messages, system level, cross-compilation friendly (\o/), you can experiment
in the browser, etc…

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gamedna
The one that solves the problem in the least amount of time with the least
amount of frustration and bugs.

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FuturePromise
IMHO:

    
    
       1. C# (Using Microsoft tools)
    
       2. Erlang (Very robust, solid language)
    
       3. Python (Lots of users, good tools.)

~~~
xupybd
Thanks, Erlang sounds like it might be worth having a play with.

