

Design the ideal programming language for startups - neilk

Syntax Clause, that jolly old elf who has thousands of magically outsourced programmers in the far north, grants you a Christmas wish: the ideal programming language for startups. <p>What sort of language would you ask for?
======
bayareaguy
How about a

\- modern functional language with

\- development and debugging tools as good as state of the art for imperative
languages and

\- a large and well maintained set of libraries that

\- run on all major platforms and

\- have a liberal distribution license (BSD/GNU/Apache/etc)

------
iamelgringo
There is no One True Universal Startup (tm). There are startups that work with
embedded micro controllers, and there are startups that create networking
software, startups that work on the Windows Desktop and startups that work as
server ware that is accessed via http.

Each one of those domains is going to have different requirements, and each
one of those would be better served by one language as opposed to another.

It would be like asking people, "which human language is best for
communicating". Well, if I had to describe many different kinds and varieties
of snow, I'd probably choose an Eskimo dialect. If I had to describe many
different levels of respect, honor and shame, I'd say Japanese. If I was to
communicate in the business realm, I'd have to say English. And, if I had to
talk about hunting tapirs in a rain forest, I'd probably use a dialect native
to tribes in the Amazon.

With all due respect to PG, the idea of One True Language (tm) is a myth as
far as I'm concerned. Langauges are tools. Different languages have different
strengths and weaknesses. Familiarize yourself with enough different tools so
you can make intelligent decisions, and then use the most powerful
language/tool for the job at hand.

------
macmac
Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the answer depends entirely on what
that start-up would be doing and in what context it would be operating(skills
of programmers available, integration to other code etc.)

~~~
neilk
I originally posed this question with an additional condition -- you get $100M
to invest in 10 startups that use this new language.

The point was to see if there was anything startups might have in common, in
their language needs. Maybe the answer to that is "nothing", but I wonder.

