
Why is [programming language] so...? - tylermauthe
http://www.billthelizard.com/2014/01/why-is-programming-language-so.html
======
beggi
"why is python documentation so bad" Really? Did not see that one coming

~~~
hackinthebochs
I'll tell you whats wrong with python docs. When I google for a function and I
see from the search results that the page has exactly what I'm looking for,
when I click on the link I am instead presented with a long page of irrelevant
information that I then have to filter through. It's so bad that I actively
avoid the official docs.

~~~
IgorPartola
CTRL + f / Command + f => "module.function" and you are done.

~~~
flebron
He already searched, on google. He shouldn't have to search twice for the same
thing.

~~~
rambojohnson
google is not python docs.

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aylons
"Why is [language] so popular" may have two meanings:

The person is curious about the popularity of a language.

The person is intrigued to why a bad language has become popular.

~~~
dllthomas
Same with "Why is [langauge] so bad?"

It could be "Gah, I'm frustrated working with [language], let's see if I can
find some explanation for this insanity!"

Or it could be, "I've never encountered [language], but I keep hearing it's
bad. Why are people saying that?"

I very much expect COBOL is overwhelmingly the result of the latter.

(Of course, neither of these is a good sign, just that they're somewhat
different dynamics.)

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owenversteeg
The "hard" languages are ASP.NET, C++, C#, Haskell, Lisp, and Objective-C.

Here's a breakdown of the languages with the number of positive/negative
suggestions (popular was assumed to be a good thing):

ASP.NET : +1 -3 = -2

C++ : +1 -2 = -1

C# : +2 -1 = +1

COBOL : +0 -1 = -1

Erlang : +1 -1 = +0

FORTRAN : +2 -0 = +2

Haskell : +2 -2 = +0

Java : +2 -2 = +0

JS : +2 -2 = +0

Lisp : +3 -1 = +2

Obj-C : +0 -4 = -4

Perl : +0 -2 = -2

PHP : +1 -3 = -2

Python : +1 -2 = -1

Ruby : +2 -1 = +1

Smalltalk: +1 -0 = +1

VB.NET : +1 -1 = +0

By this metric, Objective-C is the worst language, twice as bad as PHP (oh
my!), and Lisp and FORTRAN are the best languages.

~~~
jaxytee
So I guess my next project should be written in some arbitrary Lisp or
Fortran.

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izietto
"Why is Go so..."

    
    
      Why is Go so slow
      Why is Go so hard for computers
    

I realized after a bit that the last was referring to the game :)

------
noobermin
"Why is fortran so fast" reminded me of this [1]

[1] [http://unriskinsight.blogspot.com/2014/06/fast-functional-
go...](http://unriskinsight.blogspot.com/2014/06/fast-functional-goats-lions-
and-wolves.html)

~~~
oofabz
Fortran is fast because it has implicit "restrict".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrict](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrict)

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ashmud
"why is lua so"

    
    
      why is lua so fast
      why is lua so popular in games
    

Several other popular languages had nothing or only (subset of)
fast/slow/hard/popular/powerful.

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stefanu
I think that if people were more familiar with Smalltalk, the Objective-C
would not get that bad rating. I find the Smalltalk message passing syntax is
way more readable than more common function(args) syntax. ObjC is nothing more
than a plain C with message passing in square brackets.

What might make it less attractive is the verbosity of Cocoa (formerly known
as OpenStep), too many class name prefixes, missing native literal objects and
use of pointers. This is problem of the framework, not the language itself
though.

------
perlgeek
"why is perlmonks so slow" made me chuckle. Perlmonks is indeed slow (used to
be much slower), the user interface is ugly (but quite usable once you got
used to it), but it's still the best place for deep discussions about Perl.

If you ask an interesting question (not just "how do join two files on a
common column"), you often get several amazing answers.

~~~
mtmail
perlmonks.org lost a lot of credit in my eyes because they store passwords in
clear text. All passwords got hacked&leaked in 2009, they notified the users
but continue to do it (tried today). This website is run by [any programming
language] professionals?

------
bhauer
It's a bit amusing that "why is Java so slow" is in there. I have to think
that's coming from people who are familiar with Java from the horrible Java
browser plug-in rather than server-side Java.

~~~
TacticalCoder
Java is quite fast compared to most languages but for some things it is still
terribly slow compared to C / C++. I had to do some big integers crunching
lately and tried: Java, Go, Go with GMP, C (GMP) and Haskell (using GMP under
the hood). Eventually I went for good old C with the latest GMP version for it
was the fastest for my use case (with Haskell and Go with GMP coming close but
still not as fast as C).

Java was, for the computation I needed to do... Eight times slower than C! I
know I was hitting a edge case for a very specific kind of computation but
still. The situation is so bad that there are people who wrote wrappers
calling GMP from within Java.

I think some Java devs don't realize how slow some of the Java API are for
certain tasks. For example there's no way Java BigInteger can compete with GMP
and there's no way GMP is getting ported to Java anytime soon (GMP is open
source: just go and look at some of the optimization going on and you'll see
what I'm talking about). Most Java devs don't realize how complex and
optimized some libraries out there are and how low-level you need to go when
you need the utmost performance.

Sure, server-side Java is fast for most things it's used for. But not
everything is "server-side" and there are several domains where Java simply
doesn't cut it compared to good old C + assembly.

And people finding Java being nearly one order of magnitude slower than the
alternative for some tasks may be tempted to ask "Why is Java so slow...".

Now this isn't a criticism of Java: Java is the language I know best and used
(and still use) the most. And I know it well enough to know when it's probably
a good idea to try to find an alternative.

~~~
jbooth
Last time I checked and did the math, I counted about 500 bytes of overhead in
a java BigInteger.

Still, I wouldn't call that "java being slow", more, "java having a god awful
BigInteger library class".

------
JasonFruit
One of the top three suggestions for me was, "Why is Scheme so pale and wan?"
I had no idea one of my favorite languages was so . . . poetic.

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mrweasel
Hehe, Google want to correct "Why is golang so" to "Why golang is awesome".

------
_random_
To have auto-suggestions is already a great achievement.

~~~
smorrow
So far, I've never started typing until I knew what I wanted to ask, so I find
them distracting. Sometimes I start reading them and then forget what my own
query was.

~~~
_random_
I meant for a language :). The ones like Kotlin and Idris have no suggestions
at all.

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yoodenvranx
It looks like some search terms are blocked. If you type "my penis" or "my
boobs" nothing happens, but for "my finger" or "my toe" you get some results.

------
deadghost
>why is erlang so slow >why is erlang so fast

???

