You need to stop idolizing programming languages.
I’m tired of it
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EDIT: After reading through some of the responses and discussions about this article over on Reddit, I just want to quickly make some things clear. This post was written in from the point of view of a single individual. It does not represent knowledge gained from any survey or other more (relatively) scientific means. It is purely in response to my personal experience learning a language that is often bashed by evangelists from various sides. While I stand behind the points I make in the article the discussions that seem to have spawned from it have been really informative to me.
EDIT 3: I have written a follow up to this post here.
Onto the actual post.
If you don’t do it already, you definitely know someone who does. You know what I’m talking about. Phrases like:
“Blazingly fast, and memory safe all while only using cost-free abstractions”
“ — native concurrency, garbage collection, and of course safety+speed”
“Rich type system and thread safety guarantees reliability”
I used to be that guy. My most popular comment on Medium goes along the lines of “Rust’s linter is so good, I can confidently say ‘If it compiles, it works.’”
But now I understand. It really doesn’t matter.
Why do you need validation?
Really. Ask yourself. If you feel so insecure about your programming language of choice that you have to spend inordinate amounts of time writing about why “it’s the most productive,” then is it really the best?
If people spent even half the time they used talking about “native concurrency” writing concurrent code, they wouldn’t need the language feature.
Is it really necessary?
Do you need to use the latest hot programming language? Why can’t you simply choose the language that best suites the task? Why use a systems programming language to style your static website? I personally think adding effort where it isn’t needed is a great idea.
Stop bashing the oldies
I hear a lot of developers complain about the ways some languages go about adding verbosity. They claim its old and crusty, and express confusion at their continued use.
Those languages are still used because they work. They get the job done. At the end of the day, that is all that matters. Newer languages haven’t even approached the reliability of the oldies. There are systems that have been running for longer than these new languages have existed — without a single hiccup.
OK, rant over. Go on with your day.
EDIT 2: I am realizing now that a lot of the points I made here had a lot of hand waving logic. Be on the lookout for a more detailed followup where I will be explaining these ideas in greater depth.
