alt Hacker NewsAs someone who was immersed in C++ from the original Stroustrup book (I do not recommend it), then transitioned to Java, then (largely) to Python I disagree on the language comparison.
- Java is not worse than C++, it's actually better for most large-scale programming
- A (subset) of C++ is still far better for performance-intensive applications (games, low-level systems software, avionics, etc.).
- Related to previous, if you're using ALL of C++ in your projects you're "doing it wrong". It is not a well-designed language.
- I agree that Javascript is a win for "worse is better". Anyone remember Netscape Livewire? I try to avoid that language like the plague, but its runtime support is ubiquitous so it gets the most performance-tuning love.
- Python was, initially, just a better Perl, but its dominance in Scientific computing spilled over into data science. Also, Jupyter notebooks provide a unique value proposition for a FOSS-Mathematica.
IMO JS and its spinoffs made mostly the best choices for an interpreted language. The bad parts are pretty inconsequential, and the good parts are important things other langs didn't do well. Even Rust took after how it does async and package management.
Better than Python which also recently started copying over JS decisions, except that Py was easier to use with C libs from the start which made it capture math/data/science usage earlier.