What makes a Programming Language, a good programming language ?

Posted by Rics-Dev@reddit | learnprogramming | View on Reddit | 18 comments

In your opinion, what differentiates Programming languages ? and what makes a programming language, a good programming language, or a bad one ?

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MR_LAW11@reddit

Honestly I think a “good” programming language is mostly one that makes the right tradeoffs for its purpose, not one that tries to win every category.

For me the big differentiators are: readability, tooling/ecosystem, performance, developer experience, how easy it is to debug, and whether it gets out of your way or constantly fights you.

Python feels great for learning/AI because it’s readable and fast to build with. C/C++ give you more control and performance but can be painful. Java/C# trade some flexibility for structure. JavaScript… somehow runs everywhere and survives purely out of spite 😭

A bad language to me isn’t necessarily slow or old, it’s one where simple things feel unnecessarily hard, errors are cryptic, tooling sucks, or the language fights the problem you’re trying to solve. The “best” language is usually context-dependent.

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JawztheKid@reddit

Maybe I'm controversial as a computer engineer and not a computer scientist, but for me it's how well can I directly interface with the hardware without too many abstractions or how many abstractions are opt-in and not opt-out are there in the language. I would like higher level features to be optional up to a certain extent. If I can see a language and translate it to assembly then to machine code then to signals effectively, I think it's a good language.

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Immediate_Form7831@reddit

Good design, well-defined semantics, a comprehensive standard library, a living ecosystem of third-party libraries and tools.

And perhaps most of all: readability; the ability to be able to look at the code and have a reasonable chance to know what the code is going to do when executed.

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WeepingAgnello@reddit

They say, "Worse is better". I don't know what to make of that, but it depends what language gets traction. A language could get hyped for multiple reasons, wich have nothing tondo with the language itself.

Recently, there was a nice JetBrains interview with the creator of Zig, and he says that under his non-profit org license, the zig foundation is not allowed to lobby.

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bywaldemar@reddit

I think each one has its own reason for existing. And then personal preferences also play a big role.

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smartuno@reddit

There is no good programming language, every single one is bad in its own way and has drawbacks. How good the experience is would be determined by 1) how well you can read the code, 2) how well you can write the code, and 3) how much support the language has in the dev community

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There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses

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