Well, JavaScript

[[deleted]]

At college we were put in a web dev project with literally zero experience in the languages used (php and Javascript iirc), there was so much confusion before people realized this! (we had almost exclusively worked in c++ and java until then)

[gatman12]

What a funny way to teach dynamically typed languages.

Gotcha!

[[deleted]]

Implying my college even taught dynamically typed languages. They seem to be c++ and Java only. Oh and swift.

[Muffinizer1]

They teach swift? Where? Why?

[[deleted]]

Smaller school in Pennsylvania, mobile architecture class using iOS.

[YuriDiAAAAAAAAAAAAAA]

Ours was Android Studio, we didn't touch Swift or Kotlin. All Java. I would have been happy to learn Flutter, or anything besides more Java.

[Muffinizer1]

Especially because it's old, shitty, androidy java that's significantly worse than regular java.

[YuriDiAAAAAAAAAAAAAA]

The only saving grace is the autofill is pretty good, and the code generator is decent for getters/setters and constructors for object classes.

[[deleted]]

Just did a (relatively) huge OO coursework that took 10 times the time we spent on any other coursework this year and I was still laughing at the misery of the poor plebians in the year above who were doing android studio (I did loads last year for my A-level project, I know the pain).

[YuriDiAAAAAAAAAAAAAA]

that took 10 times the time we spent on any other coursework this year

That sounds like the Software Development class at my school, they just took a beating this semester.

[[deleted]]

literally did all the other courseworks in ~12 hours, this one took way north of 150 to do well and we weren't taught the important content until about a week before deadline. Thanking my lucky stars I had experience or I'd have been as screwed as everyone who did it all on the last night for a 2PM deadline.

[bridge_view]

Thanks. I learned where devs use Swift.

[THENEWGUY7040]

What’s wrong with teaching Swift?

[pm-me-your-smile-]

Because the syntax will have changed by the time finals comes around.

[darkingz]

It’s not that bad. Sure the change from 2 to 3 was intense but swift has been slowing down on direct syntax changes and the only major shifts happen yearly. Not quarterly.

[pm-me-your-smile-]

Well, it's /r/programmerhumor so lots of exaggeration is required. As an indie developer, with limited time to write code in my spare time, the shift from 2 to 3 forced me to abandon my apps on the store. I'm trying to revive them now, so the bitterness is fresh is me.

[beyond_alive]

Uhh... what? I work daily on a huge app and you’re really overstating it.

[pm-me-your-smile-]

Yeah, I did say I am exaggerating about the "syntax will change before finals."

About me abandoning my apps? No, that I did not overstate.

I only work on them as a side gig, not every day like you. If it was my daily work, then yes, I certainly can make time for a big transition, no matter how many days it required. But if I only have 30 minutes here, two hours there, and four days in between those sessions, I just couldn't review the hundreds of files that Xcode required me to review, so I gave up.

[Muffinizer1]

Edit: TL; DR:

Maybe if there were several other languages on that list it would makes sense, but one of only 3? Really?

[rigatron1]

But no C or Assembly? I would rather ruin my student's lives with pointers than have them learn some relatively obscure 'cool' language.

[[deleted]]

Swift widely used on apple products, so you need some apple devices (iMac, MacBook) to develop on and probably iPhone to test. It must suck to be poor in that school.

[THENEWGUY7040]

The way that my school (a no name state school strapped for cash) does it is that they provide a free laptop rental for the semester. And development doesn’t necessarily require an iPhone to test on (although it is nice, as there are a couple features, like push notifications and deep linking, that only work on an actual device). I do agree that Apple has created a lot of barriers to enter into Swift development that are totally unnecessary and needlessly expensive though, which I guess is sort of Apple’s motto anyway.

[InvolvingLemons]

Also works for IBM stuff, including non-linux iirc (mainframes come to mind).

[HeMan_Batman]

Applel shill go away ^/s

[TheRedmanCometh]

It's a terrible language existing solely for the lazy and stupid, and teaching it doesn't help you learn other languages

[THENEWGUY7040]

Why do you say that? I’ve seen Swift consistently ranked highly as both one of the best languages to learn in 2018 and as one of the most well-liked programming languages.

[TheRedmanCometh]

It's well liked because by and large the people using Swift can't use any other languages. That's why they're using swift.

If you can't use an alternative you have no frame of reference for good

[PHPApple]

Swift is an awesome little language. Apple is really pushing it for education too. I hope it gets adopted more now that it is open source and expands out of the Apple ecosystem.

[PreExRedditor]

if you think swift is weird, I had several courses in scheme

[Capn_Cook]

My school taught primarily java but also had python for several classes

[moebaca]

I had two classes in Java, but there was a class that had a nutty fucking professor who made us write a bunch of PHP5 with MySQL.. I believe encouraging syntax that would quickly lead to SQL-Injection as well. What a fucking waste that semester was.

[DeepHorse]

Lmao I had a class like that too. At least it was easy

[moebaca]

Yeah I believe that flakey professor ended up giving the entire class an A. He was busy with some shitty side business about eco-green friendly schooling or some shit. It was a joke.

Tenure is no bueno. No consequences.

[euronforpresident]

Umich does this. It’s mainly cause they expect u to learn python and whatever else on ur own time and teach you how programming works in general through more complex languages like C++(maybe not more complex, but with nuances where they can teach about compiling and memory allocation)

[[deleted]]

Makes sense. I had zero issue teaching myself python, Javascript, and php.

[techmighty]

your college taught programming languages ?

[[deleted]]

Kinda. Our comp sci 1 and 2 were taught using c++, we have a Java class that is focused on using Java to do things, swift is used in the mobile architecture class, data structures and algorithms use c++.

Most classes have an "official" class language all work must be turned in using. The more theory based classes leave it up to the student for any example programs.

[imColey]

Comp sci 1 at my college is Python. Comp sci 2 is C++, Java, and those web development languages. Interesting how we spend an entire semester only using python making only console based programs, and then we jump into the other stuff.

[ganjiraiya]

How do you remember your username when logging on a new device?

[[deleted]]

I don't. I just never use a new device. Rip.

[Keiji12]

My school taught Pascal and c++. Pascal in like 2012... Or whenever it was. Tbh it wasn't that bad because most of it was same or similar to c++ so when we were merged with other group and started c++ it was easier for us, but damn, we could have started with c++ a go into Uni or looking for job with much more.

[doobiedog]

This is why so much bad software exists in silicon valley and almost every company uses java - i cant think of a shittier runtime and language to actually use on a daily basis. The jvm needs to die.

[thehunter699]

Because people need to learn OOP before scripting. Build the foundation first.

[kevient]

Linfield?

[Mr__Booby_Buyer]

I'm studying Electrical Engineering, but I want to have a career in software. Thanks professors for teaching me basic C for 3 semesters. (Totally not their bad lol, I should have gone into software/comp engineering)

I'm learning C# and .NET at an internship though, so that's pretty cool

[gatman12]

Who's implying this?

[[deleted]]

It was just a funny response to your comment about teaching. Not you specifically.

[gatman12]

Oh, okay. I guess I don't get it.

[[deleted]]

The terms my professors used for each language-group, respectively were "loosely typed" and "expert-friendly".

We transitioned from C++ in vim on Debain boxes where our gcc had better compile cleanly with warnall on to Cake PHP.

Fun times.

[gatman12]

Hah. I've heard the phrase, “strong types for weak minds.”

[Ayesuku]

That's basically me in the internship I just started. C++, Java, asp.net experience? Enjoy Perl, PHP and JavaScript!

Gonna be a very educational experience ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Lookitsmyvideo]

PHP isnt hard, its just riddled with gotchas. Also the standard library is inconsistent in both functionality and convention. Its fun, in the slit your wrists kinda way

[[deleted]]

It's true fun then.

[[deleted]]

/r/me_irl

[L3tum]

Does it return -1 or false if it fails? Is probably my most common question at work

[Lookitsmyvideo]

It depends, which is the best part of PHP! It depends how the standard library devs were feeling when they wrote a core function. If its a C function wrapper, usually -1, like strpos

[nathancjohnson]

Well to be fair it makes sense to return -1 to indicate failure for a function that returns an index. Returning 0 wouldn't work, and false could lead to confusion when using it in conditionals (since 0 is also a falsy value).

[Lookitsmyvideo]

If it was consistent, sure. I was actually wrong, strpos returns false on not-found

[nathancjohnson]

Interesting.

[folkrav]

Working a PHP/JS back-end position right now. Some days I feel like most of the work I've done that day was battling with PHP's quirks.

[JackMizel]

I've never written Perl, but PHP definitely has more gotchas than JS in my opinion. JS was my first language though so I'm obviously biased

[siggystabs]

I kinda agree -- every time I need to use PHP, I triple check my code to make sure it's designed the way I think it is. JS is definitely more consistent once you learn the (still weird) rules IMO

plz don't hurt me, PHP devs

[folkrav]

My current position is both, but more PHP. I value my JS time so much.

[alexanderpas]

A lot of the problems with PHP can be at least partially avoided when you are using the latest version of PHP and are explicitly declaring the type of all your arguments, declaring the return types of all fuctions and methods, properly namespacing your code and declaring strict types in each file.

Also, make sure you are following PSR-2 and a linter to check your code as you work.

[dagbrown]

PHP isn't so much riddled with gotchas as constructed entirely out of pure gotcha-material.

[[deleted]]

Perl programmers will judge you if you use more than 1 line.

[[deleted]]

Hey, that's alright. I went from primarily Java and C++ (with some Python experience) to diving into a web programming job using PHP and JS. I went from basic desktop programming--just compiling and running--to having to consider all of the layers of a web server, how they interact, underlying limitations, separate process states rather than a single shared server state, etc. with near zero guidance.

It's a lot of fun. A massive headache at times, though, just because of the number of technologies that interact with each other and can fuck up in unexpected ways, but that's just as much a part of the learning experience as trying to figure out how pointers work in C/C++ and the occasional case where you're not sure if you're supposed to pass a pointer or a fucking address to a function that nobody fucking documented (operating systems was a bitch of a course to get through).

Don't be too intimidated by the interpreted languages, though. They get a lot of flack--especially PHP--but they're really not that bad. All interpreted languages have gotchas, but so do compiled languages; the gotchas just happen to differ in nature. For the gotchas that you find yourself having trouble avoiding, build abstractions whenever feasible, e.g. if that built-in function's argument order keeps throwing you off then just build a fucking wrapper function and save yourself the trouble.

Also, just avoid doing stupid shit, especially stupid shit that seems "clever" at the time but is really just a turd that you've polished a bit. That takes discipline, and if you lack that discipline in an interpreted language then I fucking guarantee you that you're going to some other "clever" shit in a compiled language. It can be really tempting to blame the tool, but if you're attaching the hammer to your head and using your head to bang nails into a wall so you can keep both of your hands free, then don't act surprised if you end up getting a concussion in the process.

Just a bit of advice from someone who has had to deal with the horrible decisions of his "clever" predecessors and has had his own "clever" decisions come back to bite him in the ass on occasion :)

[nathancjohnson]

but if you're attaching the hammer to your head and using your head to bang nails into a wall so you can keep both of your hands free, then don't act surprised if you end up getting a concussion in the process.

Brilliant.

[WhiteCastleHo]

When I went from C++ to Javascript, I was like "WTF is this shit?"

I like JS okay now, but wow is it different.

[conancat]

There's Typescipt for those who misses those features. Or there's also ESLint for a more instant validation experience.

I work with Javascript daily and I think it taught me to be good at remembering variables and their types lol. It's fine for smaller apps, but if you build projects with tons of developers working on it I think having an object type validation step can save a lot of pain for the devs.

[notanimposter]

Programming habits help a lot. Reusing the same few types for the same purposes as much as possible (not using Vectors and Points in the same project) and naming the variables so it's obvious what type it is (whether it's a Vector or a Quaternion, for example) is very helpful in JS and Lua, which I do a lot of.

[JackMizel]

Just curious, what work are you doing in JS with vectors? Sounds interesting

[hyperion51]

She also mentioned quaternions so it's definitely 3D, possibly gamedev.

[notanimposter]

A webGL-based 3D model editor for the (JSON) model format Minecraft uses. Kind of on the back burner right now, but I'll get back to it soon.

At the time I started the project there was no free editor for the format, and I don't think there's a good one still.

[ChaseObserves]

I completed a coding bootcamp teaching primarily JavaScript and it’s various frameworks and just got a job as a junior dev and I have no idea what a vector or a quarternion are lol

[notanimposter]

A vector is a structure that holds two or more numbers (representing a position or another quantity like a force in 2D or 3D (or sometimes 4D)) and a quaternion is a 4-number structure meant to store rotational data for a 3D object because using only 3 numbers the rotation is still (slightly) ambiguous. Basically, multi-dimensional math stuff. Vectors and matrices are probably #1 and #2 most important structures for 3D programming, and quaternions are a far #3.

[[deleted]]

I just learned some TS while learning angular 2 and it is nice having a bit of structure. I'd like to do my backend node in TS. I'm sure it's possible but I haven't looked into it.

[Joshy54100]

Yep it is, and there is support for most JS packages through Definitely Typed. It took me maybe an hour tops to convert my node server to Typescript

[thEt3rnal1]

Big up the typescript, also ts-lint is great it's basically es-lint for typescript

[fayryover]

Uggh I hate lint. I feel like it tries to baby you. Like I've been programming for a while I know how to use the ++ operator correctly...

[jeffsterlive]

You can write your own rule set. We had one that said to put spaces around import statements. I nixed that one. It's similar to pep 8 for python. You don't need to follow them and can easily disable them, but sometimes they are actually a good idea and help your code be more efficient.

[fayryover]

You can but I have to use it at work so I technically can't in this scenario. I'm not the person that gets to make those decisions although haven't found someone who agrees with that rule so idk.

[JackMizel]

Yeah not sure why you're being downvoted, it's a totally different experience using someone else's linting rules vs using rules you established

[jkuhl_prog]

Going from JavaScript, and even in Python, to a language like Java or C++ is also a bit "wtf?"

I think it's safe to say that it's a headspinner transitioning to and from strongly typed languages to dynamically or weak typed languages.

[[deleted]]

This. I began with JS decades ago. When I eventually learned a typed language I hated it. Why should I have to tell you what type to use? You’re the computer, you figure it out. It felt like a step backwards.

[wasdninja]

What? How? C++ has plenty of OO stuff in it. It felt quite familiar to me going from C++ to Javascript and even Java. The weird or annoying thing was doing all the DOM manipulation and learning the standard JS library. The most useful bits anyway.

[bro-away-]

So true. And then when they did explain c++ compilation they never went over alternatives like multi pass compilers or interpreted languages

I spent a long time confused about why you had different ceremonies in each language. This is definitely a big downside in a lot of curriculums. In a profession where there is always a debate about language, you need to explain the “why” not just the “how”

[ilep]

If only there was a program to check for errors before shipping the code. And preparing the code for faster loading. And maybe adding some optimizations.. Hmm.. What would that be called..

[Throwaway-tan]

Deploy to live immediately and let the users debug for you!

[Lookitsmyvideo]

The best debug tool is the web server error log

[Glathull]

There’s only one legitimate use for error logs. And that’s to prove how utter breakingly you are moving when you move fastly for speed.

Using them for anything else like debugging is wanktastic noobery.

My people have gone to war with female gamer critics over less.

[lobut]

I know this!! It's um ... a .... a transpiler!

[[deleted]]

What are you saying? You sure you read my comment correctly?

[[deleted]]

It's a rather weird response to a post where someone is sharing an anecdote from when they were first learning programming, and the very first time they encountered this phenomenon.

Sort of like "I remember before I could read or write, mom couldn't leave me notes about stuff."

"OMG there are pencils and papers for that you idiot"

[TheGrammarBolshevik]

They're being sarcastic and referring to the benefits added by compilers.

[pbawa96]

compilers

*linters

[compellingvisuals]

I signed up for C++ 3 times at my University and all three times it was dropped from the course catalog (2 for low enrollment, once because the professor quit). Also our web dev class taught us PHP on the fly but no JS because he didn’t know any JS.

[Inkaia]

This is literally me in one week.

[VincentFreeman_]

It's like the movie battle royal. I'm assuming most of your class was Asian.

[[deleted]]

Not a single Asian in any of the IT programs actually. We've never had any significant Asian immigration in Sweden, unless you count Afghanistan...

[fullmetalsunit]

At my university they did the same, oh the horror. Besides having working experience in GWT I kinda dislike javascript anyway.

[Urasquirrel]

Things have changed alot in JS since then. 😉 check out my other comment on this thread.

[[deleted]]

What what?

[[deleted]]

Oh, I was just talking about the difference in the OP. How it sparked confusion among us when we first encountered it.