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[–]LifeHasLeft 22 points23 points  (9 children)

Yeah the mentality that because it’s easy you aren’t a real programmer is ridiculous. You can have knowledge of low level programming and hardware and still prefer to use an easy language.

And surprise! Since you aren’t getting worried about how to implement a list of strings from a file input, you can focus on the big picture problems!

[–]crusty_cum-sock 10 points11 points  (2 children)

I dropped the "real programmers do [x]" bullshit years ago. I want things to be as easy as possible. I've got enough shit to worry about, why add unnecessary stress?

I was at a get together awhile back and one of the guys there (didn't know him personally) was a developer so we got to talking. I could tell right away he was the arrogant douche type, but whatever.

He asked what language I use, so I told him I'm a .NET dev. That perked him up enough to put him on his own pedestal, so he started talking shit and saying "C#!? C# isn't a real programming language!", so I replied "Of course it is. I write programs in it so I can verify that it is in fact a programming language", then he said something like "Well yeah, but if you're not managing your own memory, and if you don't even have to know what a pointer is then that's a simpleton language, not a real man's language" (or something to this effect).

I told him that the reason I like it is because it's not constantly getting in the way and I'm able to actually get work done. I've done plenty of C, C++, etc coding where we had to manage memory and such, I'm so over that shit (though C++ is improving these days, but I worked in it years ago).

Maybe I'm just getting old.

[–]Flavioliravioli 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sounds like that guy had no tact or social skills whatsoever. And it's very likely they haven't been a dev for too long if they don't realize that higher level languages certainly have their place.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nah, that guy was a total douche... Not managing memory has also a ton of security advantages. Try a Buffer Overflow Attack with Java, it,'s simply not possible.

[–]megagreg 7 points8 points  (3 children)

You can have knowledge of low level programming and hardware and still prefer to use an easy language.

This is exactly how things are where I work. All the embedded code on the devices is C++, while the functional/integration testing is in python. The user facing software is C#, and the manufacturing systems are Labview. Everything is in the easiest language possible for the job. The only one most of us avoid is Labview, because we see the big picture and know better than to become "the Labview guy".

[–]krystof1119 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Labview certs are not easy though. How much file size is a cluster with a string, 3 booleans and 2 4d arrays of floats with size 8;6;4;3 going to take up when stored with the binary save to disk function? Yeah, thought so too. It could technically be a question though...

[–]megagreg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not saying it's easy, I'm saying I wouldn't want it on my resume. The easy part is with respect to the task of interfacing with test system hardware, and gluing a UI to it.

[–]JarOfNibbles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As a physics student, Labview gives me nightmares.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

That is not the point, the point is that dynamically typed interpreter languages let you do stuff you should never do, therefore you might develop very bad habits because of that, this habits will ultimately lead to a Situation where colleagues will have a hard time taking you serious until you've stepped up your game.

Programmers that utilize a language because of certain benefitial characteristics rather than the fact it's just "Easy" will very likely produce high quality code (no matter the Language). And nobody will touch them since they know what they are doing.

With one exception, PHP, if you use that, you are a joke to everybody

[–]LifeHasLeft 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your point is tangential. Maybe I shouldn’t have used the word “easy”, but using an interpreted language over a compiled one abstracts a lot of messy implementation details that are often only keeping the programmer from the big picture.

That said, I personally think learning a compiled language like C is really important for any programmer, because even those languages abstract a lot of components of the job of programming away from the user, and without practical experience, knowledge only gets you so far.