# The Best Programming Language Ever **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 18, 2009, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-programming-language-ever/514212 "2009-10-18T11:16:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2009, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-programming-language-ever/514212/81 "2009-10-20T19:33:38Z")
> [@Napier](#): > > I wondered if LabVIEW was going to come up… > > It’s buggy as hell… > > LabVIEW’s success may be due to its low starting threshold… I haven’t used it for over ten years; I’m sad to hear that it had gone downhill so much. I used version 5.something at the most, I believe; I see [by the National Instruments website](http://www.ni.com/labview/) that they’re up to something called “2009” (not a good sign when they obscure the revision history), and the Wikipedia page mentions version 8.5. ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-programming-language-ever/514212/82 "2009-10-21T00:48:10Z")
> [@Khadaji](#): > > [D programming language](http://www.digitalmars.com/d/) This is the better page to link to: [Overview - D Programming Language 2.0 - Digital Mars](http://www.digitalmars.com/d/2.0/overview.html) I’m still not really sure it’s the best introduction. I haven’t used D myself, but from what I’ve read it seems a mighty cool language. A worthy successor to C++ (probably a far better one that C++ 0x). ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-programming-language-ever/514212/83 "2009-10-21T01:11:22Z")
> [@Alex\_Dubinsky](#): > > This is the better page to link to: [Overview - D Programming Language 2.0 - Digital Mars](http://www.digitalmars.com/d/2.0/overview.html) > > I’m still not really sure it’s the best introduction. I haven’t used D myself, but from what I’ve read it seems a mighty cool language. A worthy successor to C++ (probably a far better one that C++ 0x). It definitely looks interesting. Is there an ecosystem in place? ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-programming-language-ever/514212/84 "2009-10-21T01:32:21Z")
> [@ultrafilter](#): > > Is there an ecosystem in place? A what? Crap, I only stopped reading computer books a couple of months ago. What happened? How can anybody keep up with this? Or is there some connection to CFCs or climate change or something? ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-programming-language-ever/514212/85 "2009-10-21T01:54:34Z")
> [@Napier](#): > > A what? Crap, I only stopped reading computer books a couple of months ago. What happened? How can anybody keep up with this? > > Or is there some connection to CFCs or climate change or something? ultrafilter is asking whether forest critters are using the language. they’re the key demographic of early adopters. i believe it’s called programmatic succession. why do you think o’reiley books all have animals?! ---
**Author:** ![Eutychus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Eutychus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eutychus)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2009, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-programming-language-ever/514212/86 "2009-10-22T15:38:28Z")
> [@Bootis](#): > > Everyone is wrong. QBasic was the best language ever. Then everything had to get all complicated and me and my fleeting programmer aspirations were left in the dust. Ha! You and your complicated QBasic. I used to program on punch cards using AutoCoder for the old IBM 1401. Now THERE was a programming language! ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2009, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-programming-language-ever/514212/87 "2009-10-22T15:50:24Z")
> [@ultrafilter](#): > > It definitely looks interesting. Is there an ecosystem in place? Support from IDEs, books, and other such things is slow since there’s no one actually backing the language beyond people who happened to have found it on the net. Supposedly you can do full debugging, IDEs can handle the language definition, and there is at least one book. Most of the particularly good stuff for it are all the various C libraries in existence. If you go to [here](http://dsource.org/projects/), you’ll see all the various open projects that are available. Since I’ve spent most of my career in embedded systems and working on Linux, I’ve personally gotten accustomed to using little more than a text editor and printf to debug, so I haven’t bothered trying to set up a proper IDE environment and debugging. What quality these are currently at, I can’t say, though I’m certain it’s not Visual Studio standards. I’m developing an IM/gaming client in it using D 1.0, SDL (OpenGL), dnet, and tango, and haven’t had any issues at all in creating something that will be of professional quality to the end user. ---
**Author:** ![shiftless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@shiftless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shiftless)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2009, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-programming-language-ever/514212/88 "2009-10-22T18:43:56Z")
C - It’s lean, fast, flexible and powerful. The only problem is you (the programmer) have to do a lot of the work yourself. I love it and would still be using if it were allowed. Java, C++ and other languages are OK but I’ve seen a lot of people founder on the need to use all the power at their disposal. Every program doesn’t have to use every single option in the test book. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2009, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-programming-language-ever/514212/89 "2009-10-22T19:34:48Z")
> [@Alex\_Dubinsky](#): > > ultrafilter is asking whether forest critters are using the language. they’re the key demographic of early adopters. i believe it’s called programmatic succession. why do you think o’reiley books all have animals?! Oh. That explains it. I’ve been confused for some time, then. You’d never guess what I thought “bugs” were… ---
**Author:** ![UncleRojelio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unclerojelio/32/3160_2.png) [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2009, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-programming-language-ever/514212/90 "2009-10-22T19:50:17Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > (Near) 20 years is impressive; you’ve been playing with the language since it was first developed? Yeah, I had a CS instructor who was into Haskell from the get/go. He taught intro programming, programming languages, and algorithms so I had him a number of semesters. He would invariably include some Haskell example to show how elegant and brief a functional solution could be to any problem. It was easy to see how his Haskell implementations worked, and fairly easy to think of a functional solution of my own, but actually implementing it and getting it to work proved impossible. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-programming-language-ever/514212.md?page=4)