Favourite Programming language?

[DSK-]

Visual Basic for me. It was the first language I ever used, besides html. I had some really good lecturers in college that gave me a decent grounding in it (at the time), and because it literally is visual, I can normally work my way around errors and bugs far better than any other language.

After that, I had to learn Pascal in University, which wasn't so bad, was quite fun, followed by VB.NET (90% of my project was the following code: frm1.visible = False frm1.enabled = False, the only things I remember nowadays lol) and finally that nightmarish creation of pure horror, Java.

FUCKING HATE JAVA. I was taught on BlueJ in Uni, and then at my third year I had to use Netbeans. I was NEVER able to compile or run anything in it, so I ended up having to use BlueJ for my projects :/

 

[Flatfrog]

No one mentioned Lingo yet?

I've been a Director programmer for years and I still maintain that Lingo is one of the most satisfying languages to work with because it's incredibly flexible. In Lingo all of these lines are equivalent:

set the locH of sprite 1 to the locV of sprite 2
the locH of sprite 1 = the locV of sprite 2
sprite(1).locH = sprite(2).locV

This is great for novice programmers because it removes a lot of the scariness of dot syntax and so on, while for experienced programmers it's still just as possible to make your code clear and compact. And notice - no required semicolons at the end of lines, or curly braces, or any of those ugly things. I also think that the verbose 'set the whateverProperty of myObject' syntax is an incredibly intuitive way to get to understand the principles of objects and properties. Oh, and Lingo's 'property lists' are a very clever data structure too.

Sadly, Director has been allowed to fall to pieces by Adobe and it's become pretty much unviable as a development platform these days, but it coulda been a contender

 

[mrhateful]

Anyone who says C++ are lying(or don't know better) just to sound pro, talk about dated and clunky. You write c++ out of necessity not out of love.

Languages that are truly a joy to write in is:

1. Prolog
If you love puzzles(Which i do) imagine writing in a language where everything is a logical puzzle. Its crazy fun and I am sure if it was presented with a GUI way(So non-progammers could understand/write it) it could be sold as a game, just like spacechem packages procedural concurrent code as a game.

2. Matlab scripting
Matlab is focused on doing huge calculations multithreaded your task is to write and ensure all can be done in parallel, it provides fun and exciting challenge and is a joy to write in.

3. C# meat and potatoes programming
Even though its an everyday job writing in this language its still somewhat enjoyable, what really sells this language to me is the visual studio developer kit. It makes it very easy to write and understand your own code as well as providing a good debugging tool(I mean have you tried eclipse debugging jesus that one sucks).
Also C# is way above java in every conceivable way here are some examples why:
Events:
Java does not have a built in event system

Properties:
In java you have to define properties as method this.setSometing(Value) and var = this.getSomething()
in C# you write it this.Something = Value and var = this.Something
Very easy to refacter fields into properties later on

Exceptions:
WOW, WOW has java messed this one up, in java all exceptions that can be thrown must be defined in the method, and it won't compile unless this has been satisfied. You might think oh this don't matter much, its great to know exactly what methods can throw, WRONG. Imagine this scenario: you have a interface from an other library so you cant change it. If that interface does not have throw exception on it then your screwed since you have to deal with the exception at that method in your program(Even if you cant deal with it) now luckily they have implemented something they call runtime exceptions. So what you have to do is catch all exceptions and then repackage them as runtime exceptions(Sounds fun right?) this not only is a complete waste of time and a bore, it also makes for some really ugly code.

 

[Flatfrog]

I guess I am the odd man out here but I actually like action script 3 personally. I am more of a web based programmer so the languages I know aren't all even properly considered which I can understand since html is just a markup language. The game I am designing is currently being done primarily through AS3 actually.

AS2 was wonderfully elegant. AS3 is just nasty - and the documentation sucks the hairs from an old man's balls.

 

[Blade1130]

I guess I am the odd man out here but I actually like action script 3 personally. I am more of a web based programmer so the languages I know aren't all even properly considered which I can understand since html is just a markup language. The game I am designing is currently being done primarily through AS3 actually.

AS3 was alright, though it gets a lot of bonus points from me for being able to rotate images so easily. I still have nightmares from having to do that in Java... (Never did get that rotation perfect, damn AffineTransform)

 

[devotedsniper]

3. C# meat and potatoes programming
Even though its an everyday job writing in this language its still somewhat enjoyable, what really sells this language to me is the visual studio developer kit. It makes it very easy to write and understand your own code as well as providing a good debugging tool(I mean have you tried eclipse debugging jesus that one sucks).

I can vouch for this, as someone who works daily with C# for the back end of asp.net, things such as intellisense and breakpoints that come with visual studio is a god send.

Saying this any language which is supported natively by Visual Studio is easier, it really is a great dev tool. Not to mention you can add limitless amounts of addons to add support and make life just that much easier (e.g. the add on indent guides makes following {} braces so much easier). BUT I still would avoid C++ like the plague, I get why game devs use it as you can really fine tune things to optimise them as much as possible for the restrictive consoles, but for anything else I'd take C#. Were in an age were we have 8+GB RAM for applications, by no means am I saying a developer should be sloppy but we don't need to be scrounging around for every last Kilobyte anymore.