How does ('' == [] && this); make programmers feel?
August 23, 2014 7:23 PM   Subscribe

Programming language subreddits and their choice of words presents an interactive chord graph showing how often particular languages are mentioned in other languages' communities. Another chart shows how proportional others' mentions are to the TIOBE Index. And some very elementary sentiment analysis suggests how often each language inspires pure theory, happiness and fun, or cursing. A tongue-in-cheek aside reveals that counting infrequently-mentioned languages yields another happiness/coolness chart that puts Elm at the top, just above other surprises.
posted by Monsieur Caution (28 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
So, yeah, javascript. Bonus? Your browser, the one you're lookin' at Metafilter thru right now? It speaks javascript.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:54 PM on August 23, 2014


I am deeply relieved to see that very few people are talking about SQL in the C++ subreddit.
posted by aubilenon at 8:43 PM on August 23, 2014 [3 favorites]


I thought PHP was a curseword?
posted by brenton at 8:43 PM on August 23, 2014 [7 favorites]


I've thought at times about doing a post on this, but since I'll never have time, if you've never seen hello joe - the Erlang introduction video made in the late 80's- or could have been the early 90's, you've really missed out.
posted by carlodio at 8:47 PM on August 23, 2014 [9 favorites]


I am a php developer :(
posted by grizzly at 8:52 PM on August 23, 2014 [3 favorites]


Haskell programmers speak in words? I would have expected them to exchange memes of pure thought using some sort of monadic transfer process.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:56 PM on August 23, 2014 [15 favorites]


Javascript is the BASIC of the 21st century. Sloppy, intentionally limited, but essentially omnipresent.
posted by wotsac at 9:13 PM on August 23, 2014 [5 favorites]


Carlodio, that's wonderful. It totally deserves an FPP of its own.
posted by Itaxpica at 9:24 PM on August 23, 2014


Mathematica users are the least likely to curse? The people in this sample have never tried to remember the 7-argument form of ListConvolve.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 10:26 PM on August 23, 2014 [6 favorites]


Sure, Objective-C might #3 on the TIOBE index, but that's with it (almost) only running on ONE company's hardware.
posted by readyfreddy at 10:41 PM on August 23, 2014


Oooh thanks for this. I saw one of the links, previously. And while I'd read about FRP in some stuff recently - I don't think I recall reading about elm. It looks interesting. Now I have to find out more about it :)
posted by symbioid at 10:59 PM on August 23, 2014


hello joe - the Erlang introduction video

That video is hilarious! I'd never seen it, but like many Erlang users, I've taken a class from one of the guys in it (Robert). Of relevance here, he was super forthcoming about Erlang's quirks, and his great attitude in highlighting them probably made me curse less later while being happy about the things that are fun, interesting, or simply not wrong to do with it.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 10:59 PM on August 23, 2014 [4 favorites]


You know what's not on any of those lists? Gupta SQL Windows. Suck it, Umang. Mom finally got me a Louisville Slugger a few years ago, but I guess you're off the hook for that half-hour alone in a room with you that was the second part of what I wanted for Christmas in 1995.

Not that I'm bitter.
posted by ob1quixote at 11:48 PM on August 23, 2014


Mod note: One comment deleted; maybe not with the fighty derail starter on Brendan Eich?
posted by taz (staff) at 1:15 AM on August 24, 2014


Python. Whee!
posted by SPrintF at 1:30 AM on August 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


> Mathematica users are the least likely to curse? The people in this sample have never tried to remember the 7-argument form of ListConvolve.

I think the take away fact about Mathematica is its users have had their means of expression reduced to "hate" and "crap". Even "this" has fallen by the way side.
posted by vbfg at 1:51 AM on August 24, 2014


The infrequently-mentioned languages chart indicates that COBOL is about the most often mentioned in the context of "fun". That's not what I would have expected.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:08 AM on August 24, 2014


Maybe they are including comments like "COBOL is not fun", Joe.

I suspect the forth comments are from people who think RPN is weird.
posted by scruss at 6:46 AM on August 24, 2014


Perhaps Mathematica as a programming language is only used by a pretty specialized community, who find its syntax helpful for what they are trying to do, rather than frustrating?

It's been a long time since I've programmed in Mathematica, but I recall it being a decent language to write a parser in for my undergrad programming languages course. And it bridged C and lisp quite helpfully.
posted by eviemath at 7:00 AM on August 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Seems like Pythonistas like to talk about just about everything else. I wonder whether that's due to its prevalence in scripting things like build servers that cut across language communities.
posted by spitefulcrow at 9:28 AM on August 24, 2014




No surprise that the Lisp community is
the happiest community: Lisp is wildly fun.

Also, it's made of hugs.

((((((((((Lisp))))))))))
posted by pickles_have_souls at 4:56 PM on August 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


RPN weird eq assert
posted by and for no one at 5:30 PM on August 24, 2014


Um, I can't seem to find occam
posted by Dub at 5:34 PM on August 24, 2014


Occam was removed to keep things simple.
posted by kcds at 6:17 PM on August 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


SPrintF: "Python. Whee!"

>>> import antigravity
posted by signal at 8:04 PM on August 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


> Sure, Objective-C might #3 on the TIOBE index, but that's with it (almost) only running on ONE company's hardware

Visual Basic and C# are also single-platform languages.
posted by ardgedee at 7:08 AM on August 25, 2014


Old Visual Basic was Windows only but VB.Net and C# target the Common Language Runtime of which there are projects like Mono which target non-Windows/non-x86 platforms. What I can't say is how popular Mono really is.
posted by mmascolino at 11:38 AM on August 25, 2014


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