Chad Perrin wrote:
>
> . . . and I wouldn't use C or Fortran for certain classes of complex
> application programming, either.
There are a lot of things I wouldn't use Fortran for, although when it
was the only high-level language my colleagues were used to, I did. :)
But despite its original intent as a systems programming language, I
can't think of a single application I wouldn't write in C if that's what
I was paid to do.

There are tools and programming styles that can make C programming as
easy as programming in a dynamic language like Ruby or Perl or Python.
And the whining about the edit/compile/link/test cycle being less
efficient than the edit/test cycle of a dynamic language I think is just
that -- whining. If your complex application is properly modularized,
that's just not a big deal.

C++, on the other hand, I consider a gross abomination. :)

> I wouldn't use Java at all, if I could help it, but that's another
> story.
Well ... I liked Java at one time well enough to choose it over the
protestations of management for a project ... as an excuse to learn the
language. I find Ruby to be a happy blend of all that's good in Java
(objects, classes, methods, garbage collection) and Perl (regular
expressions, system administration primitives built in, arrays and
hashes, simplified syntax), with a few other nice touches of its own
(lambdas, continuations, open classes).