Ask HN: What is your most favorite programming language ever?

I don't really have a "most favorite programming language ever". I think of languages as tools and try to keep a focus on "use the right tool for the job". I don't reach for C++ for writing webapps as a rule, and I wouldn't reach for Prolog to write an OS kernel.

That said, my primary language for most "general purpose" tasks these days is Groovy. I also lean towards Java for many things, due to familiarity. I have a soft spot for C++ as well, which I probably would have called "my favorite language" years ago.

Lately I've been working on adding R and Octave to my arsenal, and I have to admit, I'm really liking Octave.

But I just bought a Swift book earlier tonight, so who knows what the future may hold...

I don't think I'll ever love a programming language like I loved ANSI C in 1996. I slept with the K&R book under my pillow. When my friends were getting into tarot cards & crystals, I did divination by picking random passages from that book. It was my first "real" programming language, and the one that led me to understand computers on a completely different level.

Today, I guess I'd say JavaScript. I mostly write "vanilla" JavaScript with the help of grunt for minifying (switching to webpack soon). It has it's rough spots, but they're ones I've known for decades now. It's everywhere. It's multi-paradigm.

Common Lisp.

The only tool I use with it, I guess would be emacs. Unless by "tool", you mean libraries.

However, it's Ruby (often generated by Common Lisp) that puts food on the table these days -- and Python that I'm using to plot my (positive) escape from the workforce.

Both Ruby and Python are weaker languages that share some of the Lisp spirit. Ruby in fact, is derived from Emacs Lisp.

One of my side projects is an attempt to jack libraries from Python -- which will, if successful, make Common Lisp more usable as a day-to-day programming language.

After discovering Haskell (lazily-evaluated functional) and Lisp (actually, Clojure), I'd have to say them. For anything close to the metal where pauses for garbage collects don't matter, Go. And of course HTML. (Tho I realize some people out there won't count as a PL non-Turing Complete languages like HTML and Groovy as used in virtually every Gradle build script out there.)

My favourite language is Lua. Not so much for the language per se although it's pleasant to use. But it's very simple so if it doesn't fit exactly what I need I just change it. I use luaj too if I'm going to need to use JVM libraries.

For that reason I tend not to use luajit so much. Although it's a technological marvel, it's nothing like as hackable for a mere mortal like me.

Plan 9 C and the rc(1) shell by far. Plan 9 C is still C but has a lot of things fixed and the plan 9 libs are great. The rc(1) shell I like because its much more consistent than any other shell I've used.

C#

I want to be up-voted on hacker news so Python twothree is by far the GOAT programming language. Go-lang is fucking trash (until the next major point release in which case it becomes vice-GOAT). Django was what god made when he decided to refactor the bible, and is thus elevated to language status. Rust is gonna take over the world. And I currently have 103 side projects in React.