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Comment by KitDuncan | Hacker News Reader

And riot games. Basically the worst name possible for SEO.

Then again, the language is 'Go.' I am not sure that was the best naming choice and I've heard complaints that it was initially difficult to search for it. My understanding is that 'golang' has helped as a query. So, I guess the situation has improved but I understand it was problematic at first.

To be clear, I've never used the language. I actually dislike programming, though I've decided to get back into it because I have a couple of projects I want to poke at. I'm now deciding between Java and Python.

Maybe I should do an 'ask HN' submission.

If you dislike programming, Python may be the saner choice.

Brainfuck is the sanest choice.

I'm not new to programming. I just haven't done much for a whole lot of years. Brainfuck, I'm familiar with it, is never the sanest choice.

I've narrowed it down to Python or Java. I've done C, C++, BASIC, QBASIC, Perl, PHP, and even some COBOL. I've played with a few others.

Haha, my reply was more of a good nature jab @ GP's comment on Python.

Have you thought of learning a new programming paradigm? Why not check out Elixir or Rust?

Rust is out because of their cultlike traits and their need to turn a language into a political statement. Elixir I know nothing about and an absolute necessity is a wide variety of educational tools, existing projects, libraries, and help sites where people are free to tell me when I'm being an idiot.

I learn best from people with exacting standards.

>Rust is out because of their cultlike traits and their need to turn a language into a political statement.

If you're going to eliminate languages for that, you're basically out of options.

I'd say the choice really depends on the what you are trying to do. Python, Java (and even Golang) all have their pros and cons. If you are doing personal projects that involve with data processing, and maybe a simple webapp, nothing beats Python and its ecosystem. If you are planning to grow a team, and the projects are enterprise-ish, then Java is a good contender. In my case, while I wrote some 30K lines of Golang in my last job a few years back (and still got compliments from the current maintainers to this day), I just tolerated the language and never enjoyed it. Before that, I did a lot of Java and before that C and Perl. I don't program daily anymore, and only play with data science / ML ideas these days, and so I do Python (mostly in Jupyter notebooks) and run the scripts on real datasets in remote servers, with a simple Flask app to display the results/charts.

If you're considering Java, you might consider a Java-derivative like Kotlin. It's similar enough to Java that it's suitable for basically any task where Java will work. The IDE support is great and the learning curve for anyone who writes Java will be quick. After having used Java for close to 20 years and now having tried Kotlin, I see very little reason to start a project from scratch in Java these days.

"Ask HN" sounds like a great idea.

I think Python is the much better choice to start out, but Java is pretty great too. It's hard to find languages that are actually bad choices... maybe COBOL.

I have done some COBOL and even some PASCAL. Yeah, I'm old.

I hired professionals in 1995. I was done doing any of the coding by 2000. I sold and retired in 2007.

I took only one course in C. Everything else was learned on my own, informally.

I think Python would be better to start with. It is interpreted so you will get sane error messages. The community is omnipresent. If you'd like instant answers, you could just pop in to #python on irc.freenode.net.

Most of the times all your questions will be answered by a simple google search, as there are mountains of good questions and answers on stackoverflow.

IMHO for you, getting back into programming will be as simple as opening the interpreter and starting to type.

I don't think programming has changed, the basic mentality is still the same. And nothing beats good old experience.

The new niche "trends" such as asyncronous programming, actor-based programming etc. could be easily learned by lingering on HN for a while :).

Best of luck getting back on the keyboard!

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