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Comment by ilyash | Hacker News Reader

I'm working on my own programming language since 2013 so I am thinking about programming quite a bit. So here is the summary of those years:

* All programming languages suck. We are not there yet as humanity. I can not think outside of the box enough to make the breakthrough that should be made, at least as of now. While looking at other programming languages, I see the same issue: inability to express thoughts in concise and straightforward manner. Unsolved issue.

* The only idea in programming that I consider definitely good is pattern matching. Note that I'm talking about the concept here. No particular implementation strikes me as "yep, this is it": be it limitation to strings only (regex) or syntax-only implementation (preventing composability of the patterns) or some other sh*t.

Have a nice weekend!

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> All programming languages suck.

I'm not sure this if is a contrarian opinion, but this is one of my biggest career takeaways. Every programming language I have used for an extended period of time turned out to suck. Whenever I find a new programming language that doesn't suck, I end up using it enough to discover the specific way in which it sucks. So I've inferred that every programming language I haven't extensively used, and doesn't seem to suck, will just end up sucking in some way I will ultimately discover.

> specific way in which it sucks.

This

I don't have objective data but it seems that I'm reaching the "they did what?" pretty quickly when I read about yet another language. Don't need to start using it even.

The good(?) news is that this has helped me get over my instinct of, "I don't want to use this language because it sucks".

You want me to use Java? OK, as long as we're using Java in a situation where the specific way in which Java sucks is a smaller issue than the specific way in which any alternative language would suck.

Resonates. I typically say that my programming language should just suck less than others for intended use cases.

I think is as much a claim against PEOPLE and their ability to understand problems and inability to think logically as it is any language itself.

The other flaw: the presumption that solutions can only be linear sequential - languages are written into linear sequential files which contribute "keys under the street light". And no we haven't figure out any better way. But we don't acknowledge the problem either.

You seems to assume that it is possible to design a programming language that doesn’t suck for some people using it. I am pretty sure that is impossible. Just look at the many “X sucks!” mixed with “X is the best!” Posts on HN. A great example is X = Lisp.

I see what you mean. I am more focused on personal perspective (all languages suck). It's good to be more aware about the perspective. I'll also try to look from the suggested perspective too. Thanks!

I think Bjarne Stroustrup is right: “The only programming languages nobody complains about are the programming languages nobody use” :)

Not all thoughts are concise and straightforward. That's not a problem that can be solved.

Concision by itself is not something to optimize for, since it usually leads to misunderstanding at scale.

> Not all thoughts are concise and straightforward. That's not a problem that can be solved.

My observation is that inexperienced programmers have this kind of mess in their head. No programming language can help with that. Hard to tell because I'm not sure what exactly you mean.

> Concision by itself is not something to optimize for,

Concision is one of the aspects. Too much and the code is unreadable. Not enough and code is too long. In both cases mental effort grows and maintainability suffers.

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