At some point in life I read the following quote somewhere: “There are only two kinds of programming languages out there. The ones people complain about and the ones no one uses.” It strips down coding and human nature - if we use it we complain about it, and if we don't use it we don't complain.
Unfortunately - as wise that quote is, it misses the most important aspect of coding - coding is arguably the most useful tool in understanding a problem and it's solution. In three simple steps you understand you problem, solve it and learn its caveats:
- first, you disassemble the problem down to its basic operations and building blocks,
- second, you write the code for the building blocks,
- finally you combine it all into one whole entity we call an app or a program.
Below you will find my favorite programming languages - ones I use on a daily basis or weekly basis.
C language
C is a great language, in fact it was the first language I ever coded in. Unfortunately, I was not a big fan of allocating and deallocating my memory so I really only used it in class. These days, it's I use it here and then, but mostly by necessity rather than choice.
C++ language
C++ is currently my favorite and my go-to language to code in. In practice it's the logical heir to C, but in reality it has evolved so much the C-part of C++ is almost unnoticable. It's has a bunch of convenient libraries, containers, and almost all the debugging is already solved on the internet ;)
Fortran
Fortran was my go-to language for a while, and today it has sentimental value. It was the first language I made usable programs in. It was also the programming language that tought me the three most important aspects of coding: first make the code run, second make it right, third make it fast.
python
On one hand, python is a great language when you need to do something fast and need to visualize it as well. The awesome libraries one can find in python provide (almost) everything needed to visualize data. Even C/C++ code interfaces well to python, which I find so coool. On the other hand I hate python from the bottom of my heart.
Mathematica
While Mathematica is very powerful tool that I have been using for a long time - I still feel only as a beginner.