Programming Languages – Does the choice matter?

There are so many different programming languages a developer can chose from to complete a project, but in the end does it really make a difference what programming language is chosen? Doesn’t it just come down to personal preference?

I know arguments can be made on why a particular language is better than another and I know there are programming languages that have been developed for specific types of programming. In the end though, you can pretty much accomplish anything you want with the programming language of your choice. It may take a lot more time and work if you chose a programming language that isn’t geared towards your task, but the end result can still be the same.

Do you think the choice of programming language really makes a difference? What programming language is your choice and why?

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 at 10:23 am and is filed under Development Related. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Programming Languages – Does the choice matter?”

  1. MyFriendTodd on February 3rd, 2009 at 10:34 am

    I prefer the combo (some ppl think its weird) ActionScript/JavaScript/PHP/MySQL. It is very easy for me to navigate from web to desktop with this combo. I get a lot of heat from devs at my C#/.NET work place.

    I see a great benefit for ASP.NET in an enterprise environment where you would need IIS and infrastructure, but like most MS stuff it can get very expensive.

    I guess I have to remember that I have somewhat of a rogue skill set that makes me a half breed designer/developer anyway :-p.

  2. Scott on February 3rd, 2009 at 12:28 pm

    I think language choice is fundamentally important in the context of a project. Sure, many standard one-off forms over data applications are fine with whatever language you can use, but not making a consideration puts us squarely in the “everything looks like a nail” camp.

    Some types of functionality lend themselves better to a given language because those languages were designed for those use-cases. Functional languages are exceedingly good at concurrency, stuff that is hard to do in c#. Perl is exceedingly good at text parsing and manipulation. VB is exceedingly good at interop with Office.

    My thoughts are to gather as many different hammers as we can and choose them for the appropriate nails.

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