Computer Forums - What's Your Favorite Programming Language and Why?

My first and favorite langauage is Perl. It's a powerful scripting language for both online and off. I make most of my custom scripts with it and I also use it a lot for mindless, repetitive tasks. Also, it works with Windows, Linux, and Mac.

Next would have to be PHP. I hated it when it came out, but it was specifically released for web scripting (unlike Perl), so it has a few good features for that. It is easier to use than Perl, but since I already learned Perl, I didn't see any real advantage in switching to PHP. Everyone else uses PHP and I quickly found out that any major release of a script has to be in PHP or else people avoid it. Plus, since it's getting really popular, not knowing it was be a big problem.

ASP I really don't like. It's based on Windows and I don't really like Windows hosts. ASP.net is at least a little better, but still needs a Windows host. There are things like the Mono Project that tries to run the .Net web services on Linux, but there is nothing that's entirely stable. I don't like ColdFusion because it's a proprietary language with Macromedia (Adobe).

Then there are the other common CGI languages, C++ and Python. C++ isn't really supported by hosts, it has to be compiled, which is a pain, but it increases performance. I haven't really found a use for it. Python is a little better, but still not that great. Google is a big fan of it, but I would rather use Perl.

I hate Java applets, servlets, and J2EE, but it's picking up like PHP was. eBay uses it, and a lot of other big commercial applications are going towards Java. I think if I don't start to like it, I am going to get screwed down the road. Java is replacing C++ in universities because it's alledgedly easier to use as a system language. It's not going to be long before those people graduate and knowing Java makes it really easy to pick up the web Java stuff.