[wplug] Best programming language for beginner?

[Drew from Zhrodague]

> "Matsumoto has said that Ruby is designed for programmer productivity
> and fun, following the principles of good user interface design.[28]
> He stresses that systems design needs to emphasize human, rather than
> computer, needs:[29]
>
> Often people, especially computer engineers, focus on the machines.
> They think, "By doing this, the machine will run faster. By doing
> this, the machine will run more effectively. By doing this, the
> machine will something something something." They are focusing on
> machines. But in fact we need to focus on humans, on how humans care
> about doing programming or operating the application of the machines.
> We are the masters. They are the slaves."
>
> That sounds about right. Is this how the Ruby community thinks? That
> tutorial Vikram linked to is HILARIOUS, and I really like how easy it
> is to understand the code.

	The Perl book is also hilarious.

	Ruby may be a nice introduction to programming, but at the larger sizes 
of websites, there really needs to be a focus on systems impact with the 
volume of requests. Ever get Slashdotted? That can bring your site 
beyond a crawl, and into the high-speed delivery of errors. Even some 
CMSes (ahem, Drupal) will fall down even on the biggest systems, 
depending on traffic.

	I find Ruby to be a pain in the ass to manage, and have come to 
describe Ruby like this: Ruby is for programmers that hate their 
sysadmins. I don't like to work in Ruby environments. The ones I have 
worked in have had the absolute worst systems design - the programmer 
just makes his code work, and needs a ton of resources just for that.

	I have seen Java absolutely SCREAM at high volumes, but that does 
depend on the programmer designing the software correctly, and having an 
architecture designed to handle the high traffic loads.

	Yes, you can run Apache on your workstation. And MySQL, and Java, and 
Ruby, and nginx, and 3 other services. No it won't hold up to much more 
than light traffic, and you can test this with a few different 
load-testing packages.

	What do Arduinos use for programming languages?

-- 

Drew from Zhrodague
lolcat divinator
drew at zhrodague.net