It feels like anything is mowed down on the internet. I’ve been a dev for a long time too, and I never feel sure when I chose a stack for a new toy project (in my day job I rarely get to chose, so that’s a non issue there)
There is a good quote from Bjarne Stroustrup for that "There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses". I think for hobby projects it's the best to use languages that interest you
As humans we (you are human, right?) have a negativity bias. Working projects are better than perfect tech stacks. Seriously. Anything even half way working is infinitely better than anything in your head. Just pick something and go, especially for you projects.
A lot of the criticisms at specific languages are really directed at people. Especially those that have “{language} brain”. These people are of the opinion that everything looks solvable by said language even if it isn’t the best tool for the job.
If you pick the best tool for the job, no one has standing to rightly criticize you. What’s the right tool? One that you know (or have the ability to learn) and has proven itself in its ability to solve problems you’re seeking to solve.
There are two types of languages, those that people complain about and those that noone uses. Though rust has been voted the most loved for many years now on the stackoverflow yearly survey, and for good reason IMO.
As a society and as individual computer scientists, none of us actually know what a computer is or how to use them. All programming languages are guesses, mere attempts to encode our natural-language reasoning and philosophy in the purely syntactic and formal fashion required by computers. Don't let yourself become biased in favor of specific languages; instead, understand that all languages are bad in different ways.
Honestly, I would advise to not pick a language based on popularity, hate, or whichever of those qualify as internet fame these days.
I would approach the question with what you want to get out of your toy project. Do you want to get something done? Then pick a language that is close to what you are already familiar with. Do you mainly want to learn something? Go with a language with concepts you are unfamiliar with, eg. pick a functional language if you mostly do OOP stuff or pick a low level language when you mostly do high level web stuff.
My advice, generally speaking, is: When you do something in your spare time, don't spend it on things you already do at work. The way to improve in software development is to see problems from many different angles and to rethink the solutions you already know.
C# doesn't have a big spotlight on it like Rust or Python, but it is a popular and very unhated language. It's a good language that is regularly improving and has phenomenal documentation. Seriously, I've not gone to Stack Overflow for anything C# (outside of third-party libraries) for years; Microsoft's documentation gives me everything I need.
It is incredible really, I worked with C# for so long, and I tend to be very critical of the stuff I've used for a long time. For C#, I am struggling to figure how I would improve it, because all the stuff that suck in C# is usually the lesser of two evils.
Of course if you hate classes, types, managed memory or anything invented in the last 20 years you will hate it, and I've met people like this. That is why you gotta keep learning as a dev, you don't want to be one of those.
The 2 that I struggle with on a daily basis:
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missing discriminated unions. Third party libraries kind of sort of fill the gap, but it's a pain point.
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a flawed async programming model. Namely, there are multiple models (for historical reasons / backwards compatibility), and the more current one (task-based) throws a wrench in your ability to effectively design interfaces, functions, delegates etc. that can be shared between synchronous and asynchronous code. Green threads would have fixed this, at the cost of some other potential issues, but it looks we're stuck with tasks for now. Also, there is the awkwardness of needing to constantly use .ConfigureAwait(false) after every await, unless you shouldn't (e.g. in the UI thread), and if you get it wrong you might cause a deadlock in your app but not in a console app… A bit confusing and easy to mess up.
F# will give you discriminated unions and do-notation (it calls it 'computational expressions') while retaining full access to the .net ecosystem.
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Every languages has their own pitfalls. The answer on picking a language is to pick whatever works for you. There may be even domain-specific languages if you're interested in a domain, and it can be way more flexible than general-purpose solutions for that domain too.
I use 4 languages.
- C++ for adding features to a program.
- C# for making .dll for an application (
Paint.NET). Kinda similar purpose to what I do with G'MIC, except so much more limited. - Python for processing strings
- G'MIC for creating/editing raster graphics images (volumetric too)
Now, I wish there was a vector equivalent to G'MIC, but there isn't.
