Ask HN: Which popular programming languages are you NOT interested in and why?

Currently I am not interested learning modern front-end stack and js-framework-of-week. Life is short. This stack is changing so fast. I will wait few more years. Hopefully then it will be stable to learn.

Pretty much all of them. I started with C and never liked OO programming. Even when kind of optional in the language, for your own code, you still have to deal with an OO library ecosystem because everyone writes the libraries that way when the language supports it.

It kind of depends on what you mean by popular. I don’t have much interest in Rust. It has a lot of hype right now. It doesn’t seem like a bad language, just too low level for what everyone wants to use it for (due to hype and most people not writing OSes).

Javascript. There is not much to learn if you come from c. And ‘the javascript way’ is just a tangled mess. Python, because ‘the python way’ is just a bunch of weird idioms for apparently no reason other than making it odd to read for beginners. You have to use both, of course

I can't really think of a current language I wouldn't be interested in learning or learning better.

But there are languages that I am just not sure I am sold yet on, like Haskell. I am not saying it is bad as I just don't know, and functional programming isn't bad, but I am just not sure why Haskell over other options. Would love to hear reasons it might be a better choice and in what circumstances it is advantageous.

Python and Ruby. I don’t see how you could not want static typing. Not least because of it’s documenting qualities. Otherwise what are we relying on variable and method names to tell us what type something is?! Ha ha.

Lisp OTOH I could forgive the non static typing for the learning opportunity but not sure I’d use lisp for production code for the same reason unless there is a type checker utility.

I’ll put up with JS because of the Web and I can use TS but for server side I won’t use Ruby and Python as I can slot in C# or Java or Haskell and have much better time.

Finally Elm: definitely worth learning but hit its limitations pretty quick. The problem is you have to route everything in your app through their mandated UI pattern (imagine a web app where every piece of state including the currently viewed month of a date picker 20 levels deep HAS to be a React prop on the root object updatable only in in one root place with no abstractions like interfaces or type classes or even hell monkey patching dynamic language stuff to tame this problem).

Rust and the other new zero cost abstraction languages. Reason being that I think performance is a solved problem. The future is in safety and readability. Not squeezing the last few percent of fps out of your hardware. Go is in the same category. People are inventing better versions of C++ when I want them to invent better versions of Python. :)

Basically anything on the JVM or .NET. I used to use Java and C#, had to use C++.NET for a job, and now I'm just done. I much prefer compiled languages and scripting languages, and I don't see much of a need for something in between. I also don't like working with Windows or Android, so there's not much reason for me to care.

For actual preferences, I use and like Go, I'm playing with Rust quite a bit, and I use Python, Lua, and JavaScript for simpler tasks. I'm also somewhat interested in Nim and Swift, but the latter just doesn't seem interested in being truly cross platform and I don't have any Apple devices, so it's in hold for now.

C++. I know it, I use it, I don't usually like it. A lot of the language just feels like a hack. I usually much prefer to write performance critical code in C but sometimes the utility of C++ or of certain C++ libraries outweighs that desire.

Also while I don't really see C++ going anywhere anytime soon, I don't really see it expanding too much either.

Both of these facts make me a lot less interested in really diving into advanced features or low level details of the language.

C/C++ is what I started and built my first career on, back when performance mattered for just about every program.

Most .Net languages with the exception of F# which I'm quite curious about.

Haskell, not a popular language in general but in this circle. I still haven't bought into the value of building abstractions and abstractions upon that, and abstractions that let those abstractions play nice together. Ultimate yak shaving with a practical twist if you can pull it off. Seems too far removed for most problems I'm interesting in solving. Less higher-kinded functional langs (Clean, Elm), bring 'em.

Any ORM DSL. SQL is just fine.

Any version of ES20xx that's incompatible with TypeScript.

Scala. Tried it, abused it, went back and couldn't even read my own writing. I think it could be good in the right hands, those being someone who can design good languages for humans to use for each purpose. I haven't met many of them, mostly folks who just want to make a DSL using any/every feature available to do so.

Go. I don't feel the need for yet another language without conditional expressions.

(More generally: I'm pretty firmly in the camp of "terse code tends to be easier to read and reason about", and don't want language designers nudging me to break expressions up and name intermediates).

Python. I've seen too much of what happens to code files on multi-person teams to ever want to have to deal with syntactically relevant white space.

I know, large teams make it work. It still is a source of potential headaches that I don't need.

I don't like python, because most of the languages I have used and learned are influenced by the c language. They use similar syntax with parentheses. I like parentheses, because they define narrow logic scopes that help me focus. Python is also not as flexible as javascript, if I need for a dynamically typed language.

I also don't like go, because go forces to put curved bracket on the same line, whereas I use the Allman style everywhere.

With Allman, I can vertically align a pair of brackets, This helps me to see the scope they define.

Any front-end stuff, I just have no interest in them.

Related to this, I am sad to see Swift (seemingly) taking over from Obj-C. I really liked it years ago and it has a special place in my heart.

I'm not interested in any language with ambient authority, where every function may decide to read a file and phone home without declaring that in its signature.

Go and Rust for being unimpressive for something so modern and being corporate-driven. javascript for... everything.

C#, because it only seems to be useful for Windows and the language does not seem to offer enough merit on its own to try to use it on a Unix-based system.

I am playing around with Clojure/ring for the backend. I am not happy about using node/ror/php on the backend.

Ruby. I just think it's ugly.