Which programming language will you choose?

I had some chat with some of my former roommates last night. They are double E guys and are now working on embedded systems now. I mentioned that we don't use C very much now, and they got very surprised. They had classes teaching them C as freshmen, and they worked hard for another 2 or 3 years to be able to use it well. And when they finally had the time to breathe in the open air, all of a sudden, they found out that the CS guys don't use C that much any more.

It's not that C used to be very popular among the CS guys. If you take "used to" to mean several decades ago, then I'm probably wrong. C was very popular, and is popular still if you take look at the top guys in the industry. But C is the last resort a programmer will go to if speed is a must. Or perhaps if you or your boss only know C, then C is a natural choice.

If you want to program on a real computer which runs modern operating systems, you should choose your language carefully -- or rather, lazily. Programmers are lazy, and that's the reason why there are programming languages at all. Some people don't want to remember machine code, and hola, they invented sentence-like executable statements. If you work hard to be as lazy as, or even lazier than those guys, you'll live much happier here after.

Java is hot. Should I have said "was"? I'm not so sensative to the trends. People usually feel very comfortable with Java. If you think this statement looks strange, you must not have heard of Lisp before. If you decide to stay in the "mainstream", which is not a bad idea, you can put Java under your belt and leave for the adventure now! Bless you.

If you are so lazy that you hate even the braces in Java, and the awkward inner classes, you can take a look at Python. If you never want to be professional, it could be your best choice. If I had never learned C, I would choose Python as my first language perhaps. It's a very good language. If you think programmers need discipline, then Python is definately your choice! It requires you not to miss even a single tab.

I don't know much of Perl. I don't think it's designed for programs. I used it for some small scripts, and that's the farthest I ventured. I know I'm biased, but it's the best I could have done.

Smalltalk and Lisp are two languages that are very alike, in the sense that people had to work hard to describe the grammars to those that come from the C or Java background. However, they have the simplest gramars. If you think the word "meta" sounds cool, and you're after the ulmate language, then these two are worth your try. If you want to look different from everyone else, Lisp is your natural choice.

If you're an unfortunate EE guy working on embedded systems, C is your only choice. If you worship RMS and want to follow the GNU coding convention, C is also good for you, though Stallman himself may prefer Lisp. Judging by the fact that he implemented a Lisp system. If you are normal enough to feel that C is too much trouble, you can try C++.

Those are all that I know of. Basic and Pascal are not for real programmers. Ruby sounds like perl, and are famous but for its web framework. C# is from the notorious Microsoft so I don't want to appear to have even heard of it. Javascript is a very good thing, however it can't possibly run outside a browser. Lisp is the best. I really want everybody to understand this and agree with me.