ProgrammerHumor
hammerVsScrewdriver
Discussion
This meme doesn't make sense. Just because different languages have different use cases doesn't mean you can't have a favourite language
You pay me to build software. You have a project in any modern language, and you pay me, I will learn to love that language.
Can i just put this on my resume and get hired please
Yeah well, if you remove the references to "pay" from that line. You can certainly get hired 😆
You me to build software. You have a project in any modern language, and you me, I will learn to love that language.
If i read that on a resume I will just assume you had a stroke.
Prime software dev material!
I'd just assume he is a Perl programmer.
Nah kinda reads badly. How about you replace every instance of "pay" with "AI"? Now youll 100% get hired.
You me to build software. You have a project in any modern language, and you me, I will learn to love that language.
🎉
It depends. Can you invert a binary tree?
I still haven't learned to love py.
I can never learn to love Java, pre-PHP 7 versions, nor C++. No amount of money will make truley love those languages.
Don't get me wrong, I'll still accept the paycheck for them. I will just whine about it online and to family.
What’s wrong with C++? It’s my favorite
Where to begin. They just kept adding more shit to it without really fixing or cleaning up fundamentals. You have to know a lot of stdlib and boost to do anything useful in practice. Templating. Odd as hell syntax complications that seems to just get worse with every major edition. Endless debates and committee arguments over what's next.
I mean it's cool that C++ is super efficient and everything, but at what cost? I'm not sure I'd touch C++ if I was paid to do it these days. I have nothing against it other than that it's basically just become a giant monster.
Then again I'm unemployed and am capable of working in C++ if I really needed to, so maybe.
Controversially, if I did work in C++, I'd probably try to keep it as C-styled as possible.
Honestly, if you gave me C with all the type safety that C++ has, I'd probably be largely happy. Obviously there's other stuff C++ has that I would like to be able to use, but it wouldn't be the worst version of reality.
You don’t have to use everything the language as to offer. Why can’t people understand that ?
That's true for starting fresh, but with a legacy codebase, you're often forced to use everything it already does.
I do understand that? It's just hard to do with all of the existing code out there. It requires discipline when working with teams. It's still a whole whole lot of crazy stuff.
I do understand that? It's just hard to do with all of the existing code out there. It requires discipline when working with teams. It's still a whole whole lot of crazy stuff.
What if you had free reign of the stack? Whatever you pick is your fav......
I will learn it, but I will not love it. I reserve my love for worthy things, like PowerShell.
I was with you til you said powershell.
I don't get the hate that PowerShell gets... Yes, it's verbose, but that's by design. You can in most cases read a PowerShell script and say something about what it does even if you don't know PowerShell.
That is not the case with Bash.
I'm not a fan, because if I'm using powershell, that means I'm scripting on windows, which is inherently sucky
PowerShell 7 is cross platform :D
That's probably correct, but I would argue that it's a better tool for what it does. It's also cross platform so you can use those scripts on Linux as well, at least on "supported versions of Ubuntu" according to Microsoft.
Linux has python if you want a readable scripting language, but a modern shell that’s object-oriented would be nice. Nushell looks promising.
fish is honestly pretty readable for a text-based shell, though.
Nothing in my career has made me flash back to FORTRAN or PERL as much as learning Powershell these last few weeks.
Screams in COBOL
Powershell is pretty great, it's wild to me that it's not used more often for file tasks. I use it to combine and clean up incoming client files before being processed through our ETL.
bash and powershell <3<3<3
It is an enormously useful glue language. I've written ETLs in PowerShell that have been humming away issue free in prod for years.
It's the first language I learned and so in the same way I think in English, I pseudocode in PowerShell.
No lie, I would see this as a positive if on a resume when we hire. Tells me they are realistic and flexible, are want to use the tools best fit for the job.
unless it's Go
That's a great ideal until you realize that some languages suck at specific tasks, but a fanatic coworker wants to do it anyway.
idk we clearly need to rewrite the entire backend and frontend in rust.
Your boss: You will love Assembly
I do love it though.
Result: you happy, boss happy
Hello and welcome to our humble Befunge shop.
Oh and our CI system is written in autotools.
Nah you won’t love BML
Opposite of my mentality:
You have a project and a team who'll work on it, you let me decide what's best for it tech-wise
I seem to get put on teams with an existing product, so the tech stack is decided years before I'm involved.
I see. In my case same but I convinced them to switch some things
There are people who love programming, started early as children and probably do it as a hobby parallel to a job. We do have a favorite language. And there are people who see it as just work, so why would they have a favorite language
From the meme and their comments in this thread, I think OP is the latter. I am the former and still find joy in my hobby side-projects.
Same. I think it's questionable to do something just for the money.
But I'd rather screw in screws than nail in nails
I think the metaphor is bad, it's more like two different tool brands. Milwaukee versus DeWalt for example. they both offer more or less the same tools. But they might focus more in different areas.
The metaphor is still bad then, I DEFINITELY have a favorite tool brand and buy it over the others
How does that make it bad? I feel like that reflects reality. You can get the job done with either language most likely, but you might have a favorite, like with tool brands.
Meanwhile, you can't always do the same thing with tools.
Because the metaphor makes no sense. The meme implies that asking if someone has a favorite programming language is like comparing hammers to screws. It's not at all as they can be easily compared and it is easy to have a favorite. The metaphor also wouldn't work if you used tool brands, because like programming languages comparing tool brands is not like comparing hammers to screws and it is also easy to have a favorite. Tool brands would also not fit this meme format
I'm not picking a favorite between hammers and screws because the logic there makes no sense
It's not always hammer versus screwdriver. Sometimes its Dewalt Drill versus Harbor Freight drill and Python is Harbor Freight.
whats dewalt in this scenario? and btw im considering harbor freight to be the superior one here
Probably Java. Java devs love porting out how slow Python is.
why use many word when few work, java makes my brain hurt
I think python is Ryobi. Cheap to use, attachments for everything, lots of community hacks and support. Gets looked down on by pros and specialists, but as a geneneralists' tool, it's hard to beat!
And obviously they are both green 💚
C is Black & Decker. The granddaddy of modern power tools.
Javascript is a Philip's head screw. Shit sucks ass but it's somehow everywhere so we are stuck with it.
I purchased a bunk bed for my Son, and the guy I bought it from was disassembling it with an impact driver (its only 8 bolts). The bolts were originally for allen wrenches but the seller felt like torx bits worked better.... needless to say they were all chewed up so I ended up buying all new ones.
Just tell them CSS and watch them make that face.
SASS.
Damn did CS majors start early this year?
C# bro, I take my CNC lathe over your chisels, hammers and screwdrivers any day
*2 axis lathe
Yeah but then you can't appreciate the artistic flaws of a hand-crafted app.
I hate python less than others
Why would it offend you? Seems odd. Like doctors and lawyers, some languages are just better than others.
God forbid people have fun while programming.
Homelander: Whitespace
C
html!
I have a soft spot for ruby. It's utterly useless to me as a neuro roboticist, since AI and robotics are predominantly done in python and C++, but writing code in ruby is just a lot of fun, the syntax and definitions just make sense to me. I have to check out crystal at some point.
Well, from a technical standpoint I have to say C#. Reasonably fast and reasonably easy to write.
From a pure comfort standpoint, python obviously.
It depends.
Simple shell scripting? bash
Microcontroller development? C
KDE / QT development? C++
Minecraft mods? Java
Interaction between different applications? Python
...
It all depends on the task at hand.
C# my beloved
Rust.
Which one do I hate?
JavaScript. Java. VB, VB.NET, Python, Bash, ...
+1 from my side
We can all agree to hate Java. Especially older version of Java, like Java 8 and 11.
And not VB??? I'm leaving VB.NET out of the questions
Nobody whose opinion counts would have VB or VB.NET as their favorite. The .NET one is not technically bad, but why?
My secret love is awk.
Profanity is mine
I definitely have a favourite language.. c# after that comes python and then maybe Go.
But i also have my least favourite language. Javascript
The ones that makes money
I couldn't live like that.
ChatGPT?
Me saying OpenSCAD and freaking out both the other control engineers and the mechanical engineers.
I literally started using OpenSCAD yesterday lol. Might actually get more use out of it (aside from fun) once I get a 3D printer
"Sar, I'm putting my screwdriver... Everywhere".
The programming landscape is like a disgusting Game of Thrones style brothel. The question is which one this time?
OP you’re allowed to have a favourite between a hammer and a screwdriver. Just don’t mix them up for work, but that’s not intended in the question i think
The one that they pay me to use
I mean, you can still have a favourite language. Do you prefer projects that use the hammer or projects that use the screwdriver? It's a valid question.
A hammer can drive both screws and nails, it's just not optimized for the former. But arguably it's still the more flexible of the two, so if your project manager says "we have to drive both nails and screws; pick one tool," then you kind of have to.
I've had plenty of cases where I know that I could do something more effectively with a different utility, but then they tell me, "It has to be pure shell scripting. You can't use any other dependencies except what we can expect to find on the computer already," and so I improvise the jankiest screw-driving hammer you've ever seen.
Edit: fixed latter > former
I mean I get the what OP means but people can still pull favorites they'd pick for private projects
In my case it's C# or Typescript depending on what I need to do but if I was paid to do it I'd also work with Java or smth even tho I don't like it as much
If you don't have a favorite programming language you're not passionate about software development
CS majors really don't like it when people talk to them huh
Java because I'm used to it and most comfortable with it. Came to appreciate the patterns due to experience.
I like using those papers with the hole punches in them to program. Guis and monitors are overrated
It's like the 'Android or IPhone' question. Quickest way to stop them is 'Nokia'.
CPU microcode
In The Last Kingdom (First book of The Saxon Stories) the smith who forges the sword for the protagonist, when he wants to adorn this sword, serpent-breath, says:
“It’s a tool, lord,” he said, “just a tool. Something to make your work easier, and no better than my hammer.”
IDK maybe I like hammering stuff more than I like sawing stuff, but I would do both for money.
Language wars are stupid, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying that I prefer how this language expresses things or I like how this language forces me to approach problems. That can coexist with using the right tool for the job.
Homelander shreds Pascal.
The only correct answer is 'Whichever one gets the job done without making me want to throw my computer out the window.'😂
You're implying that someone might not enjoy screwing things more than hammering something, or vice versa.
The right choice doesn't have to be your favorite choice.
Dreamberg is the way
Answer: Delphi 🫡
Allow me to get out my projector transparency presentation showing the merits of Delphi...
I have been working for 4 years and I don't have favourite language. Doesn't make sense to me. I just use whichever language makes my life easier to build a certain project.
For enterprise grade projects I just default to java and for AI ML projects i default to python
Whatever language I need to use for a service I'm currently developing or supporting ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“There are programming languages other than C++?”
OK, but I prefer screwdriving to hammering. Obviously a hammer is the only thing to use for hammering-related tasks, by I PREFER screwdriving-related tasks, because I prefer using the screwdriver.
Ya feel me?
You can have a favorite tool
html...5
None, they all suck, some suck less than others at some tasks
I'm going to predict the future. Ready? Nobody will program code manually in a year or two. And all code will be written in C by coding agents. And everyone will look back and laugh about how we would fill internet forums with "which language is best".
Ok smart guy then do you prefer the hammer or the screwdriver?
Tbh it's not as bad as some other questions like "can I program X in Y" or "what is the best language (without mentioning best at what)"
On the other end, fuck Java
You can still have a favorite programming language even if it's not the best choice for everything
programming languages are tools to build something, asking for fave prog language is like asking a carpenter his favorite hammer... yes they have a favorite hammer though
My favorite is Ruby. I haven't used it in a while, I'm stuck using C# since I'm doing 3d game development in Godot.
I may not have a favorite language - but to hell with any language where I cant explicitly give my variables types.
But "favorite", "most used by you", "best for ..." and "you're good at" are completely different categories
For me it’s HTML!
Rust and C
C, it's basically just reading documentation and working out logic. No need to remember 9 billion different types and 6 billion ways to navigate a list, everyone and every thing has a compiler for it, keeps security researchers employed, everyone wins!
What's your favorite function? The Ackermann function. What does it do? Fuck all. It's just used for a proof.
Trying to pick a favorite programming language is like trying to choose a favorite child, it's impossible... but if it's JS don't invite me to the family gatherings 😅
The one that's the best for the job at hand.
Lisp.
/s
I prefer screwdrivers over hammers tough
Ah yes, the Spikes of the workforce. As long as the tool gets the job done they honestly can’t comprehend why one would have a preference. The joy is in learning and succeeding after all.
Personally I like using screwdrivers a lot more than I like using hammers and I find using a saw tedious.
Depends on the assignment🤨🤨
Personally, it's more fun to hit nails with a hammer. Feels a lot more dynamic, and it's more tactile, idk. Using a screwdriver is pretty slow, not tactile at all (there is no cool bang), and if the angle is weird it gets even worse, I hate it. So yeah, hammer all the way.
Now, of course, that doesn't mean I don't have a screwdriver for when I need it, that would be stupid. It's just that hammers are personally more fun.
Well I guarantee you have a least favorite language so I'm sure you have one you enjoy working in the most
English
R. Takes me back to my college days. And I’d love a job doing interesting analysis and making cool graphs.
Unfortunately I love money more.
They will act like this then push the team on every project to use their favorite language.
“To do what?”
Cordless drills are my favorite. They're fairly lightweight, you can easily use them as a drill or to quickly add or remove screws. But sometimes you need an impact driver, hammer, or mallet, and liking drills doesn't stop me from switching tools
English is my favorite programming language
As my favorite professor always said: "your favorite programming language is the one you're getting paid to use."
If you never tried interesting or fun languages you might have this opinion. Try out some functional languages, Scala, Clojure or Haskell or some other different language that looks interesting.
Ape make ape meme. Your replies are just ridiculous. Mr gatekeeper high on the horse
"My favourite programming language is solder" - Bob Pease
I tend to agree.
Recently told the cleaning lady to clean with a toothbrush and she said she preferred a mop, what a child right, like it's a tool, why would you have favorites lmao
Python. But I just converted a hobby project from Python to C. Turns out, Python isn't great for microsecond level timing on a microcontroller! Who would have thought? I also eliminated an if statement in the interrupts because they reduced the timing accuracy by a few microseconds.
Reminds me of a quote from an cpu engineer.
Doesn't matter which os you choose. All of them waste the processor's potential.
"What's the best tool, a hammer or a screwdriver?" Clearly the answer is "it depends on what you need to accomplish".
"Which is more fun to wield with wild abandon, using it on anything you see just to find out what happens?" I'm gonna answer hammer every damned time.
TypeScript ofc
I do like me some Javascript
A better question is what programming language do you use the most? I mean I guess some people probably have a favorite one, maybe they like the syntax
It’s probably just me, but this whole comparison of “hammer vs screwdriver” is misleading in an annoying way. Programming languages aren’t single tools, they’re a WHOLE DAMN TOOLBOX!
If anything, a language’s features are tools themselves. And this makes more sense because once you learn “hammer” (for loops), you can use the “hammer” from any toolbox you feel like. And yeah, some will have some slight differences and quirks compared to what you learned with, but it’s still the same basic thing you already know.
C++ and Java have some similar tools, but they also have some VERY DIFFERENT ONES. Which language you use depends on what you’re trying to make and what other tools you want to work on. Going with the analogy, C++ has some pretty basic tools that don’t really have the best safeguards, so it’s not too hard for you to accidentally cut yourself (memory leaks for example). Java has a ton of safeguards, so it’s much harder to make the same mistake most of the time.
If you’re going to make marble sculptures, of course you’re going to use a hammer and chisel, but there are still different options in there. Which toolbox comes with the hammer and chisel you’d like to use more.
We can absolutely have a favorite language??? I don’t have one I use for everything because I understand use-case, but what moron writes in multiple languages and has nothing to say about the finer details of each? What syntax you like more, which has better error-handling, the way this one handles pointers vs this one, etc etc. If you don’t have at least half an opinion on this then I’m not convinced you’re an experienced engineer.
I dunno, I think just because each language has its own use cases doesn't mean that we can't have preferences of what we like to work with, there is no such a thing as a "best language", but that's not what they're asking. You can simply enjoy using some tools over others.
Lisp /s
"I hate them all equally, but in different ways."
It’s C# and it’s not even close.
Yeah try rust for a while and then look at your meme again. #itsnotacult
A lot of other comments seem to be saying similar things here. It's perfectly fine to have a favorite language and I welcome people to ask me! I think learning what a developers favorite language is and then learning why can be extremely beneficial. I like Go because I really like the tooling built for it and the simplicity baked into the language. I think it's a great language for building small services that need to be portable, which happen to be some of my favorite kinds of projects. That could then lead to further conversations about what languages I like for other tasks, or what other kinds of things I'd like to build in Go, etc...
C99
Rust coders join the chat
Python for screwing around to get something up and running fast and C++ for everything else. Sometimes both.
More like "what's your favorite hammer?". I personally like those watch hammers
Best*. Asking what someone's favourite programming language is, is a valid question and doesn't work with that meme.
The one that pays the bills (most of the time)
I prefer screwing so I would say screwdriver.
The one that pays me
I mean, it can reveal what sorts of projects or ecosystems a person likes to spend time in. A stupid question is "What's the best language?", but asking your favorite one is a fair one imo.
This is what I was going to comment. There can definitely be languages you can enjoy more, I definitely have some. Of course, if people pay me to program, I'm using any language as long as it pays well
Yup, it depends. Embedded systems and game engines? I’ll use C++. Enterprise software? Java. Web? JavaScript. Expansive asynchronous architecture? Go/Rust (depending on how much concurrency I need and how fast I need the executions to be) or JavaScript. Do I expect it to need to be web based at some point? JavaScript. Computer Vision and Model training? Python. Etc.
You pick the tool that works best.
Ah yes, for asynchronous architecture either the easiest language on the planet or the most difficult language on the planet. Got you
It’s worked well for me.
Do I need a shitload of concurrency happening rapidly? Go/Rust.
Do I need a shitload of concurrency that’s spread out (I.e. over APIs)? JavaScript.
Javascript is pretty good for async servers where you don't need any background proccesses or cpu intensive tasks. And for those rust/go is perfect. Unless there's a very complex domain than c# all the way
Yup, exactly. :)
Easiest language to do what? Most difficult language to do what?
Writing a small web script is far easier in JS than Rust. Writing a robust, provably correct complex program in a mission critical situation is far easier in Rust than JS.
That’s the entire point of the post.
Yeah, I really enjoy using Go, but the work I do requires python, which isn't all that bad, but not my favorite
Love my C#. It just makes sense. But I'm doomed to Javascript.
I love reading and writing Python. But I hate missing a tab resulting in my code failing. I also prefer when code go zoom. Thus I end up in C++
Missing a tab is something that hasn't happened to me in the last 3 years. Are you using notepad++ to code?
It can very well happen even with proper IDE. Just call a function in a cycle instead of after it, and have the function do something that makes sense once, else it corrupts logic. Tadaaa, your IDE will not show anything, cause it's not a syntax issue, rather a logic issue... And then you have to debug. Sometimes it's easy to see, sometimes... It takes quite some time to find the bug.
Even ignoring the possibility of someone associating a language with the projects they've used it for, different languages have different syntax and language features, so there are actual reasons to compare languages even if there's no overlap in use cases
yea very stupid to ask what's the best programming language because the answer is so obvious. you know what im talking about, it's THE programming language... the one you're thinking of right now, i know we all know it. it's that one, the best one... you know it.
HTML?
YES!
map men reference
True, it's more like asking about your favorite tool than making some grand statement. My answer changes based on what I'm working on anyway
Of course it is stupid. The correct answer is C.
Yeah my favorite is a completely fair question. Which can also be a multi-faceted answer, e.g. for X I like A and for Y I like B.
That fits tools too. It would be totally valid for someone to say for example, hammers are fun and screwdrivers are boring. You can absolutely prefer when a job requires the one you enjoy more.
For most programming problems the analogy is more like automatic drill vs screwdriver For most problems you really can pick the language/tool you prefer, e.g. building a basic website you really can just say, "I like C#, JavaScript, Ruby, etc so I'm using that". Just like if you're building some basic furniture you really can use a drill or screwdriver for most screwdriving. It's only when you have more specific concerns do you really need to be like "I know I prefer A language/tool, but because of Y I need to use B."
So your favorite language is typically just, when allowed to use any language, what language do you use.
People overwhelmingly chose to use languages that they know for whatever project they want to do. The idea that people chose the right tool for the job over whatever they already know is just fantasy.
True, my favourite is c#. But that’s because I’m a game dev and unity requires c#. I also know c++ for unreal. But I have no reason to learn Java script or python or the three million other languages since those languages aren’t useful TO ME.