最近Stack Overflow上有一群讨厌perl的人，所以我想我应该把我的“关于你最喜欢的语言你讨厌的五件事”的问题带到Stack Overflow上。拿你最喜欢的语言来说，告诉我你讨厌它的五件事。这些可能只是让你烦恼的事情，承认的设计缺陷，公认的性能问题，或任何其他类别。你只需要讨厌它，它必须是你最喜欢的语言。
不要拿它和其他语言比较，也不要谈论你已经讨厌的语言。不要用你最喜欢的语言谈论你喜欢的事情。我只是想听到你讨厌但能容忍的东西，这样你就可以使用所有其他的东西，我想听到你希望别人使用的语言。
每当有人试图把他们最喜欢的语言强加给我时，我就会问这个问题，有时是面试问题。如果有人找不出他最喜欢的工具的5个缺点，那他对它还不够了解，不能提倡它，也不能利用它赚大钱。他还没有在足够多的不同情况下使用它来充分探索它。他把它作为一种文化或宗教来倡导，这意味着如果我不选择他最喜欢的技术，我就错了。
我不在乎你用什么语言。不想使用特定的语言?那就不要。你通过尽职调查做出了明智的选择，但仍然没有使用它?好吧。有时正确的答案是“你有一个强大的编程团队，有良好的实践和丰富的Bar经验。改成Foo是愚蠢的。”
This is a good question for code reviews too. People who really know a codebase will have all sorts of suggestions for it, and those who don't know it so well have non-specific complaints. I ask things like "If you could start over on this project, what would you do differently?" In this fantasy land, users and programmers get to complain about anything and everything they don't like. "I want a better interface", "I want to separate the model from the view", "I'd use this module instead of this other one", "I'd rename this set of methods", or whatever they really don't like about the current situation. That's how I get a handle on how much a particular developer knows about the codebase. It's also a clue about how much of the programmer's ego is tied up in what he's telling me.
憎恨并不是衡量人们了解多少的唯一尺度，但我发现它是一个相当不错的尺度。他们讨厌的事情也让我知道他们对这个话题的思考有多好。
Python,:
No switch keyword. And NO, dictionary is not a replacement for it. Not even a bunch of elif statements.
Inconsistent line break handling. Why can I do:
test = (1,
2,
3)
And not:
from itertools import cycle,
islice,
izip
Why can't I do:
if stuff \
and foo \
or bar:
return "Formated string with %(arg)s" % \
{'arg': "bloody slash"}
without using slashes?
There is not one obvious and only one way to do it. Python fails on its motto just like Java failed on "Write once run anywhere".
# what somebody from an another language would do
if not test.has_key('foo'):
test['foo'] = 0
n = test['foo'] = test['foo'] + 1
vs
# what an agnostic beginer would do
try:
test['foo'] += 1
except KeyError:
test['foo'] = 1
n = test['foo']
vs
# what you end up after looking for dictionary default value in the python doc
test.setdefault('foo', 0)
n = test['foo'] = test['foo'] + 1
vs
# what I would do
n = test['foo'] = test.get('foo', 0) + 1
And the worst is that they don't do exactly the same thing. There are subtle differences.
Choice between spaces and tabs. There should be no choice. Pick on, set it in stone and stop fighting.
Why can you do that:
test = {}
test['foo'] = 0
but not:
test = []
test[] = 0
附注:" ".join(l)是优秀的人。不要抱怨它，这并不明显，但考虑到迭代器模式，这是正确的方法。
C
No parametric polymorphism (i.e. C++ templates). It makes writing reusable data structures and algorithms a pain (and there's hardly any static checking). See for instance the comparator argument to qsort and bsearch: the comparator takes void pointers :(
No library of data structures. I really hate writing my own hash table. I also really hate scouring the web for a library of reusable data structures. Especially if it turns out to be incomplete.
Strings. Inefficient representation, unwieldy if you make it sane, too hard to safely input a string. No standard for snprintf. Too hard to create a format string with sprintf, then use that to create a string with sprintf again, in a safe way.
Only lexical macros. If different compilers expects function annotation in different places, I have to put the same HAS_NO_SIDE_EFFECTS in different places. Why can't I just grab the function, switch over the compiler type, and then insert it at the right place by a macro call?
No portable libraries for common functionality. For sockets and threading, I use SDL---a frigging game library. For .ini-style parsers, the only library I could find which was packaged for ubuntu, I posted on the daily wtf (it calculates an array of hash values, then does a linear scan through it...)
C++
Template syntax is heavy and unweildy. Let's see, for(map<string, int>::const_iterator it = mymap.begin(); it != mymap.end(); ++it).
Design errors in the STL. Should changing allocation strategy for your vector really change its type?
Overly complex type system. Type T1 has a convert-to-T2 method, and T2 has an implicit from-T1 constructor. Which is called? How does overloading, overriding and multiple inheritance interact? Poorly, I guess...
Incredibly long and unwieldy error messages from templates. You know what I mean...
References means you can't see output parameters at call sites. In C, you can guess what foo(bar, &baz) can and can't modify.
REBOL
REBOL是我最喜欢的语言之一。我不能说我有一个最喜欢的，尽管Haskell排名也很高。
Its odd syntax scares off many developers before they even give it a try.
use [email rules url] [
; A small DSL that sends email to people about URLs.
rules: [
some [
into [
set email email!
set url url!
(send/subject email url reform [ "Check Out" url ])
]
]
]
; Global context
notify: func [ [catch] dsl [block!] ] [
unless parse dsl rules [
throw make error! "You screwed up somehow."
]
]
]
notify [ [ a@b.com http://www.google.com ] [ b@c.com http://www.yahoo.com ] ]
Recursive dialects are very easy to validate with PARSE but very difficult to evaluate. (Stacks can be helpful here.)
REBOL has very poor integration with many popular technologies, particularly XML. I suspect this is partly arrogance, because the REBOL BLOCK! datatype can do almost everything XML can do. However, the real world has XML in it.
No Unicode.
Thanks to AltMe, REBOL's user community is very insular. I can understand why they want to use AltMe. It's written in REBOL and shows off its strengths. Unfortunately it also puts them off on their own little island.
即将到来的REBOL 3有望解决许多这些问题，除了最后一个。
