Why it is a bad idea to hate any programming language

A lot of programmers love their programming language. They protect it as if it was their child. They keep it very close to heart and sometimes even associate their development career with this language. There is no big problem with that, it’s great when developer loves his tools and programming language. I only see a problem when that leads to hatred towards other programming languages. In this post I want to express my opinion on hatred between programmers about other programming languages.

When a developer falls in love with a language, he tends to develop an emotional attachment to it. Therefore, if someone insults their language, it feels to them as if the person insulted them.

We have to realise that a programming language is just a tool. Some programming languages are good at some points and bad at others. It is true that all of the programming languages have their flaws (refer to a great wiki page https://wiki.theory.org/index.php/YourLanguageSucks). So there is not reason for shaming or hating people that are using the technologies you are using, your language sucks in certain points as well.

In development community there are thousands of opinions, millions, in fact. The development process, technologies, tools, ways of solving problems are often very opinionated. Same goes for programming languages. With so many opinions it is important to realise that we have to respect each other and be open minded towards other technologies or languages that people are using.

When we get that down, we will realise that we cannot make bold statements like “C# sucks” or “Javascript sucks”, because there are developers that love these technologies the same way you love yours. If you don’t like the technology, explore why you don’t like it and be open minded to ideas about it. In the end just don’t use is if you don’t want to. This humbleness is what will make you stronger, not the fact that you’ve defended your language.

Conclusion

We all are working to make the world a better place. So if other people are using other tools to make it better, let them use it, focus on your tools and how you are creating value for the world.