this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2025
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Programming languages, much like the jackass in the middle, are tools. Different tools are for different things. The right tool for the job can make your day. The wrong tool can make you question your entire career.
Funny how tools are useful. But a person who is a tool is not.
A tool of a person is a fool who is being used by someone else. They might not be useful to you, but to who ever makes the koolaid they're drinking, they're a very good tool.
I think that's the basic idea, but in practice it's used for people who are just generally dumb as well.
Eh, people misuse terms all the time. It shouldn't change what it's meant to mean.
Well, when was the last time you looked at a hammer and thought "y'know, you're pretty smart!"
Tools are always useful. If its a good thing to (ab)use said tool depends on the tool and if its human or not :p
... And the job for the tool ofc
Exactly. And what is the best tool? The best tool for the job
AI! (This message brought to you by The Microsoft Marketing Dept.)
No silly! It's clearly a goat, possibly a whole farm of them
That's just not terribly meaningful, though. Was JavaScript the "best tool" for client-side logic from the death of Flash until the advent of TypeScript? No, it was the only tool.
You're halfway there.
Yes, it was the best tool, in context
In that context, what was better?
Exactly, the hivemind is strong in this thread
If it was the only tool it was both the best and the worst by definition.
And what is the best tool for the job? The best tool for the job.
Exactly! There is no best tool. There is, however, a worst tool. It’s bazel.
You mean js
/s
So, lisp?
Yes use a lisp family language for everything and you will be enlightened
Tbf racket has a stupid easy gui library.
Yeah, that's the second option.
Sometimes I just want to use a particular tool, and care less what I'm making with it.
I rarely get this pleasure at work.
I seem to remember hearing this story: Back in the 2000s, Google did all their back-end stuff in C++ to make sure it was performant, and when they acquired Youtube they found it was made in Python, slow to run, fast to develop.
Did they change it after the acquisition? Or is python why it's still so freaking slow?
Lol @ YouTube being slow
Look at the amount of data that goes through their servers every millisecond. It's ridiculous. All things considered, YouTube is lightning fast.
Maybe the UI isn't as snappy as it could be, but the blame there lies solely on throwing more and more javascript at it to add "features" that end users don't really want.
Aaand artificially slowing down video loading by several seconds, last but not least.
is it tho? Or youtub is just profitable enough to neglect the compute overhead cost?
Things is you don't crunch numbers in Python code, you do that in libraries called from Python.
It's a few statements of orchestration and any heavy lifting is encapsulated compiled code.
You don't do tight loops on Python, or if you do you're using it wrong.
Right... And the best tool for every job is of course Rust.