I've never been able to understand the python love. But I'm ignorant and have very limited exposure to it so it's tough to get a strong opinion.

A lot seems to be from how terrible something like Perl is, which it commonly is substituted for. It seems to have a lot of libraries which is always nice.

What makes python so good?

I'm typically developing compiled code, APIs, libraries, etc..., so haven't seen the benefits yet.

um no. i wonder where you are getting these "facts" about Google from, because you should tell that person that he is an idiot.

python is optimized for readability and rapid development so its beneficial for scripting and fast prototyping.

lol, i will next time i see him.

I'm sure he will apriciate your feedback, lol

Just about every big non-techie corporation in the world runs their website and web-apps on weblogic/oracle/java/jsp - and will be forever. I'm pretty sure amazon still runs on C++. I know a stock exchange that runs on C++. Those languages might not be the sexiest thing going, but they're far from dead as far as hirability.

What is dying is client-server programming. Don't go into that.

This is not even remotely true.

I interviewed at Mountain View six months ago. All six of my interviewers were Java developers. None of them worked on Android.

Java is still the most widely hired-for language in the world. While I love Python too, Python has horrible threading support and is still significantly slower than Java. The JVM is still extremely good, even if the language is full of cruft. Also, Java keeps stealing the best parts of other languages and adding them to the core Java language - Java 7 code looks very different from Java 2.

If I were learning a new language today, I'd learn Ruby (+rails) if my goal was to build webapps and Python if my goal was to do more computationally complex stuff. I'd learn Java if I needed to build something really big since on large projects with lots of developers, things like type safety become more important. Java's threading and garbage collection are also much more advanced than Ruby or Python.

I don't suggest Java as a first language any more but it's still extremely widely used and extremely useful.

Amazon is mostly Java, although they use a Service-Oriented Architecture so you really only need to know whatever language your team uses.

As someone who IS a coder, and who has personally met and had hour+ technical conversations with over a dozen Googlers (4 in core search) about exactly what working at Google would entail, I can categorically state that you have no idea what you are talking about.

Well, I was referring to probably to your interviewer's boss, but whatever. haha, think whatever you want, i don't really have time for this.

don't bother replying, I won't open this thread again.

good luck

Cool thread, just read the entire thing. I recently got started with JavaScript, plowing through the Head First HTML5/JavaScript book. I have a lot of ideas and get even more every time I learn something new. Best of luck!

Can you expand on this? I've never been super clear on the PHP hate. I do understand the hate for crappy PHP coders which PHP allows. Is there something else I'm not clear on that's a fault of the language itself? Mostly curious how you fault the quality of websites programmed in PHP to that language.

its usually never the fault of the language itself, but given PHPs lack of controls unless you are well experienced in using PHP you'll find yourself with a maintenance nightmare (e.g. Facebook).

If you just want to create simple website quickly, then PHP is fine. I don't hate on PHP, but think that for people just starting, it doesn't have enough constraints to actually teach you want is good and what is bad.

PHP was basically a duct-taped together mess without any sense of purpose or identity. It basically hacks together some concepts without fully supporting them since they were introduced in newer versions and don't want to break the older versions.

Sometimes its better to do a clean break. PHP had a useful purpose, but there are better choices now.