Most “computer-minded” individuals have a certain knack for programming. For some it may be websites, for others networking applications, for others yet, microprocessors. I’ll admit, my passions are web applications and to a lesser degree stand alone desktop applications. But each end goal has it’s own means of allowing the adventurous programmer to reach that goal. Herein lies the question, is it fair to compare usefulness and therefore quality, of programming languages?

I am most proficient in .NET languages, C# and VB to be more specific. I recently got into a heated debate with a friend of mine over the use of PHP and Ruby on Rails. I brought up ease of use with the Visual Studio IDE, and the great ability for .NET developers to use the built in “intellisense”. His retort was

the simplicity and speed of coding using Ruby. Well at the end of the day I conceded that I suppose Ruby could be better. That shut him up. Now I digress and open that can of worms back up. Is it better? Who freakin’ knows? If one guy is good with .NET, and another is good with Ruby, and a third is a pro at writing stuff in assembly, who is better? I dunno?

People, at this point it is like comparing apples and oranges. Unless you have x number of coders each looking to complete the same task, there is no way to even begin comparing them. Now if you’ve got one guy writing a registration site in ASP.NET, another writing a chat client in Ruby on Rails, and a calculator in assembly, the only fair assumption is that the assembly guy has larger issues. I’d be fair game for starting a discussion on comparison of languages, but if you throw down the gauntlet, you must make the comparison based on projects or tasks completable by all languages being compared.

Let’s have at it!