Programming Languages: What tool is right for which job?

I think it's a good question. There are so many languages around that it is hard to choose from. I think it's beneficial to get good at a handful of languages and use them. However, there might be a time where a newer language is just so great that you have to use it. For example, in web development should you use straight Javascript? Jquery? Dart? Coffee Script?<p>Personally, Python, Java, and ObjC gets me everything I need and it allows me to get really good at a few languages instead of trying to keep 10 different ones in my head. Granted, if you know a few languages any new one should be fairly easy to pick up.<p>You don't want to start a job with some new language only to find out that it hasn't evolved enough to give you exactly what you need in your project.<p>I'd love to hear how people decide what language to use in their business. Do you pick Python over Java because it's simpler to write? Do you use PHP because of how well it's documented?<p>Like others, I'm saying this based on the title as I can't get the page to load.

I did what I always do when presented with a list like this - I checked out Visual Basic. The list makes no distinction between BASIC, Visual Basic and VB.NET. That killed any credibility the list might otherwise have had, and after realising that it appears to be more of a "what's hot, what's not" list, I stopped reading. It definitely does not do what the title suggests it does. No value.

Sorry the site's having issues. I haven't done any significant work on it in most of two years and there's rather a lot more data in it than when I actually worked on it.<p>So, yes, it's true, I haven't used the right tool for the job. Except that as with so many things "the right tool" is "an actively maintained codebase". Looking into why it's crashing now, but don't expect any miracles

Really? Go is on there, but ActionScript is not?<p>I realize that the future of the Flash Platform is in doubt, but Flash is still a great choice for a lot of things, like:<p>- This language is good for beginners.<p>- This language is well documented.<p>- I find this language easy to prototype in.

I like the idea but feel it's an echo chamber. I haven't seen a single surprising ranking yet.

How inefficient is Ruby really? This tool surprised me. Can any Ruby-ists chime in?<p><a href="http://therighttool.hammerprinciple.com/statements/programs-written-in-this-language-tend-to-be-effic" rel="nofollow">http://therighttool.hammerprinciple.com/statements/programs-...</a>

Something the site didn't answer, what high-level languages are suitable for writing highly-parallel network code? I need to write some code that does stuff like: given a couple million URLs, download each, extract an element, gather all extracted elements in a list.

Is it me, or do a lot of the 'statement' links not seem to load?

Also ran: "What tool should I have built my website with?" -- can't get a pageload

This isn't the right question to be asking.<p>There are certainly cases where one language at another for a given task, e.g. Ruby is better for string parsing than PHP. But in many (most?) scenarios the <i>technique</i> used for the job matters far more than the language. Sorting is an easy example: bubble sort is a crap solution regardless of the language.<p>Disclaimer: I can't read the actual page due to 503's and the cache isn't helpful, so I'm responding to the title and what I can divine from the linked page.

This was extracted from computer scientists and created by one, otherwise PHP would be numer one the stament: "Is so easy to get things done with this language". Right now its 10 staments are all negative (not even one neutral)

Even if you are adept in using a highly efficient and effective language for doing each job, if no one else is using the language it's utility becomes limited. That's because none of us work in vacuum. Computers run by different people in separate locations cannot talk to each other unless those people cooperate. They have to agree on some things. And further, we're all using software and systems designed and built in whole or in part by someone else.<p>I sometimes wonder what we could achieve if choices of language were reduced and we were all forced into "speaking the same language". Would the advantages of a common language supercede the advantages of any one language's design?

Haskell.