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Binary babel: Fixing computing's coding bugs

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Editorial: "Time we all learned how to program the world we want"

I'VE been using computers for decades now. It's probably time I taught myself how to program one, but first I have to find the answer to a simple question. There are thousands of programming languages out there – which one should I learn?

Fortunately, the internet has lots of answers: programming blogs and forums are filled with people asking that very question. Unfortunately, those answers are often less than helpful. The Java language "sucks", apparently, and "all Java programmers are morons". C++ is "baroque and ugly". Critics of Ruby are more plain-spoken; to them, this language is simply "a piece of shit". To the uninitiated the bile is a little bit frightening.

"It's just amazing how tribal people get with their programming languages," says Crista Lopes, a professor in the informatics department at the University of California, ...



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