“The Semicolon Wars” by Brian Hayes

I agree with the ideas that the author Brian Hayes show in his article called "The Semicolon Wars". I think the idea that there is no perfect programming language is right and in fact we don’t know what is the best notation that we could use. 

In the reading of Hayes, he talks about the differences that existed in history about how things must be in programming languages. The author starts with the endian war, where some people thought that the least significant bit should go first while others thought that the most-significant bit should go first. It is curious how something that seems so insignificant can cause so many problems just for not agreeing in the use of a convention. Although I do not understand how each of the proposals can affect the performance of computational calculations, I think, like the author, that the best option is to agree on the use of a single convention in the same way as the semicolons, in which most people preferred that the semicolon marked the end of a declaration and it turned into a convention in a lot of programming languages.

On the other hand, I would like to add that I do not think that having many programming languages is a bad thing, because I suppose that it is better to have many options. Also, I think that nowadays developers do not look for the "best programming language", instead they look for the best employment opportunities. Is there more employment for C, Python, Java or Ruby programmers? Which language offers a better salary? Those are the issues that many developers have in mind to choose the next programming language they will learn. Personally, I like Python because it is very easy to learn and at the same time, it is very powerful. Also, I think it is awesome because it makes you use indentation which is part of good programming practices. In addition, there is a lot of work opportunities for that language.

Besides, I think that with time, the evolution of languages has made companies and developers prefer one language and after another, so the developer must know what is the best language at that moment and learn it. About the conventions within the languages (such as indentation, name of variables and functions, etc.), I think that the best thing companies could do is to choose a convention and then make that every developer who works in the company use it.

Bibliografía

Hayes, B. (July de 2006). The Semicolon Wars. American Scientist, 299-303.

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