A language that allows you to talk to and command a computer.

There is only space for two languages at most in the world: the compiled one, and the interpreted one.

For 2020 now, when you have a choice, you must go for:

Those two are languages not by any means perfect from a language design point of view, and there are likely already better alternatives, they are only chosen due to a pragmatic tradeoff between ecosystem and familiarity.

Ciro predicts that Python will become like Fortran in the future: a legacy hated by most who have moved to JavaScript long ago (which is slightly inferior, but too similar, and with too much web dominance to be replaced), but with too much dominance in certain applications like machine learning to be worth replacing, like Fortran dominates certain HPC applications. We'll see. Maybe non performance critical scripting languages are easier to replace.

C++ however is decent, and is evolving in very good directions in the 2010's, and will remain relevant in the foreseeable future.

Bash can also be used when you're lazy. But if the project goes on, you will sooner or later regret that choice.

The language syntax in itself does not matter. All that matters is how many useful libraries and tooling it has.

This is how other languages compare:

Good because unnecessary state is the source of much evil.

Even if we cannot do everything in functional, we should at least strive to clearly extract functional substes in what we do.

Ciro Santilli thinks imperative programming is just a superset of functional programming where you can have state.

C and C++: OK, you're old before the Internet and compiled, forgiven.

Python: OMG, please, just make it work!!! Your are interpreted!!! You are a hot web technology!!! Node.js and Ruby are doing just fine, and Ruby is not newer than you!!! See also: pip.

Interestingly, the very first programming language with an actual implementation was interpreted: Short Code in 1950.

This is not surprising, as interpreters are easier to write than compilers.

And just like modern scripting languages, it reduced execution speed by about 50x.

The for loop is a subcase of the while loop.

One theoretical motivation for its existence is that it has the fundamental property that we are immediately certain it will terminate, unlike while loops with arbitrary conditions.

Primitive recursive functions are the complexity class that divides those two.

Largest programs ever written:

The more heavily a project relies on it, the more you start to regret it.