Over at the Ubuntu Forums, pmasiar has succinctly summarized the motivations operating behind programming language wars.
Here's what he has to say:
Here's what he has to say:
I noticed there are four school of thought about this issue:
historicist mantra is: language A worked for me, try it. Obviously this has limited use: historicist might not have experience with other suggested languages (so cannot compare from experience, only from prejudice), or if old hand like me was historicist, everyone should learn Algol60. Good luck finding it!
mercantilist: says "language B is best to find a job". That might be true, but hardly relevant: (1) LS might want to use language for research, fun or contributing to FOSS, and (2) why not learn best language for beginner, then learn best language for the job? Then LS knows 2 languages, which is obviously better than one.
agnostic schools says it does not matter, because all languages are Turing-complete, and LS is not able to distinguish between languages and pick best tool for the job until s/he learns couple of them, so is OK to start at any language. And every time someone suggest a language, they suggest another to give LS more "choice".
intuitivist says "language Z is the most intuitive for beginner, so learning anything else is wrong" (while substituting different languages for Z).
Sometimes they are mixed: historicist who learned "business' language might be also mercantilist. Agnostics often suggest 'useful' language to get a job.
Posts
