#plorbo

Two languages that were probably someone's first introduction to programming. They might not be what you used now, but they're cute, friendly, and taught many of you the basics of what you do today at a vastly higher level. In that regard, they're pretty awesome.

Karel

You get to drive a tiny little robot around on a screen and make it do things, and that's just adorable.

Scratch

You've heard of it, you probably used it in high school if you're the right age, it's somehow way closer to a real programming language than you remember, but you probably just used it to load up the tutorial games in class didn't you :P

This matchup has enough heavyweights to stand on its own, you don't need an introduction from me. Now go write some propaganda instead of reading this.

Lisp

You'd think a language built in the fifties would have died out by now, but people keep making new ones. Lisp spawns new variants and languages faster than a pack of rabbits in heat.

Java

I asked Oracle to pay me to say something nice here, but for some reason they refused. I guess they spent all that OracleDB money on another racing yacht or something.

Despite being a more niche domain-specific language, I'm guessing somehow more of you have probably heard of and/or used SQL. Funny how things work out like that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

SQL

It's pronounced "SQL", unless it's PostgreSQL then it's pronounced "SQL", or if it's SQLite then it's pronounced "SQL".

Haskell

The coolest language you've never tried. It's like a bunch of math and computing theory nerds got together and made a programming language that only they understand. Sure, you trade away things like variables and control flow, but that's a small price to pay for pure functional programming, or so they'd tell you.

Introducing an awful, cursed monstrosity that somehow spawned because people weren't satisfied with another language that a lot of people really love to hate on but is actually pretty alright... and JSFuck.

JSFuck

Everyone complains that JavaScript has too much going on. null *and* undefined? == and ===? where does it end? That's why I decided to thanos my keyboard so it only had 6 characters left. And it's still probably more usable than angular.js

C++

C is a highly performant, minimal language, that can do almost anything you put it to. It's often described as packing everything you need, and nothing you don't. C++ is not that language.

I'm a bit busy for the next day or so while I write a parser for a uni task, so in the interim, here's that SQL pronunciation poll I promised while I get Round 2 ready :P

I'll also hopefully post some Infodump box highlights tonight or tomorrow :)

Our next matchup features a language mostly designed with the purpose of *not* fucking with your brain, and a language called brainfuck. Draw whatever conclusions you will from that.

BrainFuck

The name says it all really.

Python

A pretty nifty little language, though it's frequently slow and has some rather unique syntax. It's found a real home in rapid prototyping, statistics, and machine learning work thanks to its flexible syntax though.