Ask HN: What Programming Languages do you use and for what?

C++ and a Scheme dialect at work.

Mathematica for research.

SuperCollider for audio work.

Played around with Haskell, Lua, Python, Oz and Erlang for fun.

Common Lisp for work/fun. C and Java to wrap libraries for Lisp and clean up FFIs.

I know tens of programming languages. But other than Lisp, I just can't program comfortably in any of them without having a manual beside me. Mostly because I don't want/need to.

When it comes to "fun" languages, I prefer rigor to abundance of libraries (Citeseer/LtU to github.) I will happily spend a weekend on Mozart/Oz, Scheme, ML, along with hundreds upon hundreds of research languages that I pick up to follow a given text or area of research, but quickly forget once I get a general sense of the field and I am done reading the papers.

I also dabble in J2EE and C++ stuff, from "architecture" stand points; to quickly learn new design techniques, then translate them to Lisp semantics, or usually just obviate the need for them.

Most mainstream languages bore me, and I find them lacking in quality peer-reviewed papers or ground-breaking work. So far they're just a synthesis of old ideas into a nice, accessible package, or fixes of previous short-comings. I am also idiot-intolerant; if I find a language attracts loud blowhards, corporate types, shrieking excited newbs, and generally uninformed pundits, I am more likely to avoid it just to avoid their company ..

Ruby for the website I'm working on.

PHP for websites I need to throw up quickly.

Javascript for browser scripting.

Bash for scripting on linux/osx.

Applescript for automating stuff on my mac that can't be done with bash.

Moved from C++ to C# for a few years but ended up making a comeback to C++. C# does not cut it for scientific computation. See my C# forum post here: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/csharplanguage/th...

Mathematica for heavily mathematical tasks. Sometimes Matlab to use some of its built-in library functions. I wish Mathematica supported object-oriented programming natively.

Have used others for various random tasks: ActionScript, Python, Verilog, etc.

C++ at work for the new code

C at work for supporting the old code (and at my last job for embedded systems)

Matlab at work 'cause the science phds I'm collaborating with don't know anything else

Python for most random tasks (and some analysis for myself using numpy)

Lua for extending my window manager

Haskell (just starting) for fun

Spice at my last job for circuit analysis

C/C++: At work

Python: At work, and as the backend language for my web stuffs (django & al)

Perl: Quick hacks and system scripts

Shell: System scripts where perl would be an overkill

JavaScript: as part of my personal web stuffs. Recently experimenting with node.js aswell.

I use a couple of others (Ruby, mainly) to learn them, in case I'd need them someday.

Over the years I've used C++, C, Java, Perl, a little Mathematica (for analysing algorithms and trying to come up with better approximations to replace expensive numeric algorithms), sh, small amounts of x86 assembly, and even Modula-2 (long ago) for work. Currently I'm using mostly Perl (with POE) for high-load low-latency web serving, web scraping, and various back-end scripts. We use Javascript for front-end stuff, but I'm less involved with that.

In the past I've played around a bit with Haskell, OCaml, Scheme, Smalltalk, and even Forth (again, a long time ago!). I've looked at Erlang a little, but haven't gotten around to doing anything with it. I'm hoping to get some time to play with Rakudo (Perl 6) sometime soon, and I'm looking at whether Hackety Hack and Ruby are the right way to introduce my kids to programming.

For startup -Smalltalk for Web app backend -Ruby for for backend job scripting -Some javascript

At day job - VB for some macros in Excel - R for analysis - Java for some integration modules and helping on some enterprise apps. - Scheme for other analysis and generating certain visualizations. - Bash scripts

At work the list is; PHP, Perl, Javascript, ksh and good ole K&R C For fun I mess around with Ruby and Scheme. I even played around with arc3 for a bit because I was curious.

Every job I've had I keep coming back to Unix scripting. It's just the one language that I need to always know and I constantly come back to it. I used to work on a wide smattering of very ancient Unix boxes so I had to get comfy with ksh. I use awk and sed daily just for wading through source code.

I used to spend every day coding in the scripting language for the Ameritech ISDN bulk call generator. I still have nightmares. It was like a cross between BASIC and assembly only it ran on an Intel 8086. This was in the late 90's still.

Every once in a while someone tells me I need to learn TCL. But so far I've avoided it.

Ruby: Backend web application development (work)

Javascript: Front end UI and plugin API development (work)

C: How fast can I do this? (whenever needed)

C++/Java/Flash: Games (made a good 3D game in a Java applet - check out arcade.connersc.com)

PHP: Freelance client work

(edit: formatting)

- Javascript for APIs and backend frameworks (work & fun)

- Perl for scripts and a documentation tool (work)

- Scala for fun little projects (fun)

- C/C++/C# for small things just to keep my skills up (fun)

- Shell for portable scripts and such (work & fun)

C++ at work(all the money making systems)

C# at work(some new projects)

python at work (automate stuff basically shell scripts for windows)

Haskell at home small projects.

C++ at home for working on games.

I was hired as a PHP developer, but I'm gradually transitioning them over to Ruby. I still need a manual for both of these languages; PHP for the ludicrous amount of functions (http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.levenshtein.php anybody?), and Ruby for the frequently confusing code I come across. Ruby is my current hobby language.

I also use Javascript for jQuery, and for Node.js in my spare time.

java is my default for server work, with eclipse and 12 years experience (has it really been so long??) I'm pretty quick.

javascript + jquery for front end work.

sometimes AS3 but not lately.

working on erlang as couchdb has become increasingly important to my work.

Python - for web development and some various jobs I need done and I'm using it at work.

D - for cross platform desktop applications I'm developing.

Learning Scala for the future and planning to use Vala for GTK apps.

C, c++, Obj-C at work (with a healthy mashing of bash scripting for the meta-work)