Blaze349 wrote:

gtoal wrote:

No, it was a deliberate optimization to save space. Made the code much less portable however.

Yes. A similar problem is storing a boolean. A boolean only requires one bit so using an entire int to store one boolean is wasteful.

I'm not sure that that is always necessarily the case - if you have hardware with a lot of memory (i.e. today's computers) but that operate faster on their native word size (ints) over anything smaller (such as char) it could be worth it to use ints. (from what I've read, please note that I don't necessarily know what I'm talking about)

However, I have no idea how significant differences in processing speeds are in that regard. But I would guess that the speed cost for doing 1 bit per boolean (i.e. lots of bit twiddling) is more significant than the memory cost for 32 bits per boolean in at least some modern applications.

The “hardest programming language” isn't necessarily the one that will teach you the most. A good programming language should provide abstractions, and the languages that are hard because of a lack of abstractions (like BF) won't teach you anything significant, while easier languages, such as Python, may teach you more because of the ideas that it introduces that aren't in Scratch.

A programming language that is both seen as “hard” and will teach new ways of thinking is Haskell. Haskell is a purely functional programming language, meaning that it disallows side effects (setting variables to something else). However, it isn't used as much in practice compared to the big names such as Java, Python, C++, C, etc. Haskell is rooted more in theory and is based on System F, a lambda calculus.

EDIT: The last post was from 2017, but I swear that this topic was on the front page…

TheAspiringHacker wrote:

The “hardest programming language” isn't necessarily the one that will teach you the most. A good programming language should provide abstractions, and the languages that are hard because of a lack of abstractions (like BF) won't teach you anything significant, while easier languages, such as Python, may teach you more because of the ideas that it introduces that aren't in Scratch.

A programming language that is both seen as “hard” and will teach new ways of thinking is Haskell. Haskell is a purely functional programming language, meaning that it disallows side effects (setting variables to something else). However, it isn't used as much in practice compared to the big names such as Java, Python, C++, C, etc. Haskell is rooted more in theory and is based on System F, a lambda calculus.

EDIT: The last post was from 2017, but I swear that this topic was on the front page…

I'm pretty sure there was a post that bumped it up, that was removed.

Many people (quite fairly) find Haskell difficult because it is quite a large departure from the imperative style which tends to be the norm in programming languages. Thinking functionally when you've been used to writing a program as a set of steps can be challenging.

This difficulty is exacerbated by the fact that Haskell has lazy evaluation a type system far beyond what most imperative languages have. This lends itself to incredible feats of abstraction. Practically everything in Haskell—integers, booleans, linked lists, and more advanced structures such as trees, maps, and deques—can be built up safely, entirely from ADTs and functions. There are even ways to simulate an imperative style within Haskell, such as the Writer, State, and ST types. The type system is an extremely useful sanity checker and can verify invariants at compile time that you'd have to verify through testing in many other languages.

For some reason, Haskell likes to grab terms from logic and abstract algebra (Monoid should be “combinable”, Functor should be “mappable”, Monad should be “layer”, etc.) that can be opaque unless you're familiar with the relevant background. Using these effectively can take some getting used to (and I'm not finished myself).

All of these combine to make Haskell into a difficult language to learn—and unfortunately, that difficulty tends to manifest itself fairly early on and can't be worked around very easily if you're looking to solve practical problems with it. It isn't the kind of language where you can just drag yourself to a bad, but working, program fairly early on in learning. You have to know a lot up front.

I started learning Haskell mostly as a “gateway” for Rust (which seems to be a rather unorthodox path), which in some ways has a similar, but even more complex type system (it has a custom extension of a linear type system that supports borrowing, lifetimes, etc. that you'd expect to find in a research language rather than something intended for practical work), as well as its own quirks. I was coming from Python, whose philosophy for types is “anything goes.” This was quite a shift for me, but in some ways it was helpful as it kept me from “writing Python code in Haskell” and instead learning Haskell itself.

I would mark this as opinionated if I were on stackoverflow, but this is scratch, so here are my thoughts:
You wouldn't necessarily learn a lot about programming if you learned a difficult language. A lot of coding langs are different from eachother, e.g. you can't compare python to C#.

Still though, I think brain**** (an actual language) is pretty hard.

scratch

herohamp wrote:

BrainFleck.

Understand this –
>–.>———.>–..+++.>—-.>+++++++++.<<.+++.——.<-.>>+.

not fair >~< I posted that first and it got deleted

Edit: nvm

try english its my fav language

Just difficult: C++

Designed to be insanely hard: Malbolge, Befunge, and another one that I can't mention on Scratch

I'd admire C a bit more if it wasn't for its tedious low-level management and its type conversion confusion. What DOES put me off more though is C++ with its feature bloat. Don't even get me started with Java.

CyKODE wrote:

I'd admire C a bit more if it wasn't for its tedious low-level management and its type conversion confusion. What DOES put me off more though is C++ with its feature bloat. Don't even get me started with Java.

You'd like Rust then, it's like C but without all the management to be done

Wettining wrote:

CyKODE wrote:

I'd admire C a bit more if it wasn't for its tedious low-level management and its type conversion confusion. What DOES put me off more though is C++ with its feature bloat. Don't even get me started with Java.

You'd like Rust then, it's like C but without all the management to be done

*with all the management verified at compile time

Ahhh! The reply box is messed up. Also, this post is not a necropost, because it is on topic.

Probably the hardest programming language is machine language (just ones and zeroes), but I don't think that was the answer you were looking for.

Any programming language can be really difficult if you go far enough with it. For example, in Python, do you know how lambda and decorators work? I don't.

red_king_cyclops wrote:

Ahhh! The reply box is messed up. Also, this post is not a necropost, because it is on topic.

@notlegit broke it, so the only way it can be fixed if there is a page 5 in this topic.

Does anyone know this esoteric language?

mr-scratch-cat wrote:

Does anyone know this esoteric language?

This is possibly the best esolang since it isn't just hard because hard, but rather hard because you have to use logical thought to complete tasks.

The two hardest ones are Malbolge and BF.
Sorry, it's bing. It's KCUFNIARB spelt backwards.

herohamp wrote:

BrainFleck.

Understand this –
>–.>———.>–..+++.>—-.>+++++++++.<<.+++.——.<-.>>+.

Cow
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MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO Moo Moo MoO MoO MoO Moo OOO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO
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MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo Moo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo Moo MoO MoO MoO Moo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo Moo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo Moo
OOO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO Moo

I8D wrote:

herohamp wrote:

BrainFleck.

Understand this –
>–.>———.>–..+++.>—-.>+++++++++.<<.+++.——.<-.>>+.

Cow
-snip-

Don't think that's a programming language or something that humans can even comprehend. :P

Also, please don't spam.

Oops, looked it up and it's an actual programming language. Wow.

Writing machine code by hand with a magnetized needle.