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From: bearophileHUGS@lycos.com
Newsgroups: comp.lang.haskell, comp.lang.python, comp.lang.lisp, comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Choosing a new language
Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2007 04:35:08 -0800 (PST)
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Date: 2007-12-29T04:35:08-08:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

It's not easy to answer this question, and the choice of language is
quite influenced by what's your use of it.

Python/Ruby and Java (and C#, sometimes, on Windows) are often a safe
bet today (for work purposes too), they have lot of libraries and they
are efficient enough for their purposes. But despite being flexible
those two pairs of languages have different purposes.

Haskell is a good language, it has much less libraries and today its
speed is comparable to Python/Psyco one, it may require some time to
adapt your mind tuned to older language to its nearly-pure functional
style. Today I don't think it's a language for newbies. In the future
maybe it will become more useful for work too.

Bye,
bearophile