Originally posted 2016-01-25.
1 Introduction
There are a huge variety of programming languages out there, an infinite number of concepts, and numerous ways to think about any given problem. How can one logically discriminate among these choices to make wise programming decisions?
First off, there exist a number of software-design camps, each with their own design methodoligies and folk-loreish guidelines.
Some people claim that you should thoroughly document your code with comments, others claim that you should use comments sparsely lest they become out of date and misdirect future readers.
Most people think it's important that programmers "write understandable code." But how does one define what is understandable and what is not? Is it better for code to be concise and dense (ala APL) or verbose and wordy (ala COBOL)? Some people argue that verbose code is easier to understand, as it can sometimes be "self-documenting", while others claim that dense code is easier to read, as it is shorter.
Object Oriented designers love applying acronyms such as SOLID and GRASP to software. Functional designers love applying principles and techniques such as immutability, declarativity, currying, and higher-order functions.
Every programmer has a preference for a certain programming language – probably the one which she has spent the most time with. People get into passionate debates comparing languages and software ecosystems.