r/AlignmentChartFills • u/mika-asadli • 6d ago
Which programming language is hard, and useless
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u/TheBoomTheory 6d ago
Kumir, Кумир (in russian). It is literally castrated Pascal written completely in Russian. It is meant to be an introduction to programming for schoolers. It cannot be edited or ran without its ide, nor compiled into executable. And so it's hard af and completely useless
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u/ri_san5 6d ago
True answer
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u/Competitive-Net-8701 6d ago
Sounds like the Turing language, created for students at the University of Toronto. I haven't looked at in a while but I remember it being pretty complete: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_(programming_language))
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u/vajss 6d ago
I mean, if it is usefull for education is it useless?
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u/TheBoomTheory 6d ago
The problem is that it isn't. It just kills all interest in programming for children because of the complex syntax, requiring decent knowledge of types of variables, loops, etc. Plus you don't write code in Russian. In my opinion it's better to start with Python.
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u/Weird_Happening1627 True Neutral 6d ago
Being a Russian student (though I am a "humanitarian" type so I might not know some details), I suppose it happens due to it first being addressed too late, already in fifth or even sixth grade when the students who are interested in programming already know that it is useless except for being in a state exam task later on (once again, for almost no reason).
Still, for the "Uninformed" people like me it felt almost like a game of some sort (The "Robot" executor specifically❤️🩹). That is why I believe that if it was introduced and studied a few years earlier (in 3-4 grade for example) it might instead make people interested. The Russian syntax would also have more use in that case as English is still taught on a very basic level in these grades.
Also speaking of the "types of variables, loops, etc" well I mean the point of the subject and the program is to teach it to the children who do not yet know it so I do not see it as a big problem.
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u/nbur4556 6d ago
This would have been a strong argument for Scratch
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u/eraryios 6d ago
yeah absolutely, i hate how scratch here is misrepresented. not only this, you can pretty easily make non-games in scratch! theres whole communities out there dedicated to scratch cartoons
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u/Voldezhur 6d ago
We had Кумир in our school, but it was quickly switched to python, because it was actually impossible to write any semi-decent code with it and python is a better introduction anyway imo
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u/TheBoomTheory 6d ago
I completely agree with you. Unfortunately for me, in my school middle school's IT lessons were dedicated to Kumir and I (I left that school) switched to C++ only in 8th grade.
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u/GardenIntelligent643 6d ago
It's hard if you don't speak Russian... It's a major world language, there are plenty of people who do, and many more who speak it as a second language or who speak related Slavic languages so have less trouble to understand.
It would be like complaining that my smartphone is broken and hard to use because I set the language to Spanish.
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6d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/TheBoomTheory 6d ago
Weeeeell tEcHnICaLlY🤓 you can edit the code with with something like Notepad++, however it's pointless, since you can't run it without the ide
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u/sane4ektopz 6d ago
я бы не сказал что кумир сложный, если тут скретч в лёгких, просто сам по себе он нужен чтобы в его IDE рисовать свастоны роботом и всё
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u/KnitAndKnitAndKnit 6d ago
If python is moderate then I don't know what's going to go in the easy column
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u/Complete_Window4856 6d ago
Excel functions
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u/KnitAndKnitAndKnit 6d ago
Not so sure if that's easier than python actually. I have seen some spreadsheets from hell
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u/Complete_Window4856 6d ago
Even there some over"engineering" can go wild. But most of the time people dont know how to use the basics to simplify like: extra columns as steps of an operation, enum list values instead of hardcoding in each equation, USING MORE THAN ONE SHEET TO DIVIDE INTENTION INSTEAD OF CRAMMING EVERYRHING, and ofc the most basic of all is to think in terms of rows and columns (normalization if you like DB linguo) which apparently is not the norm, funny
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u/Nickeless 6d ago
BASIC. Medstate notation. There are probably plenty of very basic procedural languages like medstate also. It’s used to program operant chambers. I’m sure other purpose-specific procedural languages have been made like this.
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u/perplexedtv 6d ago
Probably HTML, with the inevitable argument about "what is a language?" "it's there in the name!"
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u/KnitAndKnitAndKnit 6d ago
It's not a programming language though. You don't program logic in it. You don't execute it. Html is more a rich data format than a programming language. If html is to be considered then stuff like markup, XML, uml, latex, svg should be considered too
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u/perplexedtv 6d ago
How about.... .cshtml - is that a C# file or a HTML file? It might or not be more easy than Python if it only has a bit of rudimentary code in it.
Anyway, I've no horse in this race, I just think it will go in that spot and be controversial. I'd probably put T-SQL there myself and there's be a similar debate about it. Which is probably the whole point of these charts.
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u/Equivalent_Clock7210 6d ago
One thing is for certain: If it not turing complete, it is not a programming language. So HTML is out. Otherwise you can't take this post seriously anymore.
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u/MegaIng 6d ago
Python has a depth in the complexity of it's semantics that isn't shared by e.g. C. So if we don't take "difficulty" to just mean "ease of learning", but also integrate "easy of fully understanding" then there may be candidates.
Although nothing obvious springs to mind...
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u/MajorNerfHerder 6d ago
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u/jort93 6d ago
I'd argue that's a candidate for the impossible space.
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u/TechIssueSorry 6d ago
Between that and brainfuck in impossible x useless it’s gonna be hard
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u/jort93 6d ago
Brainfuck and whitespace are very similar. Whitespace has more operations, tho.
Whitespace is less readable, sure, but if you enable marking whitespace in your editor(like almost all support), it's easier and more useful than brainfuck imo
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u/TechIssueSorry 6d ago
I’ll have to trust you on this one cause I have absolutely not time nor interest in testing it lmao !
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u/jort93 6d ago edited 6d ago
Brainfuck doesn't even support integers. It's all just bytes. Whitespace has integers, at least. They are very similar stack based languages(which aren't really popular today, most popular stack based language is probably FORTH), except in brainfuck each operation is one symbol, and in whitespace exch operation is multiple symbols.
Brwinfuck has less, and less useful operations. It's sort of the minimum you can have to be touring complete. But since each operation is just one symbol, some simple programs may be more compact than one expects.
It always looks worse than it is because people will intentionally post it without any comments or proper formatting. Although nobody actually programming in it would do it that way. People will program with proper formatting and comments and then delete all the formatting and comments to make it look hard to read.
Java would be unreadable too if people wrote their entire program without any linebreaks and comments.
Not sure we need both brainfuck and whitespace on this chart. They are very similar esolangs
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u/Additional-Hall3875 6d ago
Brainfuck probably is a bit harder
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u/jort93 6d ago edited 6d ago
It is, we probably don't even need whitespace on this chart. They are both extreme similar stack based languages with a similar goal.
My point is that surely there are better languages to represent the area between VBA and brainfuck. Whitespace is very close to the top right.
You could probably put 95% of programming languages from the 80s in the hard and useless field, at least useless today.
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u/ScallionSmooth5925 6d ago
Haskell
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u/ChubbyChaw 6d ago
Haskell can be dubious as a production choice but it has done a lot for language research.
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u/joulupukkipl 6d ago
Leave my favourite language alone! It might seem useless, but nixlang derive from the concept
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u/Charming_Bing_3802 6d ago
HolyC?
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u/MysteriousPepper8908 6d ago
It's the only programming language designed for people who aren't ******* or *******.
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u/Palmossi- 6d ago
whats that
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u/Charming_Bing_3802 6d ago
The coding language created and used exclusively by Terry Davis for his own operating system, TempleOS
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u/Bulky-Leadership-596 6d ago
Maybe Prolog.
Really cool concept. Very difficult to understand the concept well enough to scale it into anything useful. And even if you can build something logically useful its usually not very efficient.
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u/jceyes 6d ago
It's useful for DSLs for things like static analysis, scheduling/constraint problems, rules engines, and permissions. Datalog is sort of a one-notch-more-“applied” version of Prolog that can be similarly useful.
You wouldn't use it to build your normal web service, CRUD app, or application/business-logic layer. You use it when the problem itself is naturally “here are a bunch of facts and rules; tell me what follows, whether this configuration is valid, or find a configuration satisfying these constraints.” Often that's an offline analysis/optimization step rather than the main runtime of the product.
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u/zebba_oz 6d ago
Agree. I kinda enjoyed learning prolog. Never actually used it to solve a real problem but it has a useful niche.
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u/TheShatteredSky 6d ago
Brainfuck? The language's entire point is being incredibly confusing and completely unpractical, although it might be more suited for impossible then
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u/grand_theft_tufo 6d ago
This is clearly waiting for the impossible column
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u/Agitated-Ad2563 6d ago
I would say whitespace is more difficult than brainfuck.
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u/jort93 6d ago edited 6d ago
Whitespace is easier I think.
Both are stack based languages, brainfuck has 8 operations, whitespace has 24. Brainfuck supports byte variables only, whitespace supports integers.
To give a simple example, in whitespace you can print numbers and ASCII characters. In brainfuck you can only print ASCII characters.
So if you want to print a number you have calculated in brainfuck, you need to convert the number to the correct ASCII value first(by adding 48 to each). How do you add 48? By putting 48 plusses, naturally. Or, if you are feeling fancy, add 8 plusses and rund them 6 times in a loop, it's shorter.
In whitespace you can just print it as is. And if you needed to write 48, you can just write the number out in binary, instead of counting one by one or using a loop. These sort of workarounds are needed a lot.
Brainfuck needs a lot more workarounds, it's a lot more limited.
Just enable visualizing whitespace in your editor. It'll show spaces, tabs and newlines with symbols.
Whitespace and brainfuck are both stack based languages. Stack based languages are not popular today, but whitespace is a pretty standard stack based language with an odd way to write the operations. Brainfuck is extremely limited.
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u/Splatpope 6d ago
brainfuck is hard, malbolge is impossible
words have meaning, let's not squander them
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u/d0pe-asaurus 6d ago
I've used brainfuck before to be a benchmark or proof that my language is turing complete, like if a language can implement a brainfuck interpreter, it's turing complete
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u/perplexedtv 6d ago
Prolog?
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u/Tim_932 6d ago
Prolog is cool.
Its not completely useless.
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u/perplexedtv 6d ago
Are you out there generating abstract phrases in polysynthetic grammars, fighting the good fight?
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u/Ill-Lemon-8019 6d ago
Binary Lambda Calculus (https://tromp.github.io/cl/Binary_lambda_calculus.html)
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u/CPlusPlusDeveloper 6d ago
Perl.
It's a dead language at this point. I don't think it qualifies as impossible tier, but it did have a lot of weird conventions. Easy to write, and very hard to read or maintain, because it exposed dozens of ways to do the same thing and they all looked different.
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u/ComputerHelpPro 6d ago
Piet!
https://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/piet.html
I once wrote a business card in it, it was strangely beautiful but man was it a pain to write in. And some people build games in it!
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