Hardest programing language?

[|The|Specialist]

What would you guys say is the hardest programing lang. to learn? All the NEWer languages are great and EZ to use but I want something very 'RETRO' but can do more than just make batchfile styled programs. Any ideas &/or suggestions?

[avdven]

How are "the newer languages ... great and EZ"? Personally, I think most languages have been getting more and more difficult because there are more and more features. Assembly, for instance, is a piece of cake to learn if you understand memory addressing and stacks. If you want something difficult, go with Prolog or LISP. They're not anywhere near the most difficult, but I can promise you that they'll be a challege since they're logic-based programming.

If you want to learn a useful language that will keep you challenged, start with C++. You can start out very basic, but get as complex and cutting edge as you want as you get better.

By the way, what are the easy programming languages you're talking about? I'm a CS instructor and I can tell you that most people will find any language difficult if you go deep enough into it...

AJ

[Spookman]

...also I would imagine you would use different programming languages for different applications, it's all very well learning a language because it's hard, but is it going to any better to use than the more modern visual programming languages, personally I think not as I remember the days of having to chug through pages of print-outs trying to debug code...the bad 'ol days

[souleman]

Personally, I think the hardest to learn is the old punch card system... You programed the computer by putting holes in cards, then fed the cards into a slot on the machine. But those are hard to come by now (unless you work for the census bearuo or a voting booth... The next hardest would be machine language.... Then assembly language.

[lench]

BINARY! lol

[smirc]

Check out Prolog, it's pretty twisted.

[AphexTwin]

like adven im curious to know what languages you are referring to when you say easy, are you talking about visual basic style langs??
i dont think there is anything easy about languages like C, java, C++, it could take years to TRULY master these languages.
also, is that frank castle in your avatar (the punisher)??? if so, nice avatar!!!!

[Jabberwocky]

every language has it's good and bad points, you just have to look at what the purpose of the language is. a few people mentioned lisp and prolog, but if you're looking for relationships in a knowledge base, you can't beat them. c might be the best language for building applications or operating systems, but for serious number crunching i'd take fortran any day.

languages are tools, and you have to pick the best tool for the job.

[netman4ttm]

I've always agreed with my instructor, its "C" because its like playing tennis without a net.

[neel]

I was reading about some kind of old programming language (I'm looking for the name), with wich people tried to make Artificial Intelligence. It was very based on logic of course (wich already can be difficult), but you also could combine and rearrange command so it made a whole new command wich had nothing to do with the commands used to 'construct' it.
There were just very few commands to make billions of commands with. I think it was a great invention for indeed make AI, but you have to be a double genius to even make an hello programm with it.

I still don't know the name... I'll post it as soon as I found it