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Picking the right language

I am a student at University so my experience is limited, hence the question.

If someone says to you, here is a task to code, what are you looking at in order to choose the language or paradigm in which you will do it in?

Hope the question makes sense?

Solution

  • There are many factors that would be influential:

    • How critical is performance? Is it acceptable to write a slow solution quickly?
    • What kinds of libraries would I need?
    • What's the platform? OS? Web? Mobile devices?
    • What's the nature of the problem? Regex-type string processing? Mathematical with Matlab/Maple/etc?
    • Graphics? Text?
    • How reusable do I want the solution to be?

    This assumes that you actually have a choice of languages to choose from, of course. One language may suit the problem best, but if you don't know enough of it, then it's practically not an option, unless you have the time to learn.