If you have any programming knowledge and play WarLight, please answer this poll:

If you were to develop a CLOT, what language would you most like to use?

http://poll.pollcode.com/tz88v

I voted, I am very new to learning to programming but I plan on making CLOTs once I become sufficient in programming.

Voted. Python is most used in my industry. Sql as well, but that is a database language

i'm amazed at how many ppl chose java. i'm personally enclined to 100% javascript (replacing my old php code with nodejs reimplementation for example) but i probably wont bother with that rewrite when i reopen house of clots, will just improve the php codebase instead with user auth and proper db backend.

Other! Obviously Fortran all the way!

and seriously - all of the options seem to be widely known, so without in-depth understanding of the differences i cannot judge.. but nice that people might have chance to chose before its done..

I feel like Java and Javascript are similar enough that it doesn't really matter. If you can do one you can do the other.

Preliminary results:

PHP 6%
Python 26%
Java 26%
C# 13%
Javascript 13%
Other 16%

I would have expected PHP to do better, as it's the most popular web language.

I feel like Java and Javascript are similar enough that it doesn't really matter.

They may seem that way at first, but they're actually very different languages. Javascript has a prototypal inheritance system which couldn't be more different from Java.

EagleBlast: as Fizzer was mentioning there are actually quite substancial differences between java and javascript. java is more ancient and robust, but at the same time slowly falling in disuse, javascript is more flexible and it's been growing in use during the last decade, most site frontends use javascript and recently some backends also use it (through nodejs) so it's quite more popular then java atm. especially with web developers.

Maybe I should have described more what I was saying :P

I'm a Computer Science major and I've been using Java for around 5-6 years. I also know quite a bit about web development. I know that underneath they're much different, and serve two largely different purposes, but the language on the surface is so similar that switching from one to the other is pretty easy. In other words, if you know Java, you don't really have to "learn" Javascript, you just have to learn the differences between the two.

I wasn't saying they should be combined as one option, because they are different. I was just saying that if one was picked over the other it wouldn't matter to me at all, and I suspect it wouldn't matter much to anyone else who knows how to use the other.

i find java much more object oriented and javascript having plenty of low level quirks to be able to fully agree that it's a trivial transition. but i can see your point.

EagleBlast,

If you think Java and JavaScript are so similar, then why don't you consider PHP just as similar as well (and C++, Object Pascal, Perl, even *nix shell scripting...)?
All of them are object-oriented, imperative languages (a large majority of the well-known languages are in that group actually). Don't get me wrong, I understand why you think they are similar (and, up to a point, I even agree), but within the group of object-oriented, imperative languages, Java and JavaScript are actually pretty far apart.
In my experience, if you know one of them, you can pick up a working understanding of any of the other relatively easily (far easier than learning a functional or logical programming language for instance)... but just like with natural languages, most programmers seem to have a "native" language, which they are considerably more fluent in.

If I had my heart set on developing a CLOT, I'd learn or brush up on any of the languages in the poll. However it would take me far less effort to do it, in my case, in PHP (or even better, Pascal, but that's not a very realistic option :( ) then in, let's say, C#. So far, so good, but in turn that would influence the quality of my code, how quickly I can develop new functionality, how much time I can spend on coding (versus how much time I need for debugging), ... and in the end, my enjoyment of the project. That, in turn, influences (or even determines) how long I'll keep working on the project!

Of course I have no idea whether this is the background behind Fizzer asking the question, but it is at least the reason why I think it's an interesting (and important) poll.

First of all, sorry, i wasn't looking to start a debate :P

But since you asked, I base that opinion off of my own experience. I know that the basis of most OOP languages are similar, but it's the format that they use that I find similar. Javascript is (for all intents and purposes) just the script version of Java. (yes, I know that it's not that simple, but in practice it is)

If you've used Visual Basic and VBScript as well, you might understand more where I'm coming from........and no I'm not happy that I know how to use these, it wasn't a choice.

I vote for Italian.

I didn't want to start a debate either; it was a rhetorical question, background for the second half of my post. To put it a little more concisely: "What if "meh, whatever" is not a useful answer and you had to choose one specific language?".