languages of choice
n.
C and
LISP. Nearly every
hacker knows one of these, and most good ones are fluent in both.
Smalltalk and Prolog are also popular in small but influential
communities.
There is also a rapidly dwindling category of older hackers with
FORTRAN, or even assembler, as their language of choice. They
often prefer to be known as
real programmers, and other
hackers consider them a bit odd (see "{The Story of Mel, a
Real Programmer}" in
appendix A). Assembler is generally no longer
considered interesting or appropriate for anything but
HLL
implementation,
glue, and a few time-critical and
hardware-specific uses in systems programs. FORTRAN occupies a
shrinking niche in scientific programming.
Most hackers tend to frown on languages like
{Pascal} and
{Ada}, which don't give them the near-total freedom considered
necessary for hacking (see
bondage-and-discipline language),
and to regard everything that's even remotely connected with
COBOL or other traditional
card walloper languages as a
total and unmitigated
loss.
