I hope this was a joke. The languages I proposed for simple tasks are simple to learn. If you know how to program already you could easily type into google "how to get a file using simple_lang_x" "how to parse file in simple_lang_x" and be done in few lines of code in a short period of time. Anyone who suggests using C to download data is a fool
I think you fail to understand how it really works: Nobody in business, not at least in any enterprise that is profit seeking, does anyone care about which language is most optimal for any task at hand. You look at your resources and what gets your to the goal the fastest with the constraint of abiding by certain quality standards and the ability to scale, among other requirements. Most of the time work is not done with the most optimal tool, either because the tool is not available or because its too costly or time consuming. So, if I only knew VB.Net and you asked me to code up a trading platform, if I knew it can be done in VB.Net and I can do it faster than having to learn another language and do it then I will chose VB.Net, no question. Which part of this management 101 is not transparent to you? P.S. Nobody suggested using C to download data. If you get here and still do not understand what I am trying to say then I suggest to re-read.
You clearly missed the point of my Beta/VHS metaphor. Deciding which technological solution is "better" depends on what one's goals are. Beta was technically "better" than VHS, but VHS ended up overwhelming Beta because VHS was "better" from a business standpoint. C is a very old language with tons of open source libraries to support data download and whatever else you can think of. So does python, but I don't use python because I don't need to switch. There are dozens of languages and I'm positive that each one shines technically for certain applications. If a non-programmer asked me what programming language they should learn first I would not recommend C/C++ even though it's what I use almost exclusively. But, to get from point A to point B I will use C++ because it's the most familiar tool. hftvol is right. Religious devotion to a language is pointless. All that matters is quickly and reliably getting an application working to make money. I'll let academics carp over which obscure language is "best" whatever that means. I want to write programs that make me money the fastest, easiest, most reliable way I can so I use the tools I'm most familiar with.
Disagree. Everything after C/C++ is C++ regardless of what it is called and in what syntax it is disguised. Good understanding of C++ concepts should be prerequisite for becoming proficient programmer in any of the modern languages.
the original poster wrote "Common tasks like downloading index component lists, historical data, etc."
I thought it was you who was religiously devoted to C. I just pointed out that its the wrong tool for the "common tasks" you described in your first post. However, I do think C has its place for other things.
Nope, no religious devotion here. Simply a pragmatic acceptance that it's my most familiar language and I can work fastest in it. If I were a zealot I'd be trying to convince everyone that C is the best language and all others are blasphemies. That couldn't be further from the truth.
I think you guys misunderstood - 2rosy wasn't making such a sweeping generalization. The right point to take away from his post is that a high-level language is (usually) more appropriate for a specialized, latency-insensitive, limited-reuse task like downloading a list of symbols. That said, good programmers are usually indifferent to language choice although they have religious preferences that you can tease out of them (e.g. I remember recently asking one of the best programmers at Google why he likes Objective-C most and the first reason he gave me was that the arguments look more readable...). There are 100% .NET/JVM shops with petabyte-scale data. Your choice of language should be decided from operational reasons, not performance reasons, with the exception of the choice to make your operations performance-centric. (I think this is ugly prose, but you get the point, please let me know if the language isn't clear.)