mathenk2

I must say that in all of my years, most every piece of source I've ever seen has been mostly [insert paradigm here]. OOP is "mostly" more times than not, same goes for FP. I would argue that "mostly" does work, and thankfully so, because nearly every service that you use throughout your day is a "mostly".

This is an out of date article that doesn't have much value any more -- many of the points seem to be bad practices anyhow. Like most languages, if you never learn it in depth, all you see are the warts. This same article could be written for nearly every other language; how many "This Language Sucks, and Here's Why" articles are going to keep popping up?! Please kill this.

This is why my repos reject code that doesn't explicitly use curly braces and semicolons. There is no legitimate reason for leaving them off.

I actually think less of those working 60+ hours and being proud of it. You're being self destructive and trying to make it sound like a good thing...

I would strongly suggest you reconsider Python and Ruby. Both of those languages are very easy to read and understand -- two very important characteristics for someone just beginning development of their own project. Once you're comfortable with one of those languages, then maybe venture out into other languages. I saw someone else mention PHP -- if you go that route, do learn best practices (e.g., namespacing, sticking to paradigms, etc.). There's a lot of really bad PHP out there, and you can either add to that mess, or be a leader in demonstrating good practices.

Might I also suggest that you spend a few days with a few different languages; if one feels right, then go with that one. You can't get a good feel for the language without using it a bit. Best of luck!

tabs for indentation, spaces for alignment. We all prefer different indentation sizes, and this technique takes care of that issue. If you want an indentation size of 2 [spaces], go for it, if you want 8, no problem.

While no system is 100% safe from viruses and malware, on my Linux machine I am guilty of not installing any AV. In the last decade or more, I have had no reason to -- although times may be changing. My web browser does not have flash, pdf readers are disabled, I'm always prompted on downloads, and Java can only run under user 'ohgodno' (and yes, it does have a passwd.)

In most cases if there is an issue with a Linux machine, you can wipe out a user and their files to remedy the problem -- the core system is very rarely impacted.