Ada. APL. Assembly language. B. Basic. BCPL. C. C+. C++. C#. COBOL. D. Forth. Fortran. Haskell. Java. Lisp. Logo. Pascal. Perl. Prolog. Python. Scheme. SNOBOL.

Is your favourite language mentioned in that list? If so, are you feeling smug? Or if not, are you outraged?

There are, quite literally, thousands of computer programming languages, and it seems that every single one has more than its fair share of passionate advocates. Whichever language you are using, you will generally find far more people telling you that your choice was wrong, than people who will agree that you made a reasonable decision to use that language.

C diehards (er, like me!) will give you several excellent reasons why C should be your language of choice. C++ aficionados will be just as persuasive about C++, and often disparaging about C (they call it "a better C"; I'd be happier if they called it "a different C", but of course they don't). Ada lovers will typically look down their noses on both the C and the C++ camp. Visual Basic programmers don't understand what the fuss is about, since it's quite obvious to them that you can do anything you need to do in straight VB code. And there's always some smart alec who'll point out that using such high level languages can only lead to code bloat and runtime inefficiency; assembly language is the only way to go. COBOL programmers will then point out that the whole point of COBOL is that you don't have to use assembly language. And then the Pascal programmers will retort that the whole idea of Pascal is that you don't have to use COBOL. Fans of functional languages such as Lisp will then say that, if you haven't programmed functionally, you haven't really understood programming at all!

Why are we so passionate about our choice of computer programming language? Do other professions suffer from the same damaging phenomenon? Can we imagine builders arguing about hammers? Or plumbers arguing about wrenches?

The answer probably lies in the close relationship between language and thought. Language doesn't just enable us to express ourselves. It also, to a very large extent, controls and limits the ways in which we can think. It is almost impossible to think like a Spaniard, for example, unless you happen to be Spanish (or, at the very least, to speak Spanish very fluently indeed). And because Spaniards cannot, on the whole, imagine with any accuracy what it is like to be non-Spanish, they are likely to conclude that being Spanish is the best way to be. (There is nothing special about Spaniards in this regard, of course -- I could have chosen any nation on the planet for the purposes of the example.)

And so it is with computer programming languages. For a start, a programmer who "speaks" only one programming language is likely, in the medium term, to have his thought processes so moulded, so shaped, by that language that he finds it hard to imagine that there are other ways to program; and, if there are other ways, well, they must surely be inferior, mustn't they?

But this is a very limiting way to look at programming languages. A programmer who has taken the very sensible course of learning several programming languages is in a much better position to judge between them. And yet, curiously, such programmers tend to be dispassionate and, dare I say, rational about language choice. For them, the sensible thing to do is to choose the language that best fits the problem domain.

For example, consider a programmer who is fluent in C, has adequate C++, and can boast a smattering of COBOL, assembly language, and Visual Basic. He is asked to write a program to check documents, presented as text files, for heavily-used phrases (perhaps he works in a publishing house, and the program is intended to help authors to identify clichés in their books; as we all know, clichés are a Bad Thing, and good writers avoid them like the plague).

Since no platform was mentioned, the programmer may reject Visual Basic out of hand (since he can't guarantee that his program will be run under the Windows operating system). Similar considerations, and the sheer amount of work it would involve, lead him to reject assembly language too. COBOL isn't terribly well-designed for such a task, so he is left with C or C++. His fluency in C might lead him to favour that option at first, but on reflection he will realise that C++'s STL will literally turn this task into a one-hour job at the most, and possibly a much shorter time need be spent. That doesn't mean C++ is the right choice for all tasks. But he may well conclude that it's the right language for this task.

He will also be wise enough to recognise that there may well be languages which are better suited to the task, but he will rightly decide that, at least for the time being, it'd be quicker to use a slightly less suitable language that one knows than to spend the time learning a completely new language, and then still have to invest yet more time in writing the program itself in that language (and writing programs in a language you don't know very well is almost bound to take longer than writing the same programs in a language that you do know).

If he is very wise indeed, he will make a point of learning that other language anyway (perhaps once he's finished his current task), so that the next time such a task is presented to him, he'll be ready.

There are so many different languages because there are so many different ways to think about programming. The language that is most right for me may not be the language that is most right for you. So what right have I to tell you what language to use? And what right do you have to tell me what language to use? None whatsoever, right?

So please, let's have a little sanity when it comes to language wars. Just remember that one man's meat is another man's poison. Cultural diversity is just as important and rewarding in programming as it is in other aspects of our existence here on Earth. Our time here is not so protracted that we can afford to waste any of it insisting that other people should change their way of thinking just because we are too lazy to change ours.

Use C. There's no better language. :-)